Offsite data backups

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marigold

Joined: 02 Sep 2005
Posts: 12458
Location: West Sussex

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 07 4:42 pm Post subject: Offsite data backups
A friend is thinking of using a company such as https://www.safedatastorage.co.uk/ to back up his small-business data. Anyone got any opinions or suggestions as to what he should be looking for in such a company? Does anyone use such a service? Recommendations? Possible problems? Questions to ask? Cheers m.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45469
Location: Essex

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 07 4:55 pm Post subject:
Why does he need an external firm to do it? If he has broadband and a PC at home he can back up to his own PC.

marigold

Joined: 02 Sep 2005
Posts: 12458
Location: West Sussex

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 07 5:43 pm Post subject:
I think he already backs up his laptop to his home PC . His home is his office - though it's getting to be more a case of sleeping in his office at the moment . The business is likely to grow quite a lot over the next few years - I guess he's looking for more security and to outsource some tasks.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45469
Location: Essex

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 07 5:48 pm Post subject:
How much data and what sort of stuff is it? Never used offsite backups of this kind, we have a fireproof cabinet that we use to store backup media in.

marigold

Joined: 02 Sep 2005
Posts: 12458
Location: West Sussex

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 07 5:59 pm Post subject:

Relatively small quantities of project management and financial planning stuff, I think. I rather suspect that what he needs is advice from someone with more up to date IT skills than mine.

My next question is going to be about applications he might use to manage his business, but first I need to get him to write some sort of spec.....

At any rate I'm beginning to get the impression that this kind of offisite service might be more than he needs. On the other hand, have you tested your fireproof cabinets?

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45469
Location: Essex

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 07 6:08 pm Post subject:

Our fireproof has walls about a foot thick. I'm pretty certain it's safe for most things.

I'd advise him to decide what he wants from his backups first:

Data restore
OR
System restore

A remote backup won't let you re-install windows, but a DVD image of his whole system partition plus a copy of his windows system disk in e.g. his car glovebox will.

For a complete system re-install without re-installing apps he could use a registry backup tool.

jema
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 28140
Location: escaped from Swindon

Posted: Tue Apr 03, 07 6:36 pm Post subject:
Speed can be an issue even with broadband. I run daily backups of my servers between servers, plus once a week I use by 10mbs broadband connection to do offsite TO the office (and remember with most broadband TO is quicker than from) I kick this process of 7am Monday and with luck it will finish late Tuesday

marigold

Joined: 02 Sep 2005
Posts: 12458
Location: West Sussex

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 07 5:21 pm Post subject:
Thanks chaps, I'm going to try and disentangle myself from this one and suggest he finds himself a proper IT person to advise him

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45469
Location: Essex

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 07 5:24 pm Post subject:
Just get him to ask the question himself, once we know what he's after I'm sure we can advise him.

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42208
Location: North Devon

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 07 6:23 pm Post subject:
Pimp.

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42208
Location: North Devon

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 07 6:23 pm Post subject:
Oh, hang on, you're already on this forum.

tahir

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 45469
Location: Essex

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 07 6:27 pm Post subject:
Que?

sean
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 42208
Location: North Devon

Posted: Wed Apr 04, 07 6:29 pm Post subject:
Never mind.

Barefoot Andrew
Downsizer Moderator

Joined: 21 Mar 2007
Posts: 22780
Location: In the 17th century

Posted: Thu Apr 05, 07 8:16 am Post subject:

I too work at home - and have a main machine in the office which plays home to all the important stuff.

I have two hard disks in the machine, the latter being used soley to store backup images.

I keep all my work under one folder, organised into a substantial tree of sub-folders etc. For day-to-day backups I simply use WinZip to make a single ZIP of this folder, and then move this ZIP file on the second hard disk. I attache the date as part of the file name (e.g. 'filename-yyyymmdd.zip') so I can keep multiple copies, and occasionally I write these out to CD (not not always).

For monthly backups, I use Norton Ghost 2003 to create an image of the entire C: drive, and write this image to a designated folder on the second disk. I then use Nero to write the image out onto CDs. Slightly faffy procedure but it's workable on a once-a-month basis. I have found Norton Ghost to be unreliable in writing backups directly to CD.

I keep copes of the CDs at my nearby parents' house.

A.

PS Note of caution with ealier versions of WinZip - versions prior to v9 - there was a limit on the number of files that could be zipped of 65,535, and the size of the resulting ZIP file to 4Gbs.

MarkS

Joined: 01 Aug 2006
Posts: 2626

Posted: Thu Apr 05, 07 8:49 am Post subject:

the key thing with All backup strategies is....

check the results work.

take a clean machine and restore your backups onto it and make sure they work.

the number of times I have seen backups that dont include key data, or inclde software where the install disks/keys are lost, etc etcetcetcetc.

Once you've got the data back - what else do you need to continue to run your business ?

the failure rate of businesses that suffer a system loss is very high.

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