How often should back up be done?

Answer 1

Depending on the type of device that you are using to make your backups, backups can be quite time consuming, and are somewhat inconvenient to both produce, and to restore from. There is a third step that virtually NOBODY does, which is actually essential, at least from time to time, and certainly the very first time. That step is to VERIFY that the backup is able to be used! I hate to say that even DAT tapes would sometimes not work all that well, and if I hadn't TESTED the backup, I would have never known that they weren't working. Let's say you have a CDR for a backup device. I've just recently found that my wife's CDR recorder is also a DVD recorder. I suspect that because of the greater data density on a DVD that it isn't QUITE as reliable as a CD burner as the manufacturer expected (HP). Consequently, I am totally unable to use CDs burned on her computer for ANY other computer, and sometimes, not even on hers. If I had ONLY this device as a backup, and if I never tested them, I would not have any idea that the "backups" that I was making were useless the day they were burned. Factoring in YOUR personal tolerance for making, testing and becoming familiar with the process, decide which is worse, making a backup, or LOSING the entire work you've done since the last USABLE backup. My rule of thumb is to "Make a backup whenever you'd feel badly if you lost all the work you've done since the last, KNOWN usable backup." If you are a business and have more than a very few transactions per day, there is no question. You make a backup EVERY DAY! That is simply a no brainer. It costs SO little to make a backup, and the inconvenience to you and to your customers is SO great if you lose your financial data, that you simply do it, just as you have your trash hauled off weekly. You can be skillful about it. I used an interesting system to reduce my media expense, which back in the 90's was more of a factor than it is today. With 5 tapes (or other reusable media), I could keep my data fairly secure. Call the media A,B,C,D, and E. Monday Use media A Tuesday Use media B Wednesday Use media A Thursday Use media B Friday Use media C End of month, use media D or E Take home media E or D, (the opposite of what you just recorded above). This gives you a backup that is never more than a day old, insurance against defective backups that is never more than 1 week old, an end of month closing media, which is alternated with the offsite backup (in case of fire or theft) that is no more than 2 months old. With this system, you can recover from all but the very worst disasters very quickly. Naturally, you need to test the media periodically, to detect early signs of wear. If you have a "verify" mode, set that to on, and your software should be able to tell you whether or not you have a reliable copy or not. Take an idle computer system (get one for free at a recycle shop if need be) and once or twice a year, perform a "restore" on your sacrificial system, and operate it for a few minutes. If all your data is intact, and you see nothing out of place, you are probably being proactive enough. Watch out for viruses! If you GET a virus, your backup WILL be infected! The more backups you make WITH an infected computer, the harder it will be to eliminate the virus entirely. The virus ISN'T gone until the backups are clean also... Swapping a hard drive is probably the fastest backup you could make. It involves some inconvenience and expense to set up, but is probably a good deal easier than restoring backup media. I saw a 1.0 TERRABYTE external drive on 2009Jun03 at Staples for $129.99 + tax, which was a closeout price. I suspect that a business could buy 5 of those and forget about any problems for a LONG time!