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.

1. To start the backup utility, go to the Start menu, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and Backup
2. The backup main window opens, by default the wizard loads first if this is the first time you are running the utility. I suggest that you uncheck the Always start in wizard mode option.
3. From the backup main window, click the Backup tab
4. From the left-hand side pane, expand your data drive by clicking the + sign and searching through the folders structure find the data you want to back up
5. Select the data by checking the respective check box – I suggest you include the System State check box from time to time as to have a backup of your system important files
6. From the Backup media or file name: Browse button, select the destination backup location- I suggest using removable media such as, a USB drive or a network share if available
7. Click the Start Backup to load the next window
8. From the Backup Job Information window, select the Replace the data on the media with this backup radio button and click the Advanced… button
9. From the Advanced Backup Options window, it is important to select the Verify data after backup check box and click OK - for info about backup types see – Data Backup Types
10. Click the Schedule… button if you want to perform the job later – you are ask to save the options selected and to enter the admin password
11. Click the Start Backup button to initiate the backup job – the Backup Progress window loads and you can click the Report… button to view the status of the backup job
     
    Note: It is important to check the log files for errors – for example, the number of backed up folders and files should match that of the Verify section and the value of the Different: element is 0. By default, all log files are saved in C:\Documents and Settings\’your username’\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows NT\NTBackup\data

Last 3 posts by George

• Backup considerations for Microsoft SharePoint - July 26th, 2010
• What is Cloud Computing? - July 19th, 2010
• Is Cloud computing getting safer? - July 13th, 2010

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.

Incremental Backup: Only the files which have been modified or created on the day are backed up. This method is very fast and consumes little storage space; however, it is best to incorporate a regular full backup with this method!  The restore operation is more complex as all the backups have to be restored in the correct sequence. Some backup systems refer to this method as a daily backup. An incremental backup resets the archive bit.

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For example: The company requirements have changed and now they have files that are updated on daily basis. It was decided that apart from the weekly full backups, a daily incremental backup is introduced. While the weekly full backups are performed on a Saturday, the daily incremental were labeled as follows: Inc Mon for Monday’s, Inc Tue for Tuesday’s, etc.

Differential Backup: Only the files which have been modified or created since the last full backup are backed up. This method uses the previous full backup as a reference point and any file that has changed or was created after that reference point is backed up. A daily differential backup does not reflect on any previous differential backups but only on previous full backups. So, Friday’s daily differential would be larger than Monday’s. However, the restore operation is faster and simpler than the incremental as only the latest differential and full backups are needed. A differential backup does not reset the archive bit.

For example: The company wanted to restore 3 files that were updated on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The restore request was done on a Friday morning and hence, they had to search the 3 (Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday) incremental backups and perform a lengthy restore operation. As a result it was decided that the daily backups are changed to differentials and will be called Diff Mon, Diff Tues, etc. Then a restore operation for the same 3 files would only require the latest differential backup.

Last 3 posts by George

• Backup considerations for Microsoft SharePoint - July 26th, 2010
• What is Cloud Computing? - July 19th, 2010
• Is Cloud computing getting safer? - July 13th, 2010

• 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. With safe location I mean away from fire or water and dangerous materials. For example, backup tapes are damaged by magnetic fields. Remember that sound speakers contain magnets and produce such fields! With secure location I mean a place that stop burglars from stealing the medium. Ideally, the medium is password protected in case a burglar manages to steal your data would find it difficult to recover it! Another important factor is to store the medium in a location away from your live data – an off-site storage location.
• Frequency of backups – is how often you perform data backups. This depends on how much your data undergo changes and/or major events such as, updating an application or an operating system. A home user may perform a backup once a week while an organization most probably performs daily backups.  While a home user may be better off with a weekly full backup that overwrites the previous week, an organization needs to implement a full – incremental/differential strategy that spans over a month or more.
• Number of generations to be kept – As an added safety you can keep a number of previous backups before overwriting them with new backup jobs. Although, this might be too expensive in terms of storage costs for home users, an organization would typically keep daily backups for a week, weekly backups for a month and monthly backups for a year.  Also, this may be more complicated with tougher law and regulatory requirements. 
• Testing the backup jobs with a recovery exercise - one of the most forgotten and neglected factors is to test that the backed up data is actually there! It would be a nightmare to lose a hard drive and your data due to a virus or a fault but it would be catastrophic to discover that your magnetic tapes that were supposed to store the backed up data were in fact blank! A planned recovery procedure must be done on regular basis to ensure that your backed up data can be effectively restored :)

Last 3 posts by George

• Backup considerations for Microsoft SharePoint - July 26th, 2010
• What is Cloud Computing? - July 19th, 2010
• Is Cloud computing getting safer? - July 13th, 2010

A typical example which many authors refer to when explaining data deduplication is the email attachment scenario. Although, as a concept this example will help the readers understand better data deduplication, I would like to point out that data deduplication mechanisms do not generally operate at file level. For the sake of completeness, the example goes that the same email attachment may be present in many email messages; however, only one copy of it is stored during the backup or archive process. A simple task that can be done with a less processing hungry mechanism than data deduplication.

Data deduplication looks within files to find unique blocks of data and then computes a hash algorithm such as MD5 or SHA-1 to generate a unique number for each block. Each unique number is then stored in an index. When files are updated, only the changed data is saved. That is, only the changed blocks or bytes are saved. In practice, data deduplication is combined with other mechanisms such as, delta differencing as to achieve better and safer use of the storage space.

Some benefits of data deduplication:

• Data deduplication offers lower storage space requirements and hence, saves you money on hardware (disks & tape ) and/or remote storage location costs.
• May provide better recovery times in Disaster Recovery situations if well planned.
• Most importantly, data deduplication reduces the data that must be sent across the Internet for remote or online backups.

Last 3 posts by George

• Backup considerations for Microsoft SharePoint - July 26th, 2010
• What is Cloud Computing? - July 19th, 2010
• Is Cloud computing getting safer? - July 13th, 2010

1. The application or wizard allows you to set verification of a backup job – tick the verify check box
2. Enable logging features – make sure you know the log files location
3. The application allows you to encrypt backed up data with a password if your destination location is a remote storage host or removable media such as, pen drives – dual password entry text box
4. Enable job status features such as, completion reports – check for failures or warnings

If these options are not presented to you in the application wizard then go and look for them before you start the job. Although, the verification mechanism was more intended to verify data integrity when backing up to tape media, it is still a useful check for all kind of media.

Another important task that I recommend you to perform from time to time is a restore test operation. Select a previous backup set and perform a restore operation to an alternate location (if you restore to the original location, remember you would overwrite your recent files with older ones). After a test restore operation check that the restored files are not corrupted such as, opening a word document or spreadsheet and verify that the data is complete and accessible.

Last 3 posts by George

• Backup considerations for Microsoft SharePoint - July 26th, 2010
• What is Cloud Computing? - July 19th, 2010
• Is Cloud computing getting safer? - July 13th, 2010

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.

Click Back up files button

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

 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.