The Road to the Perfect Backup Plan
Posted on March 27, 2007, under How To, Software, Subversion.
I recently took some load off of my file server and got a NAS device, no not the rapper. Previously my file server had a bunch of internal hard drives setup up in various RAID arrays. Now my NAS has all of my hard drives and my file server runs the Subversion server, backup software, iTunes Media server, and hosts the hot swappable drive used for off site backups. I have a strict backup routine, I got burned once a long time ago and ever since then have a strict backup plan.
My backup plan goes something like this. On a daily basis all of my computers, databases, websites, etc. are backed up to the NAS device. It is setup that when my laptop connects to the network, it will initiate a backup of the laptop as well. Once a day a data dump of my NAS is backed up to a hot swappable drive. That hot swappable drive is swapped out with another drive in my safe deposit box at my bank. Paranoid? Excessive? Yes, and maybe, but when I have hard drives go down I never get that sinking feeling in my stomach thinking “Oh $#!^, was that backed up?”.
So what are some tips for making a backup solution of your own ? Here is a small list:
- Take Advantage of Compression: Hard drives are cheap, well some of them, but that’s no need to just throw away valuable space. Most backup software has compression options, use them. You will be amazed at how much space it saves on your backup devices.
- Burn a Copy of Your Backup Software to CD: Whatever software you use for backups, burn it to a CD and keep it in a safe place; off site if possible. If you loose a hard drive and need to get an archive off of your backup, you do not want to be looking for the exact version of backup software you used to create that archive.
- Backup Open Files: A lot of your important files are locked when you backup scripts are running because they are in use. When looking for backup software, look for one that support “Open File Backup”, which will backup open files even if they are in use. This may be an add on or part of a higher package during sale, but it is worth it in the long run.
- Backup Mail Files: This kind of goes with the above above category, but sometimes overlooked. Your mail file is important, unless you delete every email. Me I save all of my email, not sure why, just do. Backup your mail file! Again a lot of backup software have features for doing this exact task.
- Data Clean Out: I have a software repository that contains software I have purchased over the years and have stored just in case I need to reinstall it. Recently I actually looked in the repository and was shocked. There was so much old software, software that probably wouldn’t even run correctly these days; that’s how old it was. I went through an cleared out over 75Gb of old junk. I figure if ever need a copy of this very old software, I haven’t needed in years, I can probably find it our on the big bad internet somewhere. Better yet, the latest version probably has much needed and wanted bug fixes and improvements.
- Off Site Redundancy: It’s been mentioned several time before in this article, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Keep a copy of your data off site; a safe deposit box, girlfriends house, friends house, behind a bush, anywhere away from the actual data. If your house burns or something else horrible along those lines, hardware care be replaced, but data can not. Do not trust your data to common fire safes, most of these safes will still get hot enough to ruin hard drives and other media. This is why insurance companies say to print your pictures on plain computer paper, because photos paper will ruin in those fire safes. Fire safes get very hot on the inside, not hot enough to destroy papers, but photos and media are more sensitive to heat. Online storage is also another good thing to look into.
- Encryption: This is an acquired taste. If you are only backing up pictures of Fido, you will probably not need encryption in your backup solution. However, any sort of banking, or financial information, use at least some sort of encryption. Most backup software will offer encryption options. If you are doing backups for a business, please, please, please use encryption. I hate hearing stories about how some department store lost millions of customer data that was unencrypted on a hard drive or laptop; there is no excuse in these situations.
- Don’t Be Lazy: Backups are a lot like home alarm systems, they only work if you use them. It may be annoying, it may not be fun, but it will be better than losing you data. Try to automate the process as much as possible, but setup alerts and notifications to let you know when backups are happening. Check your backed up data every other day to make sure it’s actually there are current.
There are a lot of solutions to backing up your data, you can get a cheap external hard drive for under $100 which will be good for most as a “one touch backup solution”.
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