{"id":274,"date":"2010-09-09T10:38:52","date_gmt":"2010-09-09T10:38:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timbrison.wordpress.com\/?p=274"},"modified":"2014-06-04T12:03:01","modified_gmt":"2014-06-04T12:03:01","slug":"why-do-i-need-a-backup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/2010\/09\/why-do-i-need-a-backup\/","title":{"rendered":"Why do I need a backup?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"backup\"<\/a>But I don’t need to back up anything<\/span><\/p>\n

This was the cry from a recent customer, when I asked if they had a backup –\u00a0 they hadn’t – which was why I attended the site in the fist place – to recover their ‘lost’ data!<\/p>\n

If you need data recovery or backup services, just contact UKtech<\/a> and we will do the rest.<\/p>\n

Believe me, you need a backup!<\/h4>\n

<\/p>\n

If you use a computer regularly, it is almost certain you have some data you don’t want to live without. In fact, that’s the only question you need to ask yourself:<\/p>\n

Can I live without my emails, documents, passwords, photos, music, letters, videos etc?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you are convinced already, and just need to know how<\/strong><\/em>, look here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Having spent decades in IT support, I can unfortunately recall many conversations that ended with me saying,<\/p>\n

“I’m sorry, but you have lost the lot – recovery is not an option”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This, in spite of the fact that I have been a ‘backup evangelist’ all my life – it’s just people lead busy lives and often leave the backup question until it’s too late.<\/p>\n

\"disk\"<\/a>All your data (emails, letters, documents, photos, music etc), are stored on a hard disk drive, inside your computer. These drives are literally small metal boxes, that contain mechanical circular disks, that are spinning on an axle – rather like a wheel on a car. In addition, there are other components inside the hard drive case that are very<\/strong><\/em> fragile and won’t take much abuse to cause permanent damage.<\/p>\n

‘Solid state’ or SSD disk technology is also prone to catastrophic failure.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Eventually, all disks\u00a0will<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0wear out – it’s just a matter of time. Unfortunately, it is very <\/strong><\/em>difficult to determine when <\/em><\/strong>a disk will fail, with any degree of accuracy.<\/p>\n

So the only solution at present is to ‘backup’ your disks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

‘Backup’ merely means copying the data on one disk, to\u00a0another disk. Then you have the same data on two physically different hard disks<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Backup methods are normally based upon sets of assumptions – e.g if you have two copies of your data on two hard disk, it is very unlikely both <\/strong><\/em>disks will fail simultaneously<\/strong><\/em>. So if one disk fails, you can recover your data from the other disk.<\/p>\n

However, this method does not cover you from viruses, fire \/ flood \/ theft etc. Industry best practice suggests having three basic copies of your data:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. One ‘live’ – the data you use every day<\/li>\n
  2. One local backup – for quick recovery should the need arise<\/li>\n
  3. One ‘remote’ or ‘off site’ backup – should the other two fail. (theft etc)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    What type of backup you need is determined by several things:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. How much data you need to back up<\/li>\n
    2. The frequency each backup runs<\/li>\n
    3. Your level of paranoia \/ business needs<\/li>\n
    4. Your budget<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      More about how to backup here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

       <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      But I don’t need to back up anything This was the cry from a recent customer, when I asked if they had a backup –\u00a0 they hadn’t – which was why I attended the site in the fist place – to recover their ‘lost’ data! If you need data recovery or backup services, just contact […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,27],"class_list":["post-274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-backup","tag-backups","tag-hard-disk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":892,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uktech.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}