The Basics: Backup Software
Backup software is the insurance of the computer world. As with regular insurance, you won't appreciate what you're paying for until the day it saves your bacon.
Different markets (home user, home office, small business, enterprise) have different needs; there's a backup solution to suit every one of them. It's important to select the right backup software, one that will meet your needs without overwhelming you with features and options.
Enterprise users may need to back up data from multiple operating systems, with multiple users and computers spread across a number of locations. A small business is more likely to use a single operating system, and have a much smaller number of users and computers to worry about.
Both enterprise and small business backup systems are likely to employ servers, which are dedicated computers that perform specific functions. Home and home office users are more likely to back up data to another hard drive on their computer, rather than to a server or to another computer on a network.
Home and home office users generally back up data to one of three types of media: hard drives, optical media (such as CDs and DVDs), or remote online storage systems. Long gone are the days of using floppy disks as backup media. CDs are also falling by the wayside, due to their limited storage capacity and the time it takes to burn data. DVDs are a viable option, but their cost and the time it takes to burn data can be an issue.
A second hard drive has become the most popular media for backing up data. Hard drive prices have fallen so much in recent years that purchasing a hard drive for backup purposes is no longer an expensive proposition. Internal 120GB hard drives are available for less than $80; external 120GB hard drives are available for only $20-30 more. An external hard drive is a good choice for backups, because you can move the drive to each computer you want to back up, as well as store it in a separate location when not in use.
Online backup is another storage option, one that is especially attractive to frequent travelers. With online storage, you can back up your data, as well as restore it, from any location that has Internet access. When you damage your laptop on the beach in Hawaii, you can pick up a replacement, and then restore all your data from an online backup service. Online storage does suffer from speed and cost issues. It can take a long time to back up or restore data, and most services charge a monthly fee, which is sometimes based on the amount of storage space you use.
Optical media is the standard for creating archival backups. An archival backup differs from a normal backup in that the data in an archive is never allowed to change. An archive is a snapshot of your data at a specific moment in time. Home office users can use optical media to make and store monthly, as well as yearly, backups of their business data. A few years down the road, when you need to find old data or the IRS comes knocking on your door, you can pop the media into an optical drive, and restore the information. Data archives aren't limited to business use. You can use archives to store yearly tax records, family photos, and other important or sentimental information.
There are two common types of backups: normal (or full) and incremental. A full backup is a backup of all of the data you select. You perform a full backup the first time you back up your data. Full backups take the longest time to perform, because of the amount of data. Incremental backups only back up the data that has changed since the last time you performed a backup of the same data set. Incremental backups are much faster than full backups, because there is less data to back up.
The drawback is that restoring data from an incremental backup can take much longer than from a full backup. In some cases, you must first restore the full data backup, and then each incremental backup, until you reach the lost data. For this reason, most incremental backups are only performed for a short time period, and then a new, full backup is performed. A common method is to do a full backup at the beginning of each week, and an incremental backup each day. This way, the worst-case scenario for a restore is one full backup and four to six incremental backups.
A third type of backup is a clone or drive image. This is really an extension of the full backup; it creates an exact copy of all of the data (rather than selected data) on your hard drive. A drive image provides a complete working copy of your data that you can easily restore to another hard drive.
How to Shop
One of the most important considerations is how easy the software is to use. If backing up your data is difficult or time consuming, you will probably skip the task, which is just asking for disaster to strike. Many developers offer trial versions of their software. Take advantage of these demos to try out each product. You should be able to easily install the program, create a simple backup, and restore it, without wading through pages of manuals or help files. Do read the manual, though, as it will explain important features, such as backup types, schedules, compression, and restoration.
Be sure that the backup software supports the media you want to use. Most backup software can create backups to and restore them from hard drives. Some also support tape drives, a common backup choice for business. Almost all of them support optical media, although this can get a little cloudy. Some backup systems can't actually burn the data to a CD or DVD; they rely on third-party software to do this. This is acceptable, provided you have the necessary software. A better choice is backup software that can take care of the entire process on its own.
When considering an Internet-based backup service, check security. You don't want your data streaming from the computer to the backup service and back again, without some form of encryption to protect it.
Most backup software offers the ability to compress data while writing to the backup media. This helps reduce the size of the backup, so it uses less space on the backup media. This is particularly helpful if you're backing up to optical media, which has limited capacity, or to an online service, where you may pay for the amount of storage you use. What is often overlooked is how the data will be decompressed when you need to restore it. If the software uses a proprietary compression scheme, you may need to first reinstall your operating system, and then reinstall the backup program, just to get your data. A better approach is the use of a standard compression format, or no compression at all, if you have sufficient storage space.
Drive imaging software is somewhat limiting as a main backup strategy, because it doesn't allow you to create selective backups or archive data to optical media. It's best used as a supplementary system, and not your primary backup system.
