Backup and recovery consists of two macro procedures in the event of a disaster. Backup consists of copying the data to another location and saving it. Recovery also known as restoring the data is simply placing the copied data back onto the source hard drive. Understanding how to do both of these steps is a good idea if you want to prevent loss of data and down time at your place of business.

There are several different types of backup equipment available. You will need to do some research to determine the best for your personal situation. You can choose from tape backups, secondary hard drives, CD's, DVD's, and online backups.

There are also different types of backups. Once you have decided what data you need to backup then a more specific solution can be considered. Some choose to backup anything they cannot easily recreate. You may take this approach however backing up your entire hard drive is usually the best course of action; this is called mirroring or imaging the hard drive.

Backing up your entire hard drive can take a very long time even with speedy backups. This is why some choose to only backup some folders and files. Mirroring requires that the destination drive have at least the same storage capacity as the source drive.

Another reason some choose only to backup selected data is that is not cost efficient to buy a fast enough system that can mirror their data in a required time frame, say overnight. So if you have saved all the original software programs like your Windows OS and MS Office then you probably can get by with a smaller less expensive backup solution.

If you have data that changes on a daily basis then it is a good idea to backup your data on a daily basis. For example if you're a doctor seeing only one unique patient a day it would makes sense to do this. But if you're hosting a monthly or yearly event then perhaps a monthly or twice monthly backup is a better fit to your needs. Some companies even backup data on an hourly basis; many call centers may choose to do this, because they do have clients who occasionally purchase two or three times in a day or may call back to update information they feel is incorrect.

You can also choose to backup the entire group of files again or you can choose to backup only files that have changed, speeding up the process. One suggestion is to backup files that have changed on a daily basis and then once a week do a new backup of all your data files.

Once you have a proper data backup system in place and you have established an off site storage location your biggest worries are over. When a disaster occurs, big or small, you simply need to locate your most recent backup and recover your data files.

Data backup and recovery isn't nearly as difficult as many might think. And with so many options there is no reason for anyone not to have a backup system in place.

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