Worst Practice Warnings from TechRepublic: FileSlinger™ Backup Reminder 04-06-07

Among the many backup-related items which landed in my inbox this week was a link to a collection of articles from Tech Republic called “Worst Practices for Disaster Recovery.” It particularly caught my attention as I’d just had a new client say there was no disaster recovery strategy for his entire 650-person company—at all, never mind just in IT. (Fortunately for me, providing one is not my job.)

Disaster recovery goes beyond just restoring lost data. To quote Wikipedia:

Disaster recovery is the process of regaining access to the data, hardware and software necessary to resume critical business operations after a natural or human-caused disaster. A disaster recovery plan (DRP) should also include plans for coping with the unexpected or sudden loss of key personnel. DRP is part of a larger process known as Business Continuity Planning (BCP).

Those of us who are sole proprietors don’t necessarily think a lot about business continuity and ensuring that someone else could take over and keep the business running if we were incapacitated. Maybe we should, but then again, my business is built on the personal relationships I have with clients, and there’s no guarantee they’d want to continue working with my successor if I had one. (Okay, okay. I’m making excuses.)

Like Wikipedia and Tech Republic, I’m going to focus on data protection. Most data loss is caused by human error, and simple file backups can save the day if you accidentally delete something you meant to keep. Nevertheless there are fires, floods, thefts, and small children, any one of which might destroy your entire office, or at least put paid to your hardware along with your data. The possibility of a disaster is the reason for making off-site backups.

In addition to your data, here are a few other things to keep in that safe-deposit box:

Now, on to those Worst Practices.

The first thing that will prevent you from recovering your data is not making regular backups. That one is pretty obvious, but unless you’ve got an automated backup schedule, it’s easier said than done. That’s the reason I started writing the Backup Reminder, after all: because one of my clients kept forgetting to make backups.

In order to get your business back up and running, it’s not enough to be able to recover data from six months ago. You need the projects you’re working on now. Take a look through your documents and ask yourself “How much would it cost me if I lost this?” and “How long would it take to do this over?” Decide which things are critical and make sure you back them up daily. There’s plenty of free software which will do that for you, like Karen’s Replicator and SyncBack Freeware for Windows and SilverKeeper for Mac, not to mention online services like Mozy.

Next on the list of Worst Practices is “Save money on backup media.” This actually a warning against not buying enough backup media. You need enough tapes/disks/drives to make at least two full backup sets. And there are only so many times you can re-use a tape or a re-writable CD/DVD before it wears out.

The other danger in “saving money” is buying cheap no-name CDs and DVDs. These are much more likely to degenerate within a couple of years. (See the 9/26/03 Backup Reminder for more details.) It can also be dangerous to put labels onto CDs; the last I heard, you’re only supposed to write on the innermost plastic ring, where there isn’t any data. I do think, however, that if you buy CDs which are coated for printing on, it should be safe to write on the tops with a soft-tipped pen. (More on labels here.)

The next worst practice on TechRepublic’s list is “Don’t look at your logs.” You may be asking “What logs?” Many software programs keep “logs” recording the success or failure of the backup. Some programs will only tell you if the backup fails, but they’re usually still keeping track. If you don’t know where to find the log, check the install directory for the program. For instance, if I go into Program Files\System Tools\Mozy\Data, I find a text file called mozy.log. It’s full of things like this:

Fortunately, there’s actually a handy little “Mozy status” icon which tells me when my files were backed up last without my having to actually look at the logs, but logs are important. In the TechRepublic article, Peter Herbener recommends looking for error messages, checking to see if anything obvious is missing, making sure the number and size of files back up seemed right, and checking the start and end time of backups.

The fourth Worst Practice is not testing your backups. Testing every backup of every file every day isn’t really practical, but you should definitely check the first backup you make with any new program. Herbener’s tips for testing are:

I’d make sure to print that text file, myself, because having it backed up won’t matter if you can’t remember the procedure.