Creating,Backup,Plan, computer Creating a Backup Plan

Gone are those times when the companies and the organisations didn't need a hi-tech system to handle them. Owing to the considerable increase in the business sector and thus, an enormous increase in the complexity of the organisational struc ----------------------------------------------------------Permission is granted for the below article to forward,reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website,offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as longas no changes a

----------------------------------------------------------Permission is granted for the below article to forward,reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website,offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as longas no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and theresource box below is included. ----------------------------------------------------------Creating a Backup PlanBy Stephen BucaroYour company's data may be its most important asset.Imagine a large corporation with millions of dollars ofaccount receivable and account payable data stored on theirnetwork. A fire causes massive data loss. How much workwould be required to re-create the lost data? Withoutbackups, the company may not survive the disaster.Choosing a backup media is important, but in this articleI'll focus on creating a plan for the type and frequencyof backups. Let's assume you will use some type of tapebackup media.If your company has only a small amount of data, you maybe able to perform a full backup every night. You wouldneed two tapes which you would alternate in case the mostrecent full backup turns out defective. At least you havea previous one to go back to. You would store the tapes ina secure off-site location to avoid being destroyed in thesame disaster that might destroy the original data.When you perform a full backup, each file that gets bakedup has the "archive" attribute in its file properties setto zero.The archive attribute is a flag stored for each file thathas been created or modified. It indicates that the fileneeds to be archived. Backup programs can reduce the sizeof backups by saving only files which have been modifiedsince the previous backup. When the file is saved in afull or incremental backup, the archive bit is set to one.In Windows, you can view the archive attribute for anyfile by right-clicking the file in Windows Explorer andselecting "Properties" in the popup menu. In the"Properties" dialog box, click on the "Advanced..." button.If your company has a large amount of data, it would betoo time consuming to perform a full backup every night.Instead, you would perform a full backup only on Fridaynights, and perform a "differential" backup on otherweekday night. This backup plan would require six tapes.- A differential backup saves all files that have beencreated or modified since the last FULL backup.- Restoring with differential backups is easy. You needjust use two tapes. First restore the last full backup.Then restore the last differential backup.A differential backup doesn't reset the archive attribute.The next time you perform a differential backup, it willagain save all the files that have changed since thelast full backup. So each night, the differential backupwill get progressively larger until the next you perfroma full backup.If your company has a great amount of data that changesevery day, it would be too time consuming to perform adifferential backup every night. Instead, you mightperform a full backup on Friday nights, and an"incremental" backup on other weekday night.- An incremental backup saves only the files that havechanged since the last full or incremental backup.An incremental backup checks the archive attribute todetermine if the file has changed and needs to be backedup. Then it resets the archive attribute. An incrementalbackup stays small because it includes only files thathave changed since the last full or incremental backup.- Restoring with incremental backups is more time consuming.First, restore the last full backup. Then restore all theincremental backups made since the full backup, in theorder they were made. The only reason to use an incrementalbackup scheme is if differential backups become too large,requiring more than one tape.Many company networks continue to opperate on Saturday andeven Sunday. In this case, you would need to add therequired additional tapes to the plan.If during the day your company creates a large volume ofdata, or a small amount of data that is too critical towait for the standard night time backup, you can performa copy backup. To do this, you just copy the selected filesto a backup media.----------------------------------------------------------Resource Box:Copyright(C) 2004 Bucaro TecHelp. To learn how to maintainyour computer and use it more effectively to design a Website and make money on the Web visit bucarotechelp.comTo subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter visithttp://bucarotechelp.com/search/000800.asp---------------------------------------------------------- Article Tags: Backup Plan, Full Backup, Backup Every, Archive Attribute, Incremental Backup, Differential Backup, Last Full