Data loss is serious. We know it, you know it. If you lose a month’s worth of data, you are in some serious trouble. That’s why your backup is so crucial to your business. Not all backup solutions are created equal. You need to be skeptical of your backup if it doesn’t give you a ironclad guarantee. Here are 6 key indicators to look for to determine if your backup solution doesn’t take your data seriously.
1. Your backup requires human interaction.
If you need to rely on someone to replace a tape every night, or worse, to manually copy files to a backup drive, then things are going to get messy. Automation is key. It only takes one little accident to escalate into a disaster.
2. You only backup monthly/weekly/daily.
We’ve seen organizations that were completely content with running their backup once every two weeks. This means that if they were to suffer from a hard drive failure on their server, all of their work, new prospects, and other data from up to two weeks could be gone.
Your backup solution should run at least daily. Even better is if you can back up files every hour or more.
3. There’s no offsite storage option.
If you are just backing up data to a big server or internal hard drive, there’s no easy way to take that data somewhere else. This doesn’t do you any good if there is a fire, flood, theft, or power surge. Nobody wants to think about the pain of dealing with a disaster, but being prepared is important, and you’ll be thankful in the event of misfortune.
4. Your offsite storage requires a road trip
Offsite data storage is important, but it can’t be a manual process. Tape backup solutions make it easy to grab a tape to take home – at least then your data is offsite. However, it’s still susceptible to human error. Or theft. Or hardware malfunction. Get the idea?
With cloud data centers, automated offsite backups are fairly inexpensive.
5. There are exceptions to what gets backed up
Consumer-based backup solutions and older business solutions aren’t as capable as the backup systems now available for businesses that take their data seriously. A good backup system should be able to handle all of the files on your server, from documents to applications to system files. Even your email should be backed up and protected.
6. It’s difficult (or time consuming) to restore files
This is one of the most frustrating problems that face lesser backup solutions. You’ve invested in the backup device, but when you need it you need to deal with the laborious process of getting your data back. This is another trait that tape backup systems leave you stuck with – it can be very labor intensive and slow to seek through all of your tapes to restore files.
Fortunately, Think Tank NTG has been dealing with data backup solutions of all sizes and has a solution that doesn’t suffer from any of these troubles. We trust our BDR backup solution for ourselves and our clients. Want to learn more? Reach out to us at 800-501-DATA and tell us your pain points with your existing backup solution!