Computer Backup: Are You Willing to Roll the Dice?

It is estimated that about 90% of households have at least one computer in the home. Computer Industry Almanac reports that at the end of 2011, there were 310.6 Million computers in use in the US. Studies suggest that the average adult spends between 5 - 8 hours on the computer per day between work and home. I believe that it is safe to say that computers play a huge part in our lives.

Computers are interwoven into just about every aspect of our lives. We use them to pay bills, preform business transactions, connect with our loved ones and the world. We use them to play games, check the weather, gamble, make travel arrangements and the list goes on. In the process of doing all those things, the computer has also become a place where we store important documents and pieces of information, as well as priceless memories, making computer backup essential. We want to keep our cherished memories and data for the long term.

Computer backup is simply the storage of your computers files on a medium other than hard disk. The process is done in order to protect your valuable information in the event it becomes inaccessible or unrecoverable via your computer. Backing up your computer is one of those things that you should just do. You don't want to learn about losing all your invaluable documents the hard way. Trust me.

I'm writing this article because I am one of the unlucky ones. The hard headed ones. I was one of the ones who put of today what I could do tomorrow. Mix that with my "It wont happen to me" attitude and you have the perfect cocktail of disaster. Goes down sweet but leaves a bitter aftertaste. The day of reckoning came and I was completely devastated. Backup your computer people!

I had an online jewelry business on Etsy.com. Building up my site, I had accumulated pictures and documents that I used to promote my business. This vital information was all neatly saved on my laptop. I was going about my business when Mr. Virus decided to pay me a visit. My computer was corrupted with no remedy that I could apply. There were mucho tears. I couldn't just take the hit and reboot from the factory settings, so I had to bring in the big guns. The Big Guns are NOT cheap. They were able to recover a large majority of my material but not all of it. Don't get me started on the money I lost because I had to close down my shop those few days while my computer was being fixed. It was a major headache and I had a major headache at the end of the ordeal.

This article is your life preserver. I'm trying to save you before you become me. Be smart and save yourself. Save yourself time and more importantly, save yourself money. Backup your computer today.

Cloud Storage Allows Access of Data All the Time and From Anywhere

Storage of information has gone way beyond the conventional methods which people have known for a very long time and now storage has moved to the remote systems which are now called the cloud. Information here is usually saved and stored in a data center which is a series of servers. These have totally eliminated the need for individuals to wholly store all their data locally on a computer. The whole concept of the cloud storage can be explained as data floating in the cloud or sky and that the location of the data is unknown to the individual.

The biggest advantage with the cloud services is the fact that the data stored in the cloud is certainly accessible from anywhere in the world. Data availability is one thing which many businesses and individuals will want to have anywhere and at any time. These are the benefits which the different businesses and organizations will want to tap into and which provide that data just as it was stored and from all around the world provided there is an internet connection. The next advantage is that the data will not only be accessed via a computer but also through many other devices which people have like the mobile devices like the tablets and the smartphones.

The backing up of the data on the cloud has become very popular especially with the increasing internet speeds and this is year after year. The backing up of data to the cloud will not entirely wipe out the back ups on the external hard disks. But comparatively, data on the cloud is an excellent backup solution and definitely the direction into the future. This is the approach to data storage and backup for the future and will surely continue growing. The range of services which are offered by the cloud services has been improving and they are moving towards the automation of storage and backups. This will entirely eliminate the need to worry about the backups and any other problems coming up during data storage.

The most notable and definitely what will endear the cloud storage to businesses as well as individuals is the fact that the limitless amounts of data can be stored up in the cloud. Still many people and businesses do not understand the cloud services and the impact that they have in the storage and backing up of data. But far from being a fad like it was some while ago, the service is now popular and as more and more people adopt it, it has become a necessity. Some of the most popular services are the Dropbox, Google Docs and even the Amazon S3 services.

Cost implications when it comes to the storage of data have been greatly reduced to a very basic level. This is unlike the previous methods of storing data where equipment cost was just very high. The external hard drives and other storage facilities will often be a big cost when it comes to the storing data whether it is the small volume of data or the big volume of data. It is especially a very high cost outlay when it comes to the storing large amounts of data.

Cloud services have invested in multiple data centers and they are offered to clients based on the redundant operation such that even if a server is compromised, data will still be accessed since it has been stored in different locations on a number of different servers. This mode of operations ensures that they are always available and they are reliable. There are numerous options of different storage set ups which can be said to be in the hundreds. Some have been designed for specific purpose, such as only storing a single type of data, whereas others are much more flexible and can handle all sorts of data. This has allowed that whatever the data business may hold, all of it can be stored and backed up effectively and efficiently. Having said this and even without exactly described how cloud storage works, it is important to say that cloud storage is here to stay and offers options to every kind of business or all individuals to backup or store data irrespective of the type of data.

Disaster Recovery Plans to Safeguard Against a Virus

As the IT industry has evolved, so has the threat of data loss because of a virus. The importance of email in the daily operations of a business has caused many companies to adapt their disaster recovery plans to include a solution for virus protection. Unfortunately, many backup solutions do not combat the threat of a virus being backed up.

Virus Protection
To protect your data, you should start at the source. Virus protection should be deployed on every system, regardless of the operating system. While Linux or Mac systems might not be susceptible to Windows based viruses, they still can spread the virus. Hackers are also beginning to focus their efforts on creating viruses for these operating systems, increasing the importance of protection for these machines. If the file contains a virus, any copies of it will transfer the virus. If this file is ever opened in the operating system it was made for, it can cause data to be destroyed throughout the network. This is why every computer and network should have the appropriate virus protection in place to ensure that all data entering the network is clean of any viruses. If no such protection exists, data can be altered or destroyed with little hope of recovery.

Disaster Recovery Plan
Every company should have a disaster recovery plan in place. This plan safeguards against viruses destroying any data on the network. An optimal plan includes virus protection that scans files that enter the network and makes point-in-time data copies. These copies must be stored separately from the network to ensure that they do not get infected as well. To shield a network from data loss, their backup solution must be robust enough to restore data from multiple points. Backup system software often conflicts with antivirus software because of the immense amount of data being transferred at one time. For instance, incoming data from a whole network would all need to be scanned. While this might not be an issue for very small companies, larger companies could cause the backup system to slow down significantly. This must be taken into account.

Backup Solution
Common backup solutions, such as replication, are not optimal for restoring data damaged from a virus. If an infected file is transferred, the current backup solution is no longer safe to use. Ideally, a point-in-time backup system would be used as a disaster recovery solution. This would allow files to be restored before they were corrupted. However, it is important to install or enable antivirus protection during restoration to ensure continual file integrity. Otherwise, the network would be open to virus attacks without any safeguards in place.

A company can never have too many precautionary measures in place when their data is at stake. Having an appropriate disaster recovery plan in place will minimize a company's downtime and help safeguard against any data loss due to viruses entering the network. Incorporating antivirus programs into your business is a start, but incorporating a point-in-time backup system will ensure that data can be restored confidently.

Effective and Efficient Backup and Recovery Strategies

The backup and recovery systems are aimed at restoring data and configurations such that a catastrophic event will not leave individuals or businesses suffering drastic losses. The reason behind this is that even in the event that all precautions are taken, it is impossible to plan for disasters which will in one way or the other have to happen.

There are several ways through which data can be lost. These vary from large data losses or small losses but whichever the loss, it can come up with a lot of costs to the concerned party. These losses can be through hard disk failure, system crashes, power failures, accidents as well as malicious damage. Other ways that data can be lost can be through corruption by viruses or natural disasters.

All organizations dealing with massive amounts of data have to recover it as quickly as possible when any loss occurs lest they suffer a loss in their business. Even the small enterprises also will be gravely affected if any loss occurs in their data management and storage. This calls for meticulous planning for any type of loss or data failure that is likely to occur. Data backup and recovery architecture is a system that takes account of every aspect of the system requirements and contents and configuration of the server. Some of the consideration to make when assessing the type of data backup architecture include: what are the likely scenarios where data can be lost, is the data critical and how often will the data be backed up. These considerations together with others such as the manner in which the back will be done and the backup media to be used are critical questions that will need to be answered before the actual backup and recovery strategy is come up with.

Most data and recovery systems will often include ways in which the common data loss methods are avoided in the first place rather than recovering them later. However not all disasters or accidents can be entirely avoided. The system should give details of the procedures to be followed in the recovery process.

Back up design will often determine how often data and which part of data will be backed up. This data will either be backed up manually or automatically and either offline or online. There are some best practices in data backup management include remote storage of data, geographical redundancy where data is stored in a different geographical location to avoid the catastrophes that strike a wide region to avoid adversely affecting business in case anything happens. However these data back up plans come up with costs and the business has to assess the amount of capital that the business can afford to pay.

A good back up should be able to make a business continue with the normal day to day operations when a disaster strikes or during outages which include power and network outages. For effective back up a business should keep a dedicated employee who looks into the back up and also the software and hardware administrator who is capable of quickly identifying the problem when it arises and taking the necessary steps to solve it.

There is one mistake that most people commit when doing back up by thinking that they will keep on backing up but this is not sustainable in the long run and is also very expensive to maintain. Scheduling of backups should be done carefully taking into mind the importance of the data. Smaller volumes of data are also easy and faster to perform. If the system is heavily required by the users then it should be up within a short time and thus the backing up should be done on the most important files at predetermined times.

To be sure that the backup and recovery will perform when required then it is important to test the system at least once to make sure that everything will work when needed. This is usually known as a trial restoration. It aims at trying to reinstall the operating system, the backup software and the backup files. When these work, then your data is safe and only scheduled maintenance checks will be carried out.