Security > Disaster Preparation & Recovery

Backing Up Your Data

By Marcus Otite

What is the best device to use to back up your data? Marcus Otite, Circuit Rider at Superhighways Partnership, has briefly outlined the options available, together with the costs involved below.

Why it is important to back up your data

You should have backup copies of all your data for a number of reasons - a file can be accidentally (or maliciously) erased, hard drives and other hardware can fail, your PC or server could be stolen, and, in extreme cases, disasters such as fire or flood can occur. This could mean losing all your data and information, which may be critical for the running of your organisation - how long could your organisation survive if it lost all its client data?

What to use

There are several methods you can use to back up your data. These include:

• Floppy disk
• Zip disk
• CD-Recordable
• DVD-Recordable
• External hard drives
• Tape
• Online back up services

DVD Recordable disks and drives are now more widely available, affordable and reliable so are also a good option.

Floppy disk drives

These were the first back up devices available for the average user, but their main disadvantage is that their storage capacity is still only 1.44 Mb. This wasn't too much of a problem when files on PCs were small word processing documents or spreadsheets. But with advances in technology and the huge leap in the size of software applications and formats like video, audio and graphics, floppies can't really cope any longer. Floppies are also less reliable than hard drives - a back up on a floppy is not very secure at all!  Floppies should be avoided now that far superior alternatives are available…

Zip Drives

Manufactured by Iomega, essentially these are super floppy drives. They are 3.5 inch in size just like an ordinary floppy, but currently have a storage capacity of 100Mb, 250Mb or 750Mb per disk. These are handy drive units and are fast, efficient, and come with very understandable and easy-to-use backup software. External zip drives, which can USB or Firewire connections, can be moved between machines for backing up or archiving purposes. Costs? Price of a Zip drive is between £60 up to £90, disks between £7 and £10 each.

CD Re-writers

Useful not only for backing up data but also for transferring data between different computers - and many other uses! Any computer bought today is likely to come with a CD, DVD or CD RW drive, or a combination of these, so data transfer by CD is possible with computers that have any of these drives.

Recordable CDs are now 700 Mb capacity and most CD Re-writers come with easy-to-use software such as Nero or Roxio as part of the package. Another plus is that the "write once" CDRs themselves can cost as little as £0.15 each if you buy in bulk in "cake" containers. CD-RW discs which can be written to and erased many times are around £0.60 each. You can get internal drives, which are either standard IDE control (the standard for most modern CD-ROMs) or SCSI (small computer system interface - where an extra card is needed to connect the CD-RW to the mainboard). You can also choose an external CD re-writer with either USB or Firewire connection which could be an option again if your machines are not networked or you require flexibility. Costs? Starting price of internal CD re-writers is £25, external drives start from around £60.

DVD-Recordable

DVD re-writers are similar to CD re-writers but DVD disks have a much higher capacity of 4.7 Gb (about six CDs worth).  Initially there were issues with the different formats of DVD disks (DVD+R and DVD-R) but this is now less of a problem with recent DVD writers supporting both formats.

Good quality brand name DVD R disks cost as little as £0.60 or less each if you buy in bulk. DVD R disks can be written to once (similar to CD-R technology). DVD RW disks allow you to continually write to a DVD up to around 1000 times (similar to CD-RW technology). Rewritable DVD disks are susceptible to scratching and even slight damage can make them unreadable. DVD RW disks cost around £1.00 each. DVD RAM disks are also available but the technology is currently less widely supported by DVD Re-writers. However, DVD RAM disks can be written to up to 100, 000 times so are useful for archiving data. They are also said to be more robust than DVD RW disks. If you wish to use DVD RAM disks make sure you buy a DVD Re-writer that supports this format. Single sided 4.7 GB DVD RAM disks cost around £3.50 each. Double sided disks with a capacity of up to 9.4GB are also available for around £5 each (bulk price). Again if you are planning to use this format, make sure you buy a DVD Rewriter that supports it.

Like CD Re-writers, DVD Re-writers can be external or internal and come with basic software. Prices start at around £50 for internal drives and £85 for external drives and vary according to the speed of the drive and formats supported.

External hard drive

These devices have become more popular as prices have fallen, and for good reason - they are mobile, fast, have large capacities, are portable and compact  - all these things make them good candidates for backing up. However, they should probably be used in conjunction with another method of backing up such as a DVD Rewriter as it's unlikely that you would want to regularly take the drive off the premises for disaster recovery purposes.

Units are available which are tailor-made for backing up with capacities of up to 300Gb and include backup software such Dantz Retrospect Express. Some are classed as "media centres" and also have built-in memory card readers. They usually attach through either USB or Firewire ports. Prices start at around £100.

Tape

Tape is still the most common backup media and with good reason - with appropriate software it's easy to use, the medium is small and portable so taking off site for security and peace of mind is relatively simple, it can store large amounts of data and tape drives are usually very reliable.

There are, bewilderingly, several different types of tape which have varying storage capacities - Travan, DAT (Digital Audio Tape), DDS 1 to 4 and DLT are the most common for smaller organisations (up to 80Gb storage) with SDLT (up to 320Gb) and LTO (up to 800Gb) catering for larger servers. Note that the tape drive needs to be matched to the capacity and type of tape you want to use. Capacity is given in the format 10/20 which means that the tape can store up to 10Gb uncompressed or 20Gb compressed.

When selecting a drive, it's worth overestimating the amount of data you're going to back up - it's sure to increase!

These devices can copy the entire contents of a hard drive automatically when you aren't around depending on the type of software you buy, for example, ArcServe, Veritas Back Up Exec and Dantz Retrospect. The software also assists you to restore the files from the tape - a backup is no use if you can't get the data back onto the machine again!

You would generally only install one tape drive in a small organisation usually on the server or the main PC where you are storing information if you have a well structured peer-to-peer network.

Costs? Starting price is around £160 for a Travan drive, up to £300 - £800 for a DAT or DDS drive and £1500 - £3500 for LTO. Tapes cost between £5 and £30 each depending on the type and capacity although high-capacity LTO tapes are much more expensive. Remember you'll need to buy a box of ten to allow for daily, weekly and monthly backup schemes.

Online backup services

Online back up services take advantage of the popularity and availability of broadband connections to upload files to a web server. Various companies offer this service including:

• IBackup  - ($149/annum for 4Gb)
• BackUpMyStuff - (around £210/annum 10Gb - 15 day free trial available)
• Connected DataProtector - ($80/annum)
• FlashBackup - ($50/annum)

These services use incremental backups so that only the first backup would be of all the user files in the shared directories - after that it would only backup those files which were new or had been changed. Software is provided allowing you to schedule backups out of office hours.

This type of system, although it has obvious hassle free advantages, is currently quite expensive unless you have relatively small amounts of data to backup. For more information see the Knowledgebase article Online Backup Services.

N.B. All prices quoted are dependent on place of purchase and are subject to change.

More Information

For more information on buying a CD or DVD rewriter see the CNET Burner Buying Guide.

This article is based on one written by Marcus Otite, Circuit Rider at Superhighways Partnership, which previously appeared in their newsletter. Thanks to Marcus and Kate at Superhighways for allowing us to use.

Techsoup article Backing Up Your Data