There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who perform effective backups and then there are those who are meant to lose priceless, important information. Admit it or not you belong to one of these groups of people. If you belong to the first group, then that’s great news. If however you are in the second group, that’s bad news.
Maybe you’ve failed in properly handling your data backups or you may not be aware that this failure is a result of your inconsistency. Consistency is undeniably a necessity but if you don’t manage all aspects of backups, there is weak link and your backups will be harder for you to deal with. It’s possible you can face horrible and pricey expenses when you need them.
As a matter of fact, preventing backup failures is not always as easy as it seems, technology changes over time. New ideas, new concepts and new information require changes to be made to your backup routine.
Ideally, cloud backup is the way of the future. If however you still back up locally onsite and want to avoid backup failures, here are some tips to keep in mind.
- Media failure ranks as one of the main reasons why backups and restores fail, be it tape, USB or optical media. It is important to treat your backup media with respect and use it wisely. Rotating media regular and replacing old with new helps minimise failures.
- Human error is also considered as one of the prolific reasons of backup failure. The best protection against human error is to train those persons responsible to follow the best practices. Keep in mind that the persons who are going to implement backups and restores must fully understand what they should and shouldn’t do.
- Sometimes new software may also results to backup breakdown. Why? For instance, operating system and other program updates can make firewall changes which can affect network backups, causing them to stop working.
- Tape drives and other backup hardware may also fail. The causes of breakdowns for backup hardware are the same as any other kinds of hardware, yet there are some circumstances that are unique to these backup systems. An example is tape drift which causes a horrible type of failure in tape drives. As the drive ages, the heads begin to wander out of alignment. As a result, if you need to restore the tape on another drive, it will not be able to read the tape. The really scary part is that the drive passes verification as it can just read what it wrote.
- Backing up over a network is more effective as it removes unnecessary backup devices. However other issues such as network problems or a bad switch can cause backups to fail if they aren’t being monitored.
Thankfully these days we have technology known as cloud backup which reduces and almost eliminates the issues of yesteryear. It is still imperative that the correct data is being backed up and that test restores are done.
They say that if you do not test your backup, then you don’t have any backup at all. So, whatever the reason of your backup breakdown, the best thing to do is to verify or test it by performing regular test restores. Testing your backups regularly won’t totally prevent backup failures, but it will raise any problems that you wouldn’t have known about and allows you to fix the problem before it get worst.
If you are concerned about your data and if it’s being backed up properly, contact CKP Computers so we can check it out for you. Our number is 0447 619 397 or you can send us an enquiry, either through our contact page, by Facebook or by email, helpme@ckpcomputers.com.au.