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The Native backup utility found in Windows XP operating systems helps you protect data from accidental loss if your system experiences hardware or storage media failure. The backup storage medium can be any local drive but I recommend using a separate storage device such as, a removable disk or a large capacity USB drive. If the original data on your hard disk is accidentally erased or overwritten, or becomes inaccessible because of a hard disk malfunction, you can easily restore the data from the archived copy. Additionally, the backup utility helps you take a copy of your computer’s System State, which includes the system files and the registry while you can schedule regular backups. The backup program creates a volume shadow copy of your data, that is, creates a temporary copy of the data, including open files that are being used by the system.

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Full Backup: A full backup is a copy of all files from one location to another. Although, this is a very safe and straight forward method, it takes a long time to complete and consumes lots of storage space. Some backup systems refer to this method as a copy backup. A full backup resets the archive bit.

For example: A company finds that their data hardly change on a daily basis and decides to perform a full copy (backup job) of their folders and files on a weekly basis. They decided to call this backup job as ‘Weekly Full’ and used a remote storage location as the backup destination. Also, they may want to have a back-storage of four weeks such as, Weekly 1 Full, Weekly 2 Full, Weekly 3 Full and Weekly 4 Full. Then on Week 5 they start again from Weekly 1 as to rotate their backup job over four weeks. With this strategy they can go back to weekly restores to a maximum of four weeks. Read more »

A Data Backup Strategy is a plan, method, or series of tasks for obtaining a specific goal – safe data backups! The main factors in a data backup strategy are the following:

• Backup medium – The destination backup medium depends on the size of the data being backed up. For smaller amounts of data a low capacity removable drive such as, Pen or Zip drive may be adequate. As the data size increases, you need to have large capacity drives such as, USB external hard drives and for medium to large organizations; a tape drive is usually the backup medium.
• Location of the backup medium – The backed up data needs to be held in a safe and secure place. Read more »

Data deduplication is a data backup process that eliminates duplicated data. At first thought, one may think that the word deduplication means the negation of duplication! Although, this is what happens in data deduplication that connotation is not the right one! Actually, the word deduplication means the division of that which is one whole into two or more pieces. In fact, the data deduplication mechanism divides data into blocks or chunks of bits in order to eliminate the redundant pieces within data.

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How many computer users rely completely on application wizards?  I have nothing against application wizards, in fact, I do recommend users to make use of these when they are using new applications and lack experience with that application. However, wizards most often set certain parameters to default values rather than adding an extra screen or step to allow the user to verify some advanced parameters! Wizards are tools with a sole purpose of making your life easier and hence, would assume many assumptions! Hopefully, safe assumptions rather than deceiving ones! But, is this ok with backup applications? Without debating whether this is correct or not, I would prefer to share with you the most important parameters to look for when performing a data backup: Read more »

1. Open Backup and Restore utility  – Start / Control Panel / System and Maintenance, and finally click Backup and Restore. Alternatively, you can type backup in the search box (Start – Search) and then click the backup and restore
2.  If this is the first time, click Set up backup, and follow the wizard.  You may need to enter your administrator password.
3. Manually create a new backup by clicking Back up now.  You may need to enter your administrator password.
4. Choose where to save your backed up files. It is highly recommended to use an external drive or CD/DVD media :)

 5.  Choose the files and/or folders that you want to backup or better use the default option if your not sure - Let windows choose.

6.  Set up a backup schedule from the Change schedule link.

7.  Finally click Save settings and run backup.

 If you’ve created a backup before, you can wait for your regularly scheduled backup to occur, or you can manually create a new backup by clicking Back up now.

1. Open the Control Panel Home window from Start / Settings / Control Panel
2. Click Backup and Restore Center
3. Click Back up files button
   
4. Select location where you want to save your backed up files
5. Select disks that you want to include in the backup
6. Select type of files to include in your backup
7. Create a backup schedule
8. Click the Save settings and start backup button

Alternatively, you can create a complete backup of your entire computer by clicking the Back up computer button and follow the simple wizard :)

Some years ago the trend of data backups was – play it safe and back up all data – Resource and energy management was not an issue or better was one feature with the lowest priority, especially with large corporations. As we advanced into the era of energy saving awareness and pay-per-use concepts, backup methodologies and services evolved in line with such concepts. However, the issue of economy remains – are we backing up the right data?

 Traditionally, corporations’ senior management main concerns were that the business data must be safely backed up, verified and some off-site policy was in place, given that the costs were affordable! IT staff main concerns were that ALL data is backed up and backup jobs ended with a success status. Some advanced features such as, retention and recovery points were added to the backup policies. The result of such concept without investigating the data being backed up required that enough storage media is available to handle the entire data size no matter how long the backup process would take.

 Is this concept valid to-day? Do we actually need all the data? Does our data change on a daily basis? Is the backup administrator knowledgeable about the importance of the data being backed up? Is it feasible to use storage space for data that will never be retrieved back?

 The way forward with data backups is the involvement of all stakeholders of the respective data. Data belongs to its rightful owner. A regular exercise should be in place where an IT staff or manager invites every Data Owner (the actual user/employee owning a particular data) to review what should be backed up, for how long the backed up data is required and the acceptable loss of data time-frames in cases of system failures. For example, take an employee that downloads various articles, research material and other documents on a daily basis to create a report or a business case, etc. Apart, from the legal issues a sound conversation with this employee would conclude that whatever report he/she is creating will be the only file needed to be backed up.

 Data owners are responsible for their own data while backup administrators are responsible for the service they are rendering to them. A good backup policy is one that makes the employees aware that they own the data and they should verify that their data is safely and securely stored. Such a policy would clearly explain that users should inform the IT/backup administrators with their backup requirements. On the other hand, a sound policy would include that the IT/backup administrators check with Data owners on regular basis depending on the business type to verify that those requirements are still valid.

 Another valid point would be to publish a document within the company such as, on a secure intranet with brief details about the data being backed up, retention times and other options that do not disclose any sensitive data.

 Briefly, Data owners are the only people to decide which data within their environment is to be backed up, for how long it should be kept and the acceptable loss of data time-frames. Also, they should initiate and terminate a backup request by informing the backup administrator while the backup administrator should review the Data owner requirements on regular basis.