Often, when you are running a business or just going through your day to day life, you don’t think about how fragile your data a Backup Strategy . Unfortunately, data can be lost all too easily and when that happens, a lot of people are wishing they backed up their data. Fortunately, after reading this article, you and your business don’t have to be among that group.
Why You Need To Backup Your Data
To understand just how horrible losing data can be, let’s look at an example with the company JournalSpace. JournalSpace had been around for 6 years and then suddenly lost every piece of user data they had. Due to this, the company died as soon as every user realized they never could get back all the sites and data they had created and hosted with the company.
This all could have been avoided if JournalSpace had properly backed up their data. Though it’s too late for them, it is not too late for you. Let’s look at the best ways to back up your data so that you can avoid such a tragic fate.
Firstly, and this cannot be emphasized enough, once you are done reading this article backup your data immediately. All too often in life, we tell ourselves that we’ll do what it is we said we were always going to do. Then days turn to weeks, weeks turn to months, months turn to years and sometimes, years turn to never. As soon as you know what to do, backup your data and start scheduling consistent backups for the future. If possible, you could even automate some backups or at least make alarms on your computer to remind you.
What Does A Proper Backup Strategy Look Like?
Now let’s discuss the most effective manner of backing up your data: the 3-2-1 backup system.
The 3-2-1 backup system is broken into three steps:
- 3: Make sure you have 3 copies or more of all your data.
- 2: 2 of those copies are on different devices you can access.
- 1: Have 1 copy or more somewhere that isn’t local.
An example of this process could be having all your data backed up on two external hard-drives and then securing those drives in a safe place while backing up the last copy on a Cloud computing service like Google Drive. Many services have unlimited space for online data like DropBox Business, OpenDrive or BackBlaze.
Although many people only backup their data on external hard drives, there is a huge benefit to also uploading to online storage services. External hard drives can stop working due to a variety of reasons. Often, simple usage and the wear and tear of everyday life on an external drive can hurt the parts within it and lead to the drive breaking down. The obvious solution is to backup online but doing that can also have problems.
The problem with online backups is that digital data can be altered or lost. Though online backups are in many ways more secure than backups on physical items, online backups also can be hacked or deleted altogether. The best thing you can do when backing up online is to do your research on the storage service you are entrusting your data to. This way, you can make an informed decision as to who you will trust your data with and know how they will protect it. Perhaps more importantly, you can see if they have succeeded or failed at protecting others in the past.
Remember…backing up your data should be done as soon as possible and frequently. You should have both physical backups and online backups, something that can be accomplished with the 3-2-1 method. You never know when you will be wishing you backed up your data, so get started backing up now!