Data Backups and Disaster Recovery

90% of businesses that suffer catastrophic data loss are out of business within two years. And no hard drive will last forever. Every hard drive has a failure point somewhere in the future.

But for every size of business there is a great backup and disaster recovery solution.

For single computer backups, I like the Fantom GForce II. Go to http://www.newegg.com and search for GFII1000EU. Use the NTI Shadow backup software included with the drive. Get two and rotate them every Monday. You’ve got to keep one of them offsite! That’s the whole point of a backup. Fire or theft will put you out of business otherwise!

You can also use an online backup solution like the one at http://www.carbonite.com that you might have heard about on the radio. This is a good choice for home based businesses that only have to backup 2-6 GB of data every night.

But a business with one or more servers needs a proper backup and disaster recovery solution.

Check out Yosemite Backup at http://www.barracudaware.com for a one-fixed-price-for-everything software solution. I’ve used this and it’s great! If you use tapes and agents you really need to check this out. You pay one price for all the agents you need.

There are also some great managed backup appliances. These appliances can backup multiple servers and keep offsite copies for serious disasters.