Three Easy Ways to Back-up Your Business Data 

As an IT consultant, who is very passionate about helping small businesses become more efficient through their technology, I’m always emphasising the importance of data.  The simple fact is that without your data, or your customer data, you have no business.  Although vital to the running of your business, the subject of data is both boring and complicated.

In reality, it doesn’t have to be complicated at all, although I doubt anybody can make it any more exciting!

Many business owners are confident that as long as their computers are working properly, then their data is safe.  It will always be there, waiting to be accessed and used.

The problem is that while using your computers your files are constantly being opened, written and re-written to and then closed.

All of this often causes files to corrupt, not to mention the accidental deletions or amendments that are a constant hazard.  More importantly the storage media that they are written too in not reliable in the long-term.  For example hard drive develop disk errors, and will ultimately fail.

With all of this in mind, here are three simple suggestions that will help you ensure your precious data is backed up, while keeping the processes required to do this as simple as possible.

1 – USB Memory Stick (flash drive)

This is by far the simplest and most basic method of backing up data.  USB memory sticks are available from many outlets, including supermarkets, and can be purchased for less than £15 for 32Gb of storage space.

In operation, all you need to do is plug the memory stick into a USB port on your computer, open your file browser (such as Windows Explorer) navigate to your working folders (like 'My Documents' or your 'Desktop') and copy the most important data onto the stick.  The memory stick will display as a new drive letter on your computer, probably the letter E or onwards e.g. (E:).

Top tip: Ebuyer is a good place to look for USB Flash Drives online.

• www.ebuyer.com/store/Storage/cat/USB-Flash-Drives

32Gb USB Flash Drive

2 – An External Hard Drive (HDD - Hard Disk Drive)

Using this method (an external hard disk) is almost as simple, but slightly more expensive.  Also often connected by cable into the USB port, but the disk size ranges from 50Gb up to 3Tb.  The pricing is usually from about £40 to over £200 respectively.

In operation you would use it in the same way as the USB stick, or use the software that often comes bundled with the external HDD when you buy it.  However, the software is often complicated and usually unnecessary.  If you know where your files are on your computer, and where you want to put them on the external storage drive, then 'drag and drop' (...or 'copy and paste') are often as complicated as it need to get.

Top Tip: Ebuyer is a good place to look for External Hard Drives online.

• www.ebuyer.com/store/Storage/cat/Hard-Drive---External

3Tb High performance USB 3.0 storage solution

3 – The 'Cloud' - Dropbox/Google Drive/MS OneDrive/etc.

The simplest way to take advantage of cloud storage is to use your online quota to backup your data.  Usually, when signing up for one of the more popular cloud storage providers (such as Dropbox, Google Drive or MS OneDrive) you’ll have free storage space already allocated to you.  This may be ample for your needs.  However, for a monthly fee you can have upwards of 15Gb, per person, available to use.  The main thing about back-up, if it's not to complicated for you, is to focus on the critical files (documents) and make sure you are backing up those.  They may well come within your free quota.

These 'Cloud' services will have locally installed app that synchronises your important files up to the cloud.  In operation, you will just open the locally installed app and drag the data you want to backup into the app location.

Dropbox/Google Drive/MS OneDrive

IMPORTANT NOTE

Perhaps I should have opened with this comment?
Whichever method you choose, do not be misguided in thinking that transferring your data onto the new storage solution is the answer to protecting your precious data.  It's important that any back-ups you make are a copy of your data, and the back-up means it is stored in a least 2 places.  I have seen far too many people use a pen drive as their only storage medium, only to be 'heartbroken' or worse when they discover all their data has been lost!  Don't learn this lesson the hard way!

SUMMARY

I hope that this short article has opened your eyes to how simple the first steps to keeping your precious data safe can be.

Although the suggested methods are both simple and cheap, in the long-term, they are only really suitable for consumer use.

If you take your business, your customers and the data seriously, then it really pays to have a more robust, professional data backup solution, which is provided by a professional technology provider.  With this you will get guarantees about your data's security and Service Level Agreements protecting you against data loss.

If you’d like to talk further about your data storage and security, or any other ways your technology could help your business become more efficient, please get in touch with AWP Computer Services to discuss your options.

CALL AWP Computer Services on 01772 698078

I am still surprised by the number of people that I speak to, who use computers both in businesses and at home, that don't regularly back up their valuable data.  Many of them know about the importance of making a backup, but quite often don't put this knowledge into practice.  Unfortunately, I learned the hard way a number of years ago now.  A PC I had purchased from a well known UK high street technology retailer developed a fault.  From memory, the computer wouldn't start up, or at least would not load the Windows operating system.  It was under warranty, so I took it back to the shop.  I would have been able to work on the problem myself, but chose not to, as didn't want to compromise my guarantee.

During the process of diagnosing the problem, the technicians decided it was a fault with the hard disk drive and replaced it.  I subsequently learned that, “it was their policy” to wipe the data from all drives removed from customers' machines.  Not only had my original drive gone, but either it, or at least the data that was stored on it, had been destroyed.  At this point, I was very disappointed.  As I thought through about what I might have lost, I remembered the drawings my five-year-old daughter had created using the Paint application.  However, whilst I was annoyed with the shop and how they'd handled things, I could have taken steps to ensure I'd looked after the valuable files.  I'd never printed any of them off, nor had I copied them to another data storage device.  This is a mistake, I have NOT made again.

I am also surprised as to what some of the people I speak to think is involved in making a backup.  I had one customer recently who had been using a portable storage drive to copy their data to.  This should have been a big 'thumbs up'.  Unfortunately, it wasn't.  Whilst they had been putting their photographs (and other important files) on the storage drive, they had been taking them off their computer at the same time.  I presume this was to save space on their PC or laptop.  They came to me after the storage drive had been dropped on the floor and they could not now retrieve their data.

Your information needs to be in at least two places before you can consider it to be a backup!

Another common issue is when, like I did years ago, people take their PC to be repaired.  At some point during the process they come to realise that this is the only place their data is kept.  It can be quite alarming.  I recently repaired a PC with a faulty power supply, this in itself should be a fairly straight forward process.  It wasn't though, as even though the PC powered up with a new power supply it would not load the Windows (7) operating system properly.  This didn't ultimately give me any concern, as I always have a procedure for backing up the data from my client's computers prior to starting any work.  Unless it is, as in the previous example, an actual issue with the data storage device in the first place.  I was able to go back to a complete system (files, software and settings) restore from a back I had made before I started any other repair work.  When the satisfied customer came to collect their repaired PC, they explained to me their distress and concern after they had discovery that important files they believed to be on a pen drive (USB flash drive) were not there and had only been stored on the repaired PCs hard Drive.  Much to her relief, my back up process had saved the day.

My apologies, if the introduction to this article seems more than a little long winded.  I'm just trying to get across the point that backing up is about as essential as creating your files in the first place, if the information is something that you are likely to ever need in the future at any point (particularly if it is for your business).

How to Make a Backup

OK, you've heard all about why it's necessary to make a backup, but how should you do this?  The main concern for most is that it is going to be 'time consuming' and it's going to be 'yet another job to do'.  The process can be fairly straight forward if you think about your most important files and concentrate on those first.  This would mean that the back up process is as straight forward as copying files from one folder to another.  This method should work as long as:

1. you remember to do it regularly and...
2. you ensure that the backup folder is on a completely different device

A different device could be another physical hard drive in the same computer, a USB memory stick (flash drive/pen drive), a portable USB hard drive, a CD or DVD (as long as there isn't a lot of data) or possibly a storage drive another computer connected to your network.  It's very important not to think that another partition on the same hard disk drive is at all separate.  Even though you might see it as another drive letter (say D: as opposed to C:) the reality is that if the drive fails what was stored on either partition will be lost.

One of the most practical (and inexpensive) ways to store your data is on an External Portable Drive.  A good option is a one that connects to your computer using USB.  Another additional feature that may be of benefit, is using a USB Bus Powered type.  This will mean that you don't require an additional External Power Supply.  A good range of External Portable Hard Drives can be found on the EBuyer web site.

After that, consideration should be made about where to store the drive when it's not connected to your computer and being used to make the back up.  Again, this would be a decision you would make based on how valuable the data is to you and what solution you can afford.  This could be another room, another building (ie. If you're your own boss or work in a small firm, store a back up of work files at home and vice versa) or perhaps in a safe either on or off site.

Can I use Software to Make the Process Simpler?

In short, yes you can.  Taking this approach, may also open up the option of using somebody else's off site storage space for you files.  ie. Put them in 'The Cloud'.  I'll cover the Cloud and cloud storage in future articles.

In this post, I'm mentioning a piece of software we use at AWP Computer Services to create both full and incremental backups.  This is the aptly named “BackUp Maker” published by ASCOMP Software (www.backupmaker.com).  The good news is that it is free for personal used and is relatively inexpensive for business use.  With regard to my previous comment, a full backup is making a copy on another device of all of the files in a selected folder (or a set of selected folders) an incremental backup is using the software to detect which files have been modified (added to, changed or deleted) since the last backup and only taking a copy of those.  Having the ability to take what is then only effectively a partial back-up will make the whole process quicker.

BackUp Maker by ASCOMP Software - www.backupmaker.com

Using this software multiple backup routines can be created and various options can be selected to determine how and when your backups are created.  In my next post I will explain some of these options and show how a backup works.

For more information about data management, data backup and recovery visit AWP Computer Services Web Site.