Need for Data Backup
How important it is to backup your data? The pace at which the data is being generated the world over is constantly on the rise. Businesses concerns have come to realize that data is today the primary precursor, generator and sustainer of new business and tend to rely heavily on the saved data for all their day today and long term activities.
Considering the interdependence and cooperation between the various departments in any business concern, regarding the generation storage and the use of the vital data, any data loss situation can create a situation of confusion and chaos, both within and outside the organization. Here comes in the role of data backup. Backup is the process of creating the multiple copies of a file or a data, so as to make the extra copies available for use in case of a lose of that data due to natural, mechanical or man made data disasters.
Data backup is a serious activity that requires a considerable planning and investment. It is vital to protect the precious data and data backup is the integral part of any organizations core activities. In the absence of a sound backup, it becomes sometimes impossible to recreate or restore the lost data. Recovering from a major data disaster like a storage media failure or a virus attack could often prove to be more frustrating then imagined. Organizations which use computers and computer networks should resort to some sort of data backup on a regular basis. Data backup is their only sure guarantee against any major data loss scenario.
A data disaster can prove to be a costly affair for any small or medium size business and could threaten the very survival of that business. The investments by small and medium businesses on the data storage hardware and software, is expected to increase by at least four times in the last four years. The worldwide expenditure on the storage media hardware and software is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 43 percent.
Qualities of a Good Backup Media
In any systematic backup strategy, the choice of the backup media plays an important role. Any backup media should have certain desired qualities and must satisfy some important criteria. Ideally speaking, a good backup media should be genuinely reliable, easy to use, easily accessible and reasonably fast. However, compromises could be made as to the choice of the backup media, depending upon the individual needs of an organization and the volume of data to be backed up. A reliable backup media should have a long life span and should prove to be sturdy against high temperatures, humidity, light and other environmental factors. However, care should be taken while writing and storing the data on a media, so that it could flawlessly be retrieved when required. Speed and time are the other important factors that determine the choice of a backup media. Different backup media have different speeds at which the data can be written and retrieved from them. Again individual considerations and requirements do play an important role in this context. A chosen backup media should be easily available at a reasonable price so as to fit into the budgetary allocations of all types of business concerns. It should be easily accessible at the time of need and preferably portable so that it could be stored at a distant location to execute data recovery operations in case of a data disaster due to a natural calamity. A backup media of choice should be handy and easy to use and should not require astute technical expertise to handle it. Besides these factors, the choice of a backup media depends upon other factors such as compatibility with the existing hardware.
Portable Hard Disk as Backup Media
A portable hard disk satisfies most of the above mentioned criteria, desirable of any good backup media. They are easily available at reasonable prices. Portable hard disks offer a high speed, so far as writing, processing and retrieval of data are concerned. They prove to be sturdy and handy and are compatible with most of the modern hardware. They offer a high level of integrity and come in a wide range of capacities ranging from 20GB to 500GB. However, smaller drives tend to be a little slower than the larger ones, though they do not require an AC adapter. Some of the portable hard disks come with automatic backup software. A portable hard disk is basically a mechanical device with a definite life span of 3 to 6 years and is liable to crash. They do not have a long life span like some of the recent backup devices like flash drives and thumb drives. Still the portable hard disks are an ideal backup media for medium and small businesses.
If you are concerned that you have experienced data loss due to malicious or criminal actions, a computer forensics (also known as digital forensics) expert can examine your hard drive to find evidence of this.