Drive Backup Software

A Quick Overview of Drive Backup Software

When it comes to storing your most important data its important to find a robust solution. The last thing you want is to find out that you backups failed when you need to retrieve lost data. Backups are important for various reasons. Not only can you hard drive crash or fail, but your computer can get stolen or a virus can corrupt your system. Who knows what can happen and usually when it does its too late. Its really easy to set up a good backup routine and once its set up you can rest assured that your data is safe and that you won’t suffer any significant loss when the worse thing happens.

Drive backup software comes in many shapes and sizes. Essentially it’s the medium between the data on your hard drive and your backup medium. The software does 3 important functions. Firstly is will “copy” the selected data and compress it into a much smaller file size that’s more convenient for storage. Secondly, it will allow you to retrieve that information when you restore the backup file and lastly it will allow you to schedule your backups to make sure that the process happens without you having to manually make backups every day.

If you need to make daily backups, software becomes increasingly important. Obviously you don’t want to keep making backups of the same data day in and day out. You only want to backup the “new” data every day otherwise you will end up with masses of unnecessary data being backed up every day. Software allows you to schedule and sort exactly what gets backup up and this can greatly increase the efficiency of your backups.

Another important aspect to consider is the issue of remote storage. Good drive backup software will allow you to store a second copy of the data remotely. All you really need is a network connection to the remote computer and set the software up to store a clone of the information on a remote hard drive or tape backup. This is widely considered as standard procedure and some companies even keep multiple copies to ensure that the data never gets lost.

There are many free software for creating backups but you really get what you pay for. Ease of use, capabilities and restoring data are the most important considerations and you should never skimp on these for the sake of saving $20.

Some Important Backup Issues To Conside

Backups is as important to any home or business computer as the files and the work itself. To think that a single hard drive crash can potentially cause massive loss is a scary thought and there’s been some horror stories over the last few years of businesses being wiped out because they lost their data.

Since everything is digital these days its vitally important that you create backups of everything you do. Whether it be those precious family photos or your personal will, file backups is the smart thing to do. Here are a few important things to consider when looking into drive backup software.

1. File Size
One of the real issues with making consistent backups is the sheer file size of your backups. Doing a weekly backup of all your data fro storage purposes can quickly add up and you will either fill a few hard drives or a small stack of CD’s or backup tapes. Incremental backups can be a smart thing to do but make sure you don’t overwrite important data.

2. Backup Medium
Making backups require a storage medium and traditionally tape backups was the most popular solution for companies with large amounts of data. Tapes can store large amounts of data but with some of the more recent technologies means that hard drives are now the preferred backup medium as backup tapes are notorious for failing over time.

3. Frequency of Backups
How often you make backups is a very important decision. Mae them too often and you might waste loads of storage space. Make them to far between and you might lose some data. Its important to consider your own unique situation and address what you need and what best suits your own individual situation. As a rule of thumb, more is better because once data is lost its lost forever.

4. File Type
Different drive backup software will save different file types. Each software tries to compress the data as much as possible and the best software can do a really good job of making large backups rather small files for storage. The real issue is with restoring the backup data and if you don’t have the right software, it can be impossible to read the backup files again.

5. Retrievals
This comes back to the file types and the issue of getting access to the backed up data is also a big one to address. There is no use in making backups if you can’t get access to the data again. Make sure you consider this for remote backup solutions and pay particular attention to retrieval times.

Remote Data Backup Software

For individual use and even for small businesses, a local backup system can be more than adequate. If you simply have to store daily work and archive the day to day filing then a simple setup can be more than adequate to keep you data safe. Basic storage on an external hard drive, DVD’s or tape backups can handle the volume that individual or home usage requires.

There are several problems with doing these elementary backups though. The first and most obvious is with the human error aspect. Even when you backup software is fully automated it still relies on a person to manage the actual medium on to which you are backing up your data. Another is the issue of backing up data from multiple locations. For bigger organizations where central databases are used, it become a nightmare to synchronize data and to prevent corruption of live data. This is where remote backups come in.

Remote backup software allows you to create one centralized backup hub that can not only handle data from multiple locations, but it can perfectly synchronize the data that gets stored to insure that nothing gets left behind. Backing up databases is vitally important these days since we are no longer dealing with static data like we did 10 years ago and having the right software for the job is crucial.

Remote backup solutions is not just for the professional business user either. If you are a musician or graphic designer that deals with large files, then keeping backups can become a formidable task and it can eat up hard drive space at a fierce pace. There are several remote storage solutions that allow you to store your data remotely. With a decent internet connection its really painless to simply install the software and set up your backup schedule – preferably at a time when you are not working.

By storing your data remotely it takes both the responsibility and the hassle out of protecting your data. Remote storage is much safer and although it comes at a price, it is trouble free once you’ve got it set up. Different levels of security is also available with most of the storage services and generally the more space you use, the more you will pay. It is however an easy way to take care of all your backup needs.

Looking at Backup Mediums

As important as your drive backup software is, the actual medium unto which you back up is also important and something you need to look at very closely. Traditionally tape drives were used as they are capable of large amounts of data but as any IT manager will tell you, they are notoriously slow and riddles with errors when you do have to restore the data. It is definitely not a very reliable solution and many companies resorted to making multiple copies just to protect their data.

For home users, blanks CD’s and DVD’s is usually the backup medium of choice and with a 4GB capacity on a DVD it is often more than adequate for backup purposes. The problem with disks is that they have a limited lifetime. Keeping backups for extended periods of time is a real issue and if you need to store data for 10 or 20 years then you will have to look into a more professional solution.

Ever since hard drives became cheaper, external hard drives have become the backup medium of choice. These days you can get a terabyte or two for a few hundred bucks. Although hard drives are much more robust and a much better way to back up data it can break down, fail and crash. Even something as simple as dust can mess up a hard drive permanently.

With the new generation of hard drives it seems to be much improved and with memory cards growing in size it seems like it can be the future of data storage. The new solid state hard drives are essentially flash cards and they are some of the fastest, smallest and most reliable ways of storing data.

Taking responsibility for your own backups is one issue, but there is off course the issue of remote backups. Many storage services online will offer you a set amount of hard drive space and by installing their drive backup software you can set your own backup preferences and have everything safely stored on a remote server – no worries.

Every backup solution comes at a price, but I would strongly suggest that you look at the most robust solution. Setting it up in a way where it automatically gets scheduled is one way to take the human error out of it while remote server takes the potential loss out of the equation.