Backup strategies for home user and small business
For many home users one of the most types of files on a PC are personal photos, and personal videos. Equally important may be documents, possibly relating to tax, finance, or legal issues.
The simplest rule is that all data must be stored in three locations, on two types of media, and ideally one should be at a different location, ie offsite. This is the "3-2-1" rule.
The first two are often very simple, a second drive, maybe networked, or a plug in drive, eg USB drive. In the past tape storage could have been considered, but this is m ainly only large coperate organisations who use it. The third location can be a bit harder but two common solutions are either Cloud storage, or another USB drive that is typically saved in a different location. The overall plan is that is any simple failure happens, then it is a simple case of copying the data back from the second drive. However, one must be prepared for a very bad situation such as fire, flood or lightening strike. All these, along with theft, could destroy all data at a single location.
The second big problem with backups is making sure they are done. In 'my' data recovery days with CnW Recovery, we often had people turn up at the office with a broken drive and saying they were going to back it up next week, then it suddenly failed. Some backups you can do manually, but most should be as automatic as possible. Cloud backups often have systems setupmso files are backed up within maybe one day of being changed. This means that the worst you could lose would be 24 hours data.
There are several types of backup, a complete disk 'clone', or just selective files. A complete backup means that if the hard drive fails totally, it will be possible to get a system up and running in the last state it was in. However, complete backups can take several hours to run, and so incremental backups could be considered for a regular basis, and periodic full backups. The time interval for each one is very dependant how how much use the PC has.
Another very simple approach is to create batch files to copy the critical files to and external drive. It is actually very simple then to schedule a call to this batch file onb maybe a daily or weekly basis. Anything that is automatic is highly recommended, but should be checked occasionally to make sure it is still taking place. There can be times were a windows update changes something, so the process fails.
The final stage is to use CnW-FM to ensure your critical files are in the expected multiple locations.
