Back That Thang Up!
So if you joined the party in hopes of hearing a Lil’ Wayne song, well… we have something EVEN better to talk about! Today we wanted to talk about one of our most frequently asked questions – backing up that data.
Data backups are pretty much a necessity in today’s world. When you have a real-time copy of your computer’s footprint, and all the data within it, you are fully covered in the event that your originals are lost or destroyed. If you have a data breach, or a ransomware attack for example, having good quality backups will keep you from losing a days of work, and in some cases month’s of work. We’ve seen a company lose 6 months of data! Can you imagine the cost to retrace all of that work?
Fortunately with cloud services, its easier than ever to have regular backups done, and stored off site. It still requires you to set up the schedule and understand best practices for creating, storing, and then restoring your data. Also, the solutions vary based on if you are looking to back up personal, or business data. Here are some recommendations for File Sync and Backups from PCMag.
They list Microsoft OneDrive, GoogleDrive, Dropbox, and Apple iCloud drive for some users. Businesses with more than a few computer stations will want something more hefty, for which we have further recommendations, but these are a good start for personal use.
Here are a few different types of backups:
Full Backups:
Full backups are pretty much as they sound — a copy of all the data in your environment or subsection of the environment. Full backups are the fastest to recover, and require the most amount of storage space.
Differential Backups:
These backups make copies of all the files that have been created or changed since the last full backup. Differential backups save money and time because they don’t backup any files that were saved in the last full backup. The downside is that it takes longer to recover from differential backups because you need access to the full backup and the differential backup that followed it.
Incremental Backups:
Incremental backups are similar to differential backups but they only cover the data that was changed after the last backup of any type. This means whether it was a full backup, differential backup or incremental backup it doesn’t matter. This is in contrast to a differential backup that will capture all files changed since the last full backup.
Some mistakes to avoid:
- Not doing any backups
- Doing your backups on the same piece of hardware – to be effective, you want offsite backups, either in the cloud or at an offsite server.
- Not doing your backups frequently enough
- Not labeling your backups
The team at TCR is here to help! If you have any questions about best practices for your company’s backups, or if you want to talk about how we can help ensure you’re protected in the event of hardware failure, cybersecurity breeches, natural disaster, or just careless mistakes – we’re here for you. We help clients set up the best strategy and schedule to keep their data backed up, and we’d love to assist you too!
Find out more about how TCR Solutions has been serving happy clients for over 20 years! We are accredited by the Better Business Bureau, and have 5-star reviews on Google.