Low Cost Backup

Backing up your whole hard drive, or just the data on it, can be done economically. What you need to look at is the potential trade off between cost and convenience. The media for doing low cost backups can consist of one or more of the following:

1)    CD or DVD’s

 It depends on which type of CD or DVD you use. CD or DVD’s can be purchased as write once and read many or read writable. The cost of every backup depends on the number of CD’s or DVD’s required. If more than one is required then someone has to replace them as they become full. An average CD will store about 640MB of data and a DVD will store about 4.5GB of information. if you are using read writeable disks, the draw back with this method is it requires erasing the media when a backup is being done. If the disks are write once then new disks have to be used. An equal number of disks have to be available to save different versions of the data. The method only works well for backing up small amounts of data.

 2)    Flash Drives

 Flash drives are available in different capacities ranging in size from 256MB to 32GB. The higher the capacity the more expensive they are. Again. Flash drives are typically only good for backing up reasonably small amounts of data.

3)    Tape

 To be able to use tapes for backup purposes requires the following: a tape drive, numerous tapes and backup software that will transfer the data from a hard drive to tapes. The limitations of tape drives are the capacity the tapes are capable of storing and the longevity of the media. Originally, the rule of thumb was a tape drive was equal in capacity to the size of the hard drive to be backed up. With hard drives available in the terabytes this is no longer practical.

 There is a hidden expense with tapes. Tapes have to be changed on a daily basis to be most effective. This requires assigning an employee to change the old tape with the correct one in the sequence. Just like CD’s or DVD’s tapes have to be replace with new ones from time to time.

 4)    Second Hard Drive

A second hard drive is a practical solution. The backups can be performed automatically using the backup software included with your operating system. The drawback is unless you purchase a second external hard drive every time a backup is performed it will erase the earlier backup. Therefore you only ever have the latest backup. If a file gets corrupted on your backup, you cannot go back to a previous revision.

5)    Online Backup

The previous methods of backup have their merits and drawbacks. There is another method that is becoming popular that is offsite backups. The company that is storing your backup installs software on to your computer. You decide what you want to backup and then set a schedule. The software will update the backup on a daily basis automatically. The charge for this is typically based on the amount of storage space used per month.

6)    Network Backup

All of the previous methods are really one computer solutions. What if you have a small office with 5 or 6 computers and all of your data is spread across all of these machines? There is likely duplication of the data, security is a nightmare, and, there are too many other potential issues to mention. A low cost solution to this scenario is the installation of Microsoft’s Home Server. This solution can be purchased as a complete system for approximately $600.00 to $700.00 or just the software can be purchased and installed on a spare computer.

When the Home Server system is completely installed, every computer in the office would be backed up automatically. Backups are full backups not just the data. Using Home Server for automated backups provides other advantages, such as security, remote access through the internet and all data located in one location. This solution coupled with the offsite internet solution will give you total peace of mind that your data is safe, without crushing your budget.