T101.6 - Computer Backup Systems and Services
Backup systems are the most critical systems for a small business person. Things have in fact gotten much "safer" with the progression of cloud backup services. It was very hairy business prior to these services.
Backups come in generally 2 forms:
There are in fact other types of backups that can be done on things like your registry (on a pc), but these are the two you should be most familiar with:
There is also another computer solution which completely changes the data backup dynamic and that is Virtual Desktop servers. That is discussed in a separate section.
Likewise, with Chromebooks, there really is no backup system required as they are really just a dumb terminal for the cloud (which can be thought of as a bad a-s mainframe).
Backups come in generally 2 forms:
- Full Hard Drive Backup
- Data Backup
There are in fact other types of backups that can be done on things like your registry (on a pc), but these are the two you should be most familiar with:
- Full Hard Drive Backup -- 1) Make a bit for bit copy of your entire hard drive. This one makes you sleep good at night. 2) An alternative is to make an image of your drive in a compressed file. This later one should not make you sleep quite as well.
- Data backup -- Backs up data files from your computer like word and excel files, quicken and quickbooks files, and any other data files you create. Data backups are great, the problem is if your computer crashes, it may take you hours or even days to get your computer reconfigured, depending on the other "stuff" (programs) you had running on it an the level of custom configuration you had done to it. The other problem is if you didn't configure your backup routines properly you may miss some of your data files.
There is also another computer solution which completely changes the data backup dynamic and that is Virtual Desktop servers. That is discussed in a separate section.
Likewise, with Chromebooks, there really is no backup system required as they are really just a dumb terminal for the cloud (which can be thought of as a bad a-s mainframe).
1) Full Hard Drive Backup
There are several ways to make a full hard drive backup. There is only ONE method that should ever be trusted, and that is the method in which you make a physical copy of your drive onto a new drive, and you put the new drive into the computer and confirm it is a good copy.
Full Hard Drive Backup #1 - Cavalry Retriever
No other product should make you sleep better at night than a product that creates a bit for bit backup of your hard drive. It's critical you can easily get to and remove the hard drive from your machines to make this work easily. The first thing I look for in a lap top is easy access to the hard drive.
Put a source and target drive in the slots and press go. Making a secure backup can not get any easier. If you mix up the two drives, you will delete your hard drive so not to be done while not fully engaged mentally.
Upon duplication, take the target drive and put it in the computer. If it works, you have created a bit for bit backup. Take the drive you made the copy from, and store it offsite, and you have the most powerful full backup system one can have.
This device also acts as a docking device for external hard drives.
$35 -- at amazon
No other product should make you sleep better at night than a product that creates a bit for bit backup of your hard drive. It's critical you can easily get to and remove the hard drive from your machines to make this work easily. The first thing I look for in a lap top is easy access to the hard drive.
Put a source and target drive in the slots and press go. Making a secure backup can not get any easier. If you mix up the two drives, you will delete your hard drive so not to be done while not fully engaged mentally.
Upon duplication, take the target drive and put it in the computer. If it works, you have created a bit for bit backup. Take the drive you made the copy from, and store it offsite, and you have the most powerful full backup system one can have.
This device also acts as a docking device for external hard drives.
$35 -- at amazon
Full Hard Drive Backup #2 -- Other non-physical copies
There are several other software products and/or OS utilities which enable you to create software copies of hard drives and/or copies of hard drives to external drives. The bottom line... if you can't fully test the new copy made, you NEVER truly know if you have a good backup. I've tried to retrieve a handful of these types of hard drive backups ,and every time I tried it, the backup was corrupt or could not be restored for one of numerous reasons. I finally decided creating them was just a waste of time, and that is when I went looking for the true solution, which I found in the Cavalry retriever.
There are several other software products and/or OS utilities which enable you to create software copies of hard drives and/or copies of hard drives to external drives. The bottom line... if you can't fully test the new copy made, you NEVER truly know if you have a good backup. I've tried to retrieve a handful of these types of hard drive backups ,and every time I tried it, the backup was corrupt or could not be restored for one of numerous reasons. I finally decided creating them was just a waste of time, and that is when I went looking for the true solution, which I found in the Cavalry retriever.
2) Data Backups
There are numerous ways to backup your data.
Understanding all relevant back up options, cloud drives and cloud based software systems is critical to working efficiently and sleeping well at night. No single issue causes greater stress to an aware sole business person than data backup and data loss.
- Copy files to a usb drive or external hard drive
- FTP files from your local machine to another machine
- Use local software to select folders and files to be backed up to a remote server with an internet connection (ie crashplan, spideroak, carbonite)
- Use a cloud drive and put all of your data files in the folder that represents your cloud drive (ie google drive, one drive, dropbox)
- Use cloud based programs which prevent the data from ever being on your machine to start with (ie google Docs and google Sheets)
- Use cloud based backup programs to backup cloud based data that was never on your machine to start with (ie spanning).
Understanding all relevant back up options, cloud drives and cloud based software systems is critical to working efficiently and sleeping well at night. No single issue causes greater stress to an aware sole business person than data backup and data loss.
3) My choices
Personally.. I have the following...
Updates: 12/19/2017 --
Need to try out the google back up stuff further. below is some commentary on Crashplan and alternatives.
Crashplan
Crashplan pros for me..
BackBlaze -- 12/2017 -- I'll be looking into Backblaze as a replacement for Crashplan.
Google just started their backup/sync
- Google Drive -- All of my data except my web based scripting files (c: inetpug) is in google drive folder. So that's backup number 1 for non google files. I don't have lots of music or videos so that folder does not get huge (40GB)
- Crashplan -- Crashplan backs up both to the cloud and to a local external hard drive (simultaneously) my google drive (non google drive files) and my programming script files in my c: inetpub directory.
- Spanning - Spanning backs up my google drive files cloud to cloud, so it picks up my gdocs stuff.
- Cloned HD - Every 1-2 months I will clone my hard drive using Cavalry retriever and then store that drive offsite. This is what enables me to sleep better at night.
Updates: 12/19/2017 --
- Crashplan was recently bought by logme in crowd and prices are rising / doubling. They have partnered with carbonite for lower end subsribers.
- Google Drive has come out with a backup and sync that technically does what crashplan did... but it can't back up to local hd drive simultenaiously and not sure if has teh file filter settings which were critical so as not to be backing up access db's with each data update...
- Google Drive has come out with a File Stream which is more for corporate use as it incorporates a shared network drive into the mix. Many of the features overlap with Backup and sync but not the backing up of the no gDrive folder. Both can be running simultaneously
Need to try out the google back up stuff further. below is some commentary on Crashplan and alternatives.
Crashplan
- for data backups crashplan by code42 was amazing. The part I liked the most is ou could establish a backup set to both the cloud and a local harddrive simultaneously. It doesn't get any better than that. Unfortunately in 2016 or so, it seems crashplan got hijacked by/with the Carbonite folks. The pricing is doubling, and they are encouraging home users to go to carbonite. Carbonite was nice when I used it, but they were kind of criminal when it came to collecting money.. they had an expired card they ran -- the bank paid it -- and i had to scream holy murder to get my money back and stop the service. they made disengaging w/ them brutal. That was the mid 2000's so hopefully they'e gotten better, but a bad tase is a bad taste.
- May stay with crashplan, but the owners of these companies going commercial are getting greedier year over year... so if the departure isn't now it may be later...
Crashplan pros for me..
- Backup to a local drive simultenously
- very easy to use
- exceptional file filter (removed upload of access mdb repeatedly (need to document that)
BackBlaze -- 12/2017 -- I'll be looking into Backblaze as a replacement for Crashplan.
- Article about Crashplan price hike here -- https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/22/16184430/crashplan-home-shutting-down
- Article recommends BackBlaze and some commenters too...
- With BB if you delete a file, they also delete it from their servers. Crash Plan allows for infinite previous versions and KEEPS FILES YOU DELETE. Not only that but BB won’t let you backup a network share drive. Crash Plan will. There’s 2 reasons why Crash Plan > BB. And both reasons are worth the extra cost. So BB if actually worse than Crash Plan.
- Both have their pros and cons but CrashPlan has a number of advantages including unlimited file versioning and retention of deleted files. Backblaze deletes your deleted / modified files after 30 days. Backblaze also deletes your backed up external disks if they are not seen by the software at least every 30 days.
- https://www.backblaze.com/blog/external-drive-backup/
Google just started their backup/sync
- This may be the way to go... Need to check out the file filter options...