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Backup and Recovery:

How does it all work?

Computers and Printers are more or less like appliances now.  Complicated, quirky devices that hold your books, your pictures, your bookmarks, your documents, (let's just list them):

  • projects
  • emails
  • schedules/calendars
  • invoices
  • receipts
  • saved web pages
  • PDFs
  • school projects
  • music
  • movies
  • games
  • databases
  • CAD/3D files
  • user configurations
  • your digital footprint

Hard drive failure rates are relatively known.  Large data centers that host the contents of Google,  Apple, Microsoft, and maybe 92% of the internet track hard drive failure rates closely to control costs.

 

Hard Drive Annualized Failure Rates for Q2 2020

When it comes to your digital footprint are you willing to gamble with (yikes!) up to 6.72% odds that your data will disappear?

 

Granted, many of the failure rates are much lower, but in order to know if you're in the clear, you need to research the specific brand and model of the hard drives in your computers and systems.  (yeah, right.)

 

Businesses and individuals that are serious about keeping their computer in order must have a backup and recovery plan.

What this means is that you have backed up your important data somewhere else, AND you have restorable backup.

Cloudberry Labs Backup Software:

Cloudberry Lab's backup software will provide you with the necessary coverage that your computers need for almost all computer needs.  The software is easy to use when recovering data, and the silent scheduler takes care of all changes on your computer at the end of each day.

World-class, data protection software can be purchased for $60/year from CloudberryLabs.

Duplicati Backup Software (open-source):

Duplicati does the same thing as Cloudberry, but it's open source, so any issues are left to the community or, if possible, we can solve the issue internally.  It is as reliable, easier to use, and compatible with AWS S3 cloud storage.

Duplicati is free, open-source software that achieves 92% of the functionality of Cloudberrylabs Backup Service.  The cost is payment for my time to configure the software.

Amazon S3 Cloud Storage (AWS):

Amazon cloud storage provides low-cost, security, and ease of use that can provide extended benefits to your company.  At ~$0.023/GB/Month for storage costs, remote backup solutions become very affordable.  The storage can become a free-for-all storage bucket not only for backups, but also you can create shared cloud folders that allow you to collaborate across the office or across the world.

Synology 2 bay NAS Disk Station, DS218play (Diskless):

$250 - Synology's 2-bay NAS Station allows one drive to serve as the primary backup, and the second, a mirror of the first, to act as a secondary backup of the data. Backup/Recovery Software will save the source information to Disk 1, and the Data will be replicated to Disk 2. This solution does not provide any guarantees in the event of theft, flooding, fire or force majeure.

HGST HGST Ultrastar He6 6TB 3.5" SATA 7200 RPM:

$388 - Industry's leading 6TB capacity in a standard 3.5-inch form factor with Patented HelioSeal technology. Industry's best Idle and Active power efficiency (Watts/TB). Reliable, field-proven, 2nd generation HelioSeal process and 7Stac disk design enables the world's highest capacity.