What You Need to Know About Data Backups

Have you ever gotten angry or frustrated at computer or at yourself because you just happen to lose all your data and information? As you are working on a project or drafting a confidential document, all of the sudden your computer crashed and you lost all the data. I can guarantee that, this scenario has happened to many people. Now let's imagine same scenario in big corporate office. I am sure it would be disaster. So what can we do to prevent that?

The answer is a data backup. We all know that the machine breaks, data files becomes corrupted. We need a good back up plans in order to retrieve the information that we lost. A backup means restoring, recording and storing the same information or data in a different medium. If the original data get corrupted or lost we can make the backup data as an original. Most common reasons for using backups are to provide information in case of data lost. Backups can also be used for auditing purposes or even for forensic examination.

There are various ways in making backups. The most common way of making backups is simultaneous processing. This means, doing same thing twice at the same time by making a duplicate copy and storing in a different place.

Now, if you are dealing with tons of data which run from gigabyte to terabyte. You can use Hierarchical storage. Big companies often use this kind of system. Under this backup system all the files, data are stored into a magnetic taps and then stored under cylindrical array called Silos. You can then reuse those magnetic taps if you need to retrieve the data. Disk mirroring, Workstations/personal computer mirroring are some of the other way of making backups.

There are various types of backup software available in the market. Some of highly used backup software is listed below:

Optical Storage: Optical Storage is a technical name for a Compact-Disk Read-Write Disk (CD-RW). These CDs are available all over the market and is very inexpensive each disk could hold approximately 700 MB of the data.

Diskettes: Diskettes are widely used for backups. Diskettes are very easy to use and are affordable too. Now a day's people also use ZIP diskette which holds 100 MB to 250 MB. Better yet, there is other type of storage medium called memory stick. These are very portable and can hold GB of data.

Large-Capacity hard Disk Cartridges: This kind of cartridges holds from 160 GB to 320 GB per unit of data. These cartridges are mainly used for servers.

From now on, no matter what kind of projects you are working on; do not forget to make backups. It is better to be safe then to say sorry. By making backups you can save lots of headache and frustration.