Last Reviewed: March 12, 2008 Last Updated: March 12, 2008 *Why we show the Reviewed and Updated DatesThe FAQ's on Backups
* Gould Intelligent, LLC, it's officers, directors, and staff are not responsible for the use and misuse of the information provided on this website and in particular on this web page. This information is provided as a general guideline only. Specific implementations WILL vary the application of this information and/or procedures significantly. Improper use of any of this information could have disasterous results !ALL are advised to consult an expert for your particular application.
In the following information you can substitute disks, flash drives, etc for the word tapes!How many tapes/Disks/Drives/Copies (backups) should I keep and how often should I backup?
Why do I have so many disk, 4 day tapes, 4 weekly tapes and a minimum of 6 monthly tapes?
What is this offsite storage and why do I need it?
What is the proper procedure/method for backups?
How many tapes (backups) should I keep and how often should I backup?
In general you should keep a daily tape for each day of business, plus a weekly tape, plus monthly tapes for a minimum of 6 months. This is of course dependent on how many transactions you perform each day and how much administrative and management work (word processing, bookkeeping, documentation, etc) has changed on the
computer each day. But the rule still generally applies.
For Example:
You would have individual backup tapes (or CD's or DVD's - whatever your backup media is) for:
Monday is your weekly (you would have 4 different Monday tapes - one for each week of the month)
Tuesday daily
Wednesday daily
Thursday daily
Friday daily
Monthly tape (you would have a minimum of 6 monthly tapes) and would use this tape instead of any other tape on the last
business day of the month.
* Companies that have huge transaction volumes will usually backup more often and in different methods.
back to top
Why do I have so many tapes, 4 day tapes, 4 weekly tapes and a minimum of 6 monthly tapes?Simple, tapes are a poor medium to store data on, they break, they stretch, they fail. What! I'm trusting my backup to a poor system? YES - but you're not supposed to be relying on the backups for normal operations - they're for emergencies! AND, that's one reason you have so many tapes.
The OTHER reason is that the need to restore something from backup is not just because it's missing, but because it was damaged or corrupt. So the question is - how long has it been corrupt? A day, well then that's easy isn't it. Wait, maybe it was a couple of days, or was that a couple of weeks? Well I haven't really used this spreadsheet in 2 months - AHA! Many businesses I've helped have refused to accept this point but most unfortunately have felt this pain. Also, customer service is one thing but I WILL say I TOLD YOU SO!
What is this offsite storage and why do I need it?
Offsite storage is any place off the premises of your business. When we say off the premises we mean out of the same physical building that you're business is located in. Actually it should not even be in the same city block as your business.
WHY - the two most common reasons - fire and theft. If the building burns down, or the computers stolen or vandalized, where's your A/R? (A/P can wait a little bit but not too long. ;)Some other considerations - do you know what to do with your backup tape that you brought home with you if your office did suffer a disaster such as a fire. Remember your plan better have a way of getting the data off the tape too!
Something we'll talk about later is how to store your backups - putting a nail or a pin through them or holding them up by a magnet is a big no-no. Do this and you have a very ugly coaster for setting glasses on and that's all because your data is most likely gone!
What is the proper procedure/method for backups?
Ok, so you stick a tape in and the software that your cousin's friend the computer genius setup runs, backs up your whole network over night and spits the tape out the next day. Everything's ok right!
You got it - WRONG.
Did it actually back up everything? Believe it or not, this is one of the greatest points of failure I've seen. Companies go to use the backup and there's nothing there! Not a thing! But the backup software shows it working just fine - even verifying - What happened? Lots of things that don't help you one bit when you need that backup. So what do you do?
Every 3 months you create a junk file on your computer. A word processing file called backuptest and you try to restore that file from a backup tape. That's it.
BE CAREFUL - doing this wrong can result in over writing ALL your files - make sure you know how to restore a file properly. After all, you'll want to know how to do this anyway when you need to. This should only take you anywhere from 15 minutes to 1 hour to accomplish.
