Essentials of an Effective Backup Strategy

By:James Monahan

What will you do if you lost thousands of Megabytes worth of data because you never saw the importance of a backup system? If your personal computer or laptop suddenly crashes, the irretrievable data can sum up to a staggering amount and even cause irreversible damage to a company.

Most people and businesses make the mistake of not having a backup for years worth of data. The primary reasons of foregoing this important procedure is their belief that such a disaster can never happen to them and copying data to a storage device is tedious and even a waste of time. How do you put a price tag on lost work documents, personal documents, notes, databases, emails, email contacts and plans? Not backing up important data is an invitation for disaster. Whether you encounter power failure, a corrupted file, a virus, or human error, most computer users can still lose some amount of data if not all.

Having realized the importance of backing up, here are 5 essential guidelines for a reliable backup strategy.

Effective backup strategy element #1

Invest in a Backup Software of good quality and performance.
Think about how much more you’ll spend to recover lost data versus the price of a reliable backup software. A product that leaves you secured from future data data-loss disasters is always a good investment. A good backup software is the heart of an effective backup strategy. Do research over the Internet to know the latest softwares, compare their features and prices. You can also visit forums and see first-hand reviews of backup softwares they have tried.

Effective backup strategy element #2

Double check the restore capability.
Now what good is a backup system if it can store but cannot be restore the data? One way of ensuring the full restorability of your data is to invest in a backup product that has bit-level verification. The feature guarantees that while the product is performing your backup it checks all the data down to the level of bits and bytes. Fundamentally, the software first backs up the data and then automatically performs a test restore to make sure that every single bit has been copied.

Effective backup strategy element #3

Double check the capability of your backup medium.
You can spend so much on the best backup software and diligently backup your data everyday but disaster can still hit if you don’t have a dependable medium to store your archives. Another way to ensure your data restorability is choose mediums of high quality and performance. Performing test restores using the medium from time to time is also a good idea.

Effective backup strategy element #4

Inspect your hard drives from time to time.
Regularly checking your hard drives to prevent disaster is not a waste of time. Beware of spyware and viruses that can affect your system. Correct errors and bad sectors as soon as they are detected to prevent the failure of your drives.

Effective backup strategy element #5

Set a regular backup.
You add data every time you use your personal computer or laptop. This means that you will have to backup all this additional data every once in a while too. Most software packages can do the updating for you with a built in scheduler. You can set the backup timetable from every hour to as long an interval you think is needed.

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James Monahan is the owner and Senior Editor of

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