In the realm of cheap solutions that get the job done 82% of the time, a thumb drive or external hard drive will acts as the secondary backup drive.  This is the lowest level of backup solution, and also the cheapest.

Small to medium-sized businesses can combine their backup and storage needs with the use of a NAS device, which is a robust, redundant system that solves the dead hard drive problem.  It is also private and secure on the physical premises of the business.  Varying legal requirements, customer demands, and government regulations present different types of solutions.  The 4-bay NAS device with 4 x WD 6 TB Hard Drives offers 16 TB (16,000 GB) of encrypted storage, capable of 40 concurrent users.  With 10 TB hard drives, the total storage size is 30 TB.

It’s best to backup your important data on the regular basis so that you’re always prepared no matter what happens. One good way to do this is to initiate an ongoing or automatic process of backing up your files so you’ll never need to remember to back anything up. There are software solutions that provide these features.  Obviously, we offer custom solutions as well that exceed the standard backup solutions of commercial vendors.

Remote or online backup is limited by the cost of storage space versus reliability. They are very reliable but you are somewhat limited in how much you can save for what price.  Once you go past the free allotment of space, you begin a monthly payment for a limited amount of backup storage space when compared with a physical device, such as comparing 1 TB of cloud-storage versus a 1 TB hard drive.  Of course, there are always exceptions.

Amazon charges $216/yr for 1 TB of Cloud Storage versus approximately $53 for the purchase of a 1 TB SATA3 internal hard drive, as of January 1, 2020.

CD or DVD should not be used for anything other than archival storage of specific files.  The backup routines should avoid manual intervention.

Recovery:

The most important part of backing up your data is verifying that it's usable.  The only thing worse than losing all of your data to a hard drive crash is discovering that the backup is also corrupt, so you're at a complete loss.

Creating a regular recovery test routine is essential to business continuity.  Businesses that undergo a loss of business records have a higher likelihood of failure.

If you are unfortunate enough to lose the information you have stored on your hard drive then you will have to undergo a recovery process to get you up and running again. In most cases, this involves the following:

1. Replacing your hard drive
2. Re-installing Windows along with your previous programs and applications
3. Transferring your data from your backup device to your computer

Home Users:

Why you need to backup your memories?
Prom pictures, wedding reception videos, baby's first steps: all precious memories that can be lost in an instant with a hard drive failure.  Tax returns, emails, music, scans, whatever weird thing you're into needs to be backed up otherwise all your work is gone when the hard drive fails.  That's the compelling reason to have a backup and restore system for your digital life.
Don’t take any chances if you have anything important on your computer. Get a backup solution suitable to your needs. Let us help you to choose and install a backup that will protect your data if anything happens to your computer system.  A surprising percentage of our business consists of recovering lost data from failed drives.

Business:

For most companies the lose all of your data including your customer records, your accounts receivable, payroll records, vendor records, and even the software you need to run the business is simply incomprehensible. You simply cannot afford that to happen. Call us to set up an appointment to discuss your backup strategy and develop a sound disaster recovery plan.