Tips & Tricks for better Business Backup

Choosing the right backup method is one of the most important decisions you need to make when protecting your business-critical data. Learn how to develop an effective backup and recovery plan for your business-critical systems, and find out about the differences between the most common backup methods available, including incremental backup, differential backup, mirror backup, and full backup.

1. Choose the right backup method

Here is a quick rundown of the most common backup methods available:

Mirror Backup creates a mirror copy of the source data. When a source file is deleted, that file is also deleted in the mirror backup automatically.

• Pros: Fast backups, fast recovery
• Cons: High risk of data loss

Full Backup captures your entire system and all the data you want to protect. Frequent full backups result in easier recovery operations.

• Pros: Fast, reliable recovery
• Cons: Slower backup, lots of storage required

Incremental Backup captures only the changes made since the last incremental backup. Saves both time and storage space, and ensures that your backup is up to date.

• Pros: Fast backups, low storage space
• Cons: Slower recovery, risk of data loss

Differential Backup captures only the changes made since the last full backup, not since the last differential backup. This requires more storage space, but ensures an easier, more reliable restore. Many organizations struggle with incremental vs. differential backup solutions.

• Pros: Fast backups, low storage space
• Cons: Slower recovery

2. Choose the right backup destination

Once you have created a backup, where is the best place to store it safely? Here are the most popular options:

External Hard Drive

• Portable and comparatively less expensive
• Widely used storage media

Cloud Storage

• Secure offsite storage
• Files remain safe & accessible at any time
• Most reliable & convenient for business data

Network Attached Storage (NAS)

• Uses NAS device
• Accessible from anywhere on your network

3. Develop an effective disaster recovery plan

When disaster strikes, every minute of downtime costs money and directly impacts your business. You must develop a clearly-defined Disaster Recovery (DR) plan to ensure fast, efficient recovery. Below are questions to ask while developing your DR plan:

• Who is responsible in a disaster scenario?
• Can I easily recover larger amounts of data from my cloud storage?
• Can I restore a system to hardware of a different make/model?
• When I restore a computer or server, will I have to reconfigure and re-install items manually?
• Can I easily restore multiple systems at once?
• What happens if an employee’s computer crashes on the road?
• Can I restore servers located in another office or location?
• Can I perform full bare-metal recovery easily?