VISUAL NEWSLETTER – AUG 2002
BACKUP STRATEGIES REVISITED
In spite of our constant warnings, almost every month at
least one of our clients experiences a data loss due to weak backup strategies.
The biggest single impediment to routine backups is the time that it takes, so
we would like to review a few of the new technologies that are making backups
easier.
Right now, the emerging backup standard seems to be the CD-Writer.
These units can write data to special types of CD’s that hold 500-700 megabytes
of data. Most standard CD-ROM drives can in turn read this data as necessary.
The main disadvantage of this media in the past was speed, but with write
speeds from 24x to 40x this has now been overcome and they are quite fast.
These units generally run from $150 to $200 each with
rewriteable media going for about $2. per CD-RW disk. Media that can be
recorded once only is less expensive at about $1. per CD-R disk. One advantage
of CD-R disks is that they can be rendered readable in any normal CD-Rom drive.
CD-RW disks can usually only be read in another CD-Writer or
This low cost makes CD backups very economical and easily allows
for multiple generations of backups, which is always desirable. In fact, some
of our clients have opted to save their backups daily on CD-R disks with one
disk backing up each day or an entire week of data in separate folders. Once
used, these disks are labelled and put on the shelf, in case they are ever required.
These units can also make copies of other CD’s for backup
purposes and otherwise perform all the duties of a normal CD-Rom. For full
system backups CD Writers will work well in conjunction with the right
software. On large systems data compression may be required to fit entire
systems on one disk.
Along the same idea as the CD-Writer, the DVD-Writer looks
and works almost the same way but has about 10 times the capacity.
Unfortunately this technology is still quite new and the cost and speed are not
yet up to par. Far fewer computers have DVD drives capable of reading the disks
as well. This is an emerging technology that will increase in popularity as
these issues are addressed.
OTHER BACKUP TECHNOLOGIES
One of my other favourites thus far is the
In tests at several clients, data backups that took 10-20
diskettes completed on one zip disk in less time than it took to backup a
single diskette. The speed alone more than justifies the cost and you get improved
protection from more frequent backups.
Zip drives cost about $150, with the disks going for around $15.
When you compare the speed and capacity of the zip disks they really are a
bargain when compared to diskette backups. For routine data only backups these
are an excellent choice. They can be installed on any Pentium, or faster, computer
with an available IDE connection.
The next step up in backup and storage media are the Jazz
drives with 2GB of storage capacity. These are excellent for drive imaging and
complete system backups. Windows based computers quickly use up hard disk space
and these units can be good insurance against hardware failure and the cost of
reloading fifty software programs.
These units cost between $500 & $600 with disk media
running from $50 to $100 each.
Restoring a full Windows based system can be a long and
tedious process. New backup software can make this process much less painful. If
you make a full system backup you can install it on a new drive in a fraction
of the time it would take to reload everything.
For very high capacity backups, digital tape is still your
best bet for capacities over 2GB. These can be setup on a server to backup
automatically, but need to be monitored.