Companies routinely risk everything by ignoring basic backup procedures. Learn the few simple steps that could one day save your business.

In an age where technology rules the business roost, it is nearly unfathomable that so many businesses are willing to put information essential to their business at risk. And yet, on a daily basis, countless businesses – big and small – do exactly that.

The risks of not backing up data are great. According to International Data Group’s IDC research unit, 60% of companies that lose all their data will shut down within six months of the loss. More staggering, IDC notes, is that 93% of businesses that lost their data centre for at least ten days ended up filing for bankruptcy within a year.

Most puzzling about this is that the overwhelming majority of computer users know they are supposed to back up their data. It’s not as hard as you think, though. Here we’ll examine data storage options and what to look for so that you are comfortable and that your precious data is protected.

Understanding backup

Have you ever uploaded a file to a website or online service, such as a photo-sharing site? If so, you have essentially done what a backup does – take a file and copy it to another location – but on a much smaller scale.

For the Small Office Home Office, or SoHo, user, you almost assuredly have a network set up. Your computer can backup to disk, tape, or an external hard drive, which you can purchase easily, based on how much data you need to save. For larger jobs, or simply as a secondary backup – which?is strongly encouraged as it makes for expedited restoration in case of an emergency – your data may also be transmitted to a backup server.

If you’re a larger operation with remote offices, little changes in the process itself. An office’s computers send data off the office branch server, which then transmits the data offsite to a backup server, to which other offices also have access. Truthfully, there is very little the users need to do to make the backups themselves occur. So with that concern allayed, we move to selecting what to back up and how.

The essentials

When deciding what to back up, every organisation should begin with its most critical information. For example, accounting and finance data, emails (an often overlooked item because of their commonness), client and prospect information, schematics, project plans, and projections.

In addition, data and documents stored only on desktops and laptops tend to be ignored. Don’t! These files don’t seem overly important until they’re gone.

Simply consider what would be critical to get your business back up and running in short order if a catastrophe happened and wiped out everything. Then expand from there.

Tape vs disk

Jonathan Servante, CTO of computer consultancy Network Fish, explains that there are three key factors to consider when you are evaluating whether to use tape or disk as the primary backup module for your small business: cost, performance, and manageability.

A drop in the price of disk storage over the past several years has led to a lot of organisations adding disk as their backup mechanism. Much of that is psychological with respect to modernisation – disks just seem more modern than tapes, like the evolution of cassette tapes for music to CDs. However, when priced alongside the cheapest disk technologies, tape regularly keeps its cost-competitive edge, with respect to long-term storage.

As for performance, while tape drives have evolved to become very fast, with some capable of writing at 280 MBps – a figure that outperforms disk – particularly the cheaper disks normally chosen for backup. However, the infrastructure must be able to support tape, as the medium really suffers in less than optimum conditions. Also consider that when it comes to a restore, if needed, the seek time on a disk can be a matter of a few milliseconds, whereas a tape system can take much longer; you have to locate the correct physical tape and load it into a drive.

When it comes to manageability, tape’s portability is its obvious advantage. Tapes can be stored off-site, protecting them from systemwide disruptions. Disks don’t have that flexibility, though strong networking makes transfer of data to your remote site a breeze, providing the same benefit.

Online backup

Online data backup and storage is a booming industry. As such, competition for your business will be fierce. That’s good for you, because competition improves quality and controls prices. Still, you need to make sure price isn’t all you look at.

Though dozens of service providers focus on individual users, only a few services are designed specifically to handle the needs of enterprises and small businesses.

An essential find is a service that works on both Windows and non-Windows machines, and that will allow business customers to use one account to backup multiple PCs and users. Too often, mobile devices and laptops get ignored. This will ensure that those are in the backup loop with no added hassle.

To the Limit

The largest provider of online backup services, Mozy.com, recently announced the end of its ‘unlimited’ storage plans, a trend that looks like extending throughout the industry that has grown beyond needing such gimmicks to draw customers.

Mozy’s vice president of product marketing, Russ Stockdale, told PCMag.com that although three out of four of its customers’ accounts stay well below 50GB, a minority who take ‘unlimited’ at face value have uploaded vast amounts of digital video, photos, and music.

The many terabytes of transfer and storage taken by these users forced Mozy to revise its pricing policies. Rather than seeking unlimited plans likely to soon be discontinued and leave you scrambling, seek an appropriate plan based on your best estimate of requirements moving forward. Because Mozy won’t be the last to make this change.