Backup Tips

Creating original documents is dangerous work.  Hours of irreplaceable work can be destroyed in a flash due to computer hardware failure, virus infection, disk failure, or user error.  “Backup” is the most practical means of protection.

“Backup” means keeping one or more extra copies of your document, preferably in separate places.  Imagine the worst:  what would you do if your computer crashed and you lost everything on it right now?  What if the building burns to the ground?  How much work would be lost?  What would you have to do to replace it?

• Compose your document with frequent saves to your computer’s hard disk, and always consider that version to be your "original" (modern hard disks are considerably more reliable than floppy disks, CD’s, or other removable media).
• When you stop for the day, or when you reach a milestone representing a level of work that needs extra protection, “back up” by saving the file(s) to removable media:  floppy disk, CD-RW, flash drive, etc.  Usually, you can do so by selecting File, Save As while your document is open, or you can close the document and copy it with Windows Explorer or by some other means.
  • If you work on lots of different files, consider using Beyond Compare or a similar program to synchronize your hard drive data folders with your backup media. 
• At the earliest opportunity, store the backup in a separate physical location.  The backup should be far enough from the original that the likelihood of both locations being destroyed is extremely small.
• If you can’t immediately store the backup media in another physical location and the document isn't too big, consider e-mailing it to a friend or colleague.  You can also e-mail it to yourself.  That way, the document is safely stored on your e-mail server until the next time you check your e-mail.
• The second time you create a backup of a document, make it on separate media from the first backup.  That way, you always have TWO backup copies of your document.  This will protect you from computer failure or user error that destroys both the original and the copy while doing your backup.
• If you must do significant editing to the document, save it under a different name, for example, mypaper2.doc.  Continue to use new names with each successive edition, being careful not to delete the old ones until you are 100% sure that you will never need them.  This is especially important when combining documents to make a new document:  always give the new document a different name, and always save the original pieces in case they are needed later.
• For extra protection, periodically print your document.  That way, the document can be re-typed if the disk version is destroyed or damaged.
• If you have lots of software installed on your computer that would be time-consuming to re-install, consider doing a backup of the entire hard drive.  Many programs are sold for this purpose, but they are more practical if you have high-capacity removable media, such as a DVD-RW drive or a USB hard drive.  If you are using a computer with Windows XP Professional, a backup program is available under Accessories, System Tools.
• If you do have media suitable for full system backup, periodically use the Windows XP backup program and choose the option to back up "all information on this computer."  This creates what is called an "ASR" (automated system recovery) backup.  When used with the recovery CD that came with your computer, the backup can quickly restore your entire system to the state it was in at the time of the backup, programs and data alike.  This is very helpful if you have to replace your hard drive or if there is massive data loss from a virus.

Finally, make your backup efforts proportional to the value of the document.  If you are doing something simple and short that could easily be reproduced, you may not wish to back up at all.

Regular Backup Tasks 

The following summary of periodic backup tasks is something that should be a regular part of the daily routine of operators.

Supervisors should also verify that the operators are completing these tasks daily as required, since consistency is a very important part of the monitoring process. 

These suggested tasks can also be modified depending on the organization and data availability requirements, but at a minimum these are tasks that should be completed. 

Daily Tasks 

• Bring back the previous offsite backup and put back with the regular tapes.
• Check email for successful completion and failure notifications.
• Review the server error logs for any problems and resolve.
• Check the text files and verify row counts for individually exported tables.
• Review the backup software error logs and resolve any errors.
• Review all of the backup times and make sure there are still appropriate time windows for backups to complete.
• Restore a random file from tape.
• Remove tapes and send offsite.

Weekly Tasks (In addition to the daily tasks) 

• Do a full weekly backup of each server.
• Restore a few critical database tables on the production server.
• De-fragment servers.

Monthly Tasks (In addition to the daily and weekly tasks) 

• Do a complete restore on the backup server.
• Make sure that that the complete process is documented and that the documentation is updated.
• Evaluate the time windows and make adjustments where necessary.
• Compare the size of tables, the number of rows, the disk space taken up by tables and all comparative statistics to those of the month before and resolve any anomalies.
• Check with vendors of DBMS, server software and tape backup software and get and install any patches or upgrades to the software.

Backup Type

Data Only vs. Complete Operating System and Data Backup

The determination of a complete data plus operating system backup is somewhat dependent on the environment.

Complete operating system failures typically don’t happen as often as data failures. Operating systems also don’t typically change as often as the data.

Catastrophic operating system failures are often caused by hardware errors, and if specific hardware needs to be replaced, it is often the case more than not, that a complete re-installation of the operating system may need to be done anyway.

As part of a backup strategy, it may only be worthwhile to backup the operating system periodically such as on a weekly basis.

Complete System Backup vs. Partial

When practical, the most prudent backup strategy is to perform a complete system backup every working day.

If there are 22 working days in the month, 22 tapes should be used for the daily backups whenever possible.

This insures the ability to recovery any file for at least one month.

Furthermore, if weekly and monthly processing is performed, a partial backup should be performed of the transaction files before processing and then a full backup after the period has been processed. 

Keep 5 weekly tapes and 13 monthly tapes.

When disaster strikes and a critical data volume is lost, being able to restore the entire volume from last night's backup reduces the liability of attempting to restore the volume from multiple incremental and base line backups.

If you are performing full backups every night and last night's backup failed, and a critical data volume is lost before the next backup, then the volume can be restored from the backup created the night before (and so on).

As a standard rule, do not append to tapes without just cause. Prudent disaster recovery planning conflicts with the practice of leaving a tape in the drive and using it all week. The last five backups are all resident on just one extremely thin strand of tape.

Data Backup and Recovery

Because data is the heart of the enterprise, it's crucial for you to protect it. And to protect your organization's data, you need to implement a data backup and recovery plan.

Backing up files can protect against accidental loss of user data, database corruption, hardware failures, and even natural disasters. It's your job as an administrator to make sure that backups are performed and that backup tapes are stored in a secure location.

Creating a Backup and Recovery Plan

Data backup is an insurance plan. Important files are accidentally deleted all the time. Mission-critical data can become corrupt. Natural disasters can leave your office in ruin. With a solid backup and recovery plan, you can recover from any of these. Without one, you're left with nothing to fall back on.

Figuring Out a Backup Plan

It takes time to create and implement a backup and recovery plan. You'll need to figure out what data needs to be backed up, how often the data should be backed up, and more. To help you create a plan, consider the following:

The Basic Types of Backup

There are many techniques for backing up files. The techniques you use will depend on the type of data you're backing up, how convenient you want the recovery process to be, and more.

If you view the properties of a file or directory in Windows Explorer, you'll note an attribute called Archive. This attribute often is used to determine whether a file or directory should be backed up. If the attribute is on, the file or directory may need to be backed up. The basic types of backups you can perform include

In your backup plan you'll probably want to perform full backups on a weekly basis and supplement this with daily, differential, or incremental backups. You may also want to create an extended backup set for monthly and quarterly backups that includes additional files that aren't being backed up regularly.

Tip You'll often find that weeks or months can go by before anyone notices that a file or data source is missing. This doesn't mean the file isn't important. Although some types of data aren't used often, they're still needed. So don't forget that you may also want to create extra sets of backups for monthly or quarterly periods, or both, to ensure that you can recover historical data over time.

Differential and Incremental Backups

The difference between differential and incremental backups is extremely important. To understand the distinction between them, examine Table 14-1. As it shows, with differential backups you back up all the files that have changed since the last full backup (which means that the size of the differential backup grows over time). With incremental backups, you only back up files that have changed since the most recent full or incremental backup (which means the size of the incremental backup is usually much smaller than a full backup).

 Backup Devices and Media

• Floppy disks
• Magneto optical and disks floptical disks
• Optical disks
• Hard drives and disks
• Magnetic tapes
• Jukeboxes, stack loaders, etc.

Floppy disks

On PCs, diskettes are often used for backups. Their low storage capacity makes this an impractical means of doing a full backup on a Unix workstation. However, this method is better than nothing and can be used in a pinch for individual files or directories. They are inexpensive and can be fairly reliable if stored correctly.

1. How should floppy disks be stored?

• Laying flat.
• Sitting upright.

Magneto optical and floptical disks

Magneto optical disks are the same length and width as a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk, but thicker. They can store 128MB-1.2GB of raw data. They can be more stable than magnetic media, such as tapes, because they are written magnetically and read optically. This means that reading does not degrade the stored data. The drives are quite expensive as are the disks themselves.

Floptical disks utilize the same technology as magneto optical disks. They have a smaller storage capacity of 21-120MB of raw data. Most floptical drives can read and write to basic floppy diskettes.

Optical disks

Optical disks have a storage capacity from 128MB to 2GB on a 4.6-inch compact disk. They use a laser for writing and reading to the disk. They offer high capacity storage but are 2 to 3 times slower than hard drives. There are three primary types used for storage:

CD-ROM (compact disk - read only memory)

CD-ROM is the most common optical disk type, and is used by the music industry as well. This is not useful for backups but is a good choice for archiving large pools of static data.

WORM (write once read many)

A write-once CD-ROM drive is another viable, although expensive, backup option. Recordable CDs are usually less expensive than optical disks. Once written, the data is permanently recorded. Current raw storage capacities are from 540 to 640 MB.

Rewritable optical disks

Rewritable optical disks typically are commonly used for data backup and archiving data. The drives and disk are generally fairly costly but both fast and reliable.

Hard drives and disks

A hard drive can also be used to create a disk image backup, where all the data on one hard disk is simply copied to another hard disk. The second disk can be used as a backup if the first drive should fail. With the recent reduction in the cost of hard drives this option is more attractive. However, there are a couple problems with this method. For example, since it is difficult to store (multiple) disk drives off-site, this would not be a good backup method in a disaster-recovery situation. Previous versions of the same file would be unavailable.

Magnetic tapes

Magnetic tape is the most realistic medium for creating Unix backups. The tape is actually a Mylar film strip on which information is stored. It is the traditional backup medium that has been in use for years. Magnetic tapes are a sequential storage device. Since tape drives cannot randomly access data like other storage devices, such as disk drives, they are much slower. However, high storage capabilities and low cost make magnetic tapes the storage medium of choice for archiving large amounts of data.

9-track tape (also called half-inch tape) is the old standard in magnetic tape storage. It consists of half-inch tape wound on a circular reel. Although these tapes are still in use, they are extremely bulky and the storage capacity is small by today's standards. A 9-track tape will only hold around 225MB at the highest density.

QIC (quarter inch cartridge) tapes are reliable and were widely used several years ago. The drives are inexpensive, but slow. Current storage capacity of QIC tapes is up to 2GB, however, more common capacities are 150MB, 320MB, and 525MB.

DAT (digital audio tape) or helical scan devices come in two standard sizes, 8mm and 4mm. 4mm DAT's support storage capacities from 1-8 GB, while 8mm DAT's support storage capacities from 2-10 GB. 8mm and 4mm tapes are most common on newer systems. 4mm tapes are physically the smallest of the magnetic tapes and therefore take up less storage room. The only disadvantage of these tapes seems to be that they are more sensitive to heat damage than other types of tape. 8mm and 4mm tapes come in two grades; one for video/audio recording and one for binary data. The video/audio tapes may work for making backups, but they are less reliable in terms of retaining data. The binary grade tapes are a better choice. The 4mm is currently the most widely used but is being replaced by DLT.

DLT (digital linear tapes) have a storage capacity of up to 40GB with compression. The drives are quite fast and are the newest standard backup media technology. For recommended reading on the Quantum Corporation's DLT technology.

2. Which type of magnetic tape is the best choice for unattended backups?

• QIC tapes are best.
• DLT or DAT tapes are best.
• It depends on how much space the backup will take.

Jukeboxes, Stackloaders, etc

Jukeboxes and stackloaders are designed to automate the handling of media to single or multiple DAT, DLT, or optical drives. They are also known as tape or optical libraries. These devices are able to load and unload tapes into removable media drives on an as needed basis.

Know How Your Backup Software Works

Although it might seem self-evident, spend some time learning how your tape backup software actually works. Too often, we start an automated backup routine only to find that a month later when we need to restore the data, an option wasn’t selected correctly and we are out of luck for a restore.

Tape backup software has become increasingly reliable but as with any software products, there are now several levels of options with increased complexity that the operator should be aware of.

The correct selection of backup options in the software will to a large extent help determine how “solid” or how robust the backup is.

• Is verification after backup turned on?
• Are email and other notifications to operators set up?
• Is the backup schedule set correctly?
• Are the options for full or incremental backup set correctly?
• Is there an understanding of how media pools and media retention schedules work?
• Do you know how to have the tape backup software run batch files for pre and post tape backup operations?
• Is the tape backup software properly configured to write to the server system logs?
• If you’re backing up a DBMS system, is the software configured properly to shut down the instance when required?
• Does your tape backup software require the use of a special server user and password, and do you have the password and login information stored in a safe location?
• Is your tape backup software configured properly to work with your anti virus protection software?
• Do you have the backup disks for the tape backup software in an accessible location if you need to restore the tape backup software onto a server? Are the software keys for the disks readily available?
• Do you have a plan in place for regularly upgrading the tape backup software and receiving and applying patches from the vendor?
• Do you understand how the scheduling options work in the tape backup software?
• Do you understand how to select the files and directories you want to back up?
• Have you configured your backups so that a password is required to restore from tape, and are these login and passwords information stored in a safe location?
• Do you have a link to the vendor’s web site and a support login in case you need to get help quickly?

 The Importance Of Backup in our life

If you are new computer user first you should learn about  the importance and need of  back up. Because without backup yon can lose your data any time due to any virus, power failure and hard disk problem. This has happened to many people. In extreme cases, it has put companies out of business. Computers are becoming more and more reliable. This creates a false sense of security - we begin to think all our data are safe and secure and will never go away. It's not true - and never will be. If you don't back up your computer system regularly. Backups are really a necessity, and you are responsible for making backups of your files.

What to important in your system for Back up?

How to Back Up to your system?

• Back up regularly your data. It is important factor for you  to get backup your  files and folder on a regular basis. Because in this global network a  computer can  crash, a virus, or a hard drive failure can wipe out everything. Don't make this mistake, It depend upon you and your data importance but better technique is that back up everything at least once a week. But if you use your computer daily, it is best to back up important files daily and other data weekly.

• Keep several backup copies of same backup. Never back up over a previous backup copy, always try to  keep several copies over time so that if one time one back create problem you can user others.. Remember, a problem that is backed up will remain a problem when restored!

• Easy way for backup using Be selective method. You don't have to do a total system backup of your system over time, If your are doing so, you are wasting your time. Just back up your important files, folder and photos. Backing up the entire hard drive is time-consuming, not practical, and should not be done. A backup of specific data files is the way to go. But a best technique is that first install your all computer program and system drivers then do a backup using any third party software (cloning software) like Norton ghost or others of your C drive once, this backup will help you to restore your all computer program in 15 min in case of any problem and do important data backup daily or weekly.

How to backup My Documents folder?

Normally many windows user use My Documents folder to save data, the reason is that  Most Windows programs, including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access save their data in My Documents folder by default. Many other subfolders such as My Pictures, My Music and My Received files contain in My Documents folder. Those folders usually take up a lot of space, and they are therefore recommended to be taken care separately. Normally My Documents folder location is C:\ drive when you install your window on C drive, but you can change location of you My Documents folder to other drive, Must do this if your good habit to use My Documents folder frequently.

Also note that some people may have placed some or of the important files on your desktop, the common location for program shortcuts and start icons.  The default location of My Documents folder will vary depending on what version of Windows you're running:

These are typical locations, but you can change these location for My Document folder for different windows.

You can find different type of file with different file extensions in My Documents.

• Microsoft Word (.doc, .rtf, .dot) documents.

• Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlt) tables and spreadsheets.

• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pot) presentations.

• Database (.mdb, .dbf, .csv, .db, .xml) files.

• Internet (.html, .txt, .pdf) documents.

• Digital photo (.tif, .jpg) pictures.

How you can manage your outlook data?

Outlook basically Microsoft's application that is integrated into Microsoft Office  98, 2000, 2002 and Microsoft Exchange Server. Outlook is complete e-mail manager  by which you e-mail, calendaring, and contact management. Outlook enables you to filter and organize e-mail messages, integrate and manage e-mail from multiple e-mail accounts, personal and group calendars, contacts, folders, and tasks.

Outlook data is usually stored at the following paths be defaults but you can change Outlook location. Normally Outlook folder location is C:\ drive when you install your window on C drive, but you can change location of you Outlook to other drive,

How to do your system Registry Backup?

All Windows stores its configuration information in a database called the registry. The registry is the central storage for all computer configuration data.

Although the registry appears to be in one file, it is actually placed on your computer in several files. Depending on your system configuration, registry files can be found in any of the following locations:

C:\Documents and Settings\User Name\ on Windows 2000, XP.
C:\Windows\System32\Config\ on Windows 2000, XP.
C:\Windows\ on Windows 95, 98, ME.
C:\Windows\Profiles\ on Windows 95, 98, ME.

How To Back Up Windows Registry ?

In windows NT, 2000 and XP not possible to back up registry files while the operating system is running. Registry files remain fully locked all the time while Windows is running,  But here You can use an integrated Windows XP's System Restore feature for registry backup.

But using registry editor (regedit.exe) you  can to export partial or complete copies of the registry, while the Windows is up, and the exported files can then be backed up with any other traditional file backup utility. You can follow these simple steps to back up the whole registry or any particular registry subkey:

• Click Start button and then type Regedit in Run option.

• Locate and then click the root subkey that contains all the child subkeys and values that you want to back up.

• On the File menu, click Export.

• In the Save box, you can select the location where you want to save the Registration Entries (.reg) file, type a file name in the File name box, and then click Save.

The exported registry file is about 10-50 MB in size on a typical Windows NT/2000/XP installation.

E- Mail Backup

How to Back up your E-mail Messages

• C:\Windows\
  C:\Windows\System32
  The Windows system folders contain a lot of system application components, such as .exe, .dll, .ocx and more. The note from above applies to Windows system locations as well. Although you can choose to back up Windows folders, this backup won't help you much if you ever want to re-install Windows.