A vital part of any security scheme is backup. No matter how tight your security is, you always have the chance that a virus or hacker or even your 5 year old kid is going to slip through your defenses and damage your system and your vital data files. If you don't back up your data regularly you will be out of luck. And anyone who has been there knows how horrible it is to realize that your computer is destroyed and there is no way to get the files back.

In order to back up your system, you will need a backup device. Some people use Zip or Jazz drives, others use tape drives, write able CD drives, or other removable cartridge systems. I know it sounds expensive, but compared with the cost of losing your valuable data forever, each of these is cheap.

I've found that the best all-around product for backup is Backup Exec. This product requires a tape drive, as do most other third-party backup solutions. Backup Exec is preferred because it can be made totally automatic and is one of the top-rated products industry-wide. If you want to back up to other media, though, you'll do best to stick with the backup software that comes with the media.

An important fact that I've noticed about backup is that you have to make it a part of your normal routine. Even if you have automated backups set up and working perfectly, you must check them constantly. If you don't you will find yourself without a backup when you need it most! My advice is to try restoring files from your backup occasionally when you don't need it so you are ready and are sure you have good backups when you do need them.

Be careful when choosing backup mediums for longer range storage. There is nothing more frustrating then to need a backup, go to it and find that the file that you need cannot be retrieved because the media is corrupt! For critical data I usually make sure I have backups on several different media (perhaps tape and zip disk), and for the really important stuff I tend to rotate through half a dozen different medias. I mean, think about it, is the data for your entire company worth a few dollars for some hardware and media? Don't risk all of your years of hard work trying to save a few dollars on media.

Backup Disaster - A True Story

Not having a good backup can be a disaster of epic proportions. In one instance I've seen the lack of a backup turn a situation which was uncomfortable into a complete disaster.

I knew a guy who was working on an older Macintosh computer. Our entire company switched to PCs except for him, because he didn't have the time. The Macintosh was old and unbeknownst to anyone it had been outfitted with an old RAID drive (mirrored) from a manufacturer that no longer existed.

This guy believed he was doing backups every day. Someone showed him how to do it and he followed those instructions to the letter, even to the point of ignoring the error that it produced each and every time it ran. That was actually in the instructions.

One day his hard disk started making strange sounds so he called us. We tried to boot it up but no go. We asked him if he was doing backups and he handed us his zip disks, which were blank! He had been faithfully doing backups for over two years, and not one of them worked.

We had to send the disk out to a disk repair shop, and they managed to recover about 20% of the data at a cost of over $6,000! It took the poor guy almost six months with two temps to get all of the data hand-typed back into the computer!