A Case of Overwritten Backup Media

This is a report of an incident we can all learn from. The names have been changed to protect the ignorant. Elizabeth is the receptionist and office manager at Acme Services, she also does most of the bookkeeping. Yesterday she got an error while entering work orders. Elizabeth is fairly computer literate so she started some basic troubleshooting. She discovered that a directory of accounting files was apparently missing. The system and the files are absolutely essential for accounts payable and accounts receivable. Acme does not employee a full-time system administration staff. The owners nephew, Frank, is a computer wizard and helps them with computers when needed. Fortunately, Frank had installed a backup system that backups up all of the data files to tape every night. Elizabeth changes the tapes first thing every morning.

The end of the month is only a few days away and Elizabeth has a number of invoices to send out as well as quite a few payments to vendors and some commission checks. She can't do any of this without the system and the missing files. She was somewhat familiar with the backup system so she was not in full panic yet. Elizabeth got the previous nights backup tape, which she had just pulled out of the tape drive an hour earlier, and placed it back into the tape drive. She attempted to restore the files but got nervous when a message warned about overwriting some files. She called Frank and explained what was going on.

Frank was puzzled about what happened to the files in the first place. He was legitimately concerned that the hard drive may be corrupted or failing. Frank decided it would be prudent to backup the data on the HD before doing anything else. He asked Elizabeth if she had changed the backup tape this morning and she replied affirmatively. He used a remote desktop tool to access the computer remotely and performed a backup of all important data on that computer. Frank also suspected that there was a distinct possibility that there was nothing wrong with the computer or the hard drive and the files were just accidentally deleted. He decided to restore the deleted files and see if the problems occur again before doing anything drastic like replacing the HD.

Frank asked Elizabeth to insert last night's backup tape so he could run the restore. Elizabeth replied that the tape was already in the drive. Apparently there was some miscommunication about when the tape was changed and which tape was in the drive. Bottom-line, Frank had just backed up the hard drive and overwritten the most recent backup of the missing files. WHOOPS!

Forget about pointing fingers or placing blame. This kind of mistake is common with backup media. The fact is the data is gone, and the current backup is overwritten. Frank finally restored the missing files from a backup that was 3 days old. It initially took about four hours of Frank's time to work on this problem and restore those files. Elizabeth is still making phone calls and re-entering data that was lost. When it's all over, Elizabeth will probably spend about 20-30 hours recovering from this situation, and there will be at least a few customers and vendors who will be upset about payment and billing problems over the next few weeks.

The hard cost of this incident is far in excess of the cost of using an online backup service. An online backup service would not only have avoided the overwritten backup tape, but also saved enough money on backup hardware and media to pay for the backup service for several years. In addition if an online backup service were used, Acme would have their critical data off-site and protected from a fire or other disaster.

Advantages of Online Backup

Backing up data to tapes was the only way to go for decades. Tape backup is still the predominate media used to store backup copies of data to protect against failures and disaster. Other media, such as zip disks, cd's, and dvd's have become more popular among home and small business users in recent years because of the attractive cost and availability. More recently, portable disk drives have become popular because they are fast and cheap. Online backup services are the hottest trend in data backup because they are simple and effective and many are available at very reasonable costs.

Online backup services install a small program on a computer that makes backup copies of data on the service providers storage system in a secure data center. Most online backup service providers charge a monthly fee for a predetermined amount of storage. There are many different providers with many different capabilities and subscription plans. Generally speaking, online backup services offer some distinct and significant advantages over traditional media and backup methods.

• No need to purchase backup hardware and media. Backup hardware and media are generally replaced and upgraded every couple of years or so. Online backup service providers do not require you to buy or upgrade any hardware.
  
• No need to purchase backup software. Online backup service providers usually provide you with the software to install on your computer at no additional cost.

• Security. Believe it or not, online backup is generally more secure than backing up to any media that is stored in your house or business. Online backup services providers are usually housed in secure facilities and data is encrypted during transmission and storage. Your data as usually less secure in your home or business than it is at most online backup service facilities.

• Reliability. There are a multitude of problems that affect the reliability of backup data. Tapes wear out, media is over written, historical backups are on media that is incompatible with newer hardware... Online backup services typically do not exhibit these problems, data that is backed up can be restored with confidence. Good online backup service providers maintain backup data on fault tolerant arrays, and the best providers also replicate the data to an entirely separate data center.

• Offsite Storage. Most home and small business users have little or no reliable offsite storage. Moving data offsite is essential to recovering from a disaster, although relatively expensive and difficult to maintain properly. Your data is always stored offsite with online backup systems and there is no increased cost, effort, or maintenance.

• Backup Records. Do you have records of what files are on which media? Do you have records of when each file was backed up and which media contains each version? I didn't think so (not if you are a typical small business or home user). Online backup services usually provide you with a quick and easy catalog of all of your backup files and allow you to select one or more files to restore and also allow you to select which version of each file you want to restore.

• Easy Restore. You don't have to physically locate and mount media to perform a restore. Online backup providers allow you to browse your backup files and select the ones you want to restore with no concern for where the media is located. In many cases the restore is much faster because there is no waiting for the tape drive to wind out to the point where your desired file was copied.

• Automated. Online backups are usually 100% automated, meaning you don't have to do anything to keep your files backed up properly. Any other type of backup that requires on-site media will require you to manually change and manage the media, even if the backup jobs themselves can be scheduled.

• Retention. Online backup services allow you to set retention policies for your backup files and they automatically retain your files as required, and remove older versions that are no longer required. Any system that requires tapes or disk, also requires that you store and protect older versions of the media manually. When media is handled manually, mistakes will happen and data will be overwritten.

• Cost Effective. It is generally less expensive to maintain an online backup subscription than it is to purchase drives and media, and bear the cost of the manual effort and procedures required to ensure an effective backup system that involves media.

The above mentioned advantages may not be available in all online backup systems. However, the better providers will offer all of the benefits listed above. Cost is not an indicator of the quality of the online backup system, but the dirt cheap or free providers do not generally meet the same standards as the professional providers.

Backup Retention

Most large businesses have IT professionals that design and implement data backup plans and disaster recovery plans. However, small businesses and home users can benefit from some of the standard practices used by larger businesses. Large businesses typically implement sophisticated backup retention policies and off-site backups that are costly and labor intensive, putting them out of reach of the typical small business or home office user. These practices are considered essential and are often regulatory or auditing requirements. While smaller businesses and home users do not have the same requirements, they do want to retain data for many of the same reasons. Recent developments in online backup services have made it possible for everyone to enjoy the benefits of robust retention policies and off-site storage without the cost or complicated procedures.

Most home and business users are not IT Professionals and they tend to make backups for the purpose of protecting against a hard drive crash. Hard drives do fail, but that is not the only reason to backup your data. Have you ever accidentally deleted a file? If so, you might be able to restore it from a recent backup. What if you deleted the file intentionally because you thought you were done with it, and then several months later discovered that you need that file again. Chances are that you will have overwritten whatever backup was made several months ago. Do you have files that you change frequently? Possibly a big spreadsheet that you use to track your budget? Have you ever deleted a part of the file or changed some data only to discover a few days later that you shouldn't have made that change? If your backup method is only intended to protect against a hard drive failure, then you might find it impossible to go back a few days or weeks and restore an older version of a particular file.

I once deleted an entire directory because the project I was working on had been canned months earlier and I was told the project was dead and would never be implemented. A year after the files were deleted someone decided to restart that project. Fortunately, a robust backup retention plan was in place and my files were easily restored. You might think that a robust retention plan will require lots of media and money. First of all the media requirements are not as big as you might first think, and second, online backup removes any manual efforts to manage and implement.

Most good retention policies are based on retaining certain backups for longer periods of time. I have consulted with numerous companies and helped them implement backup policies that require the End of Month, End of Quarter, and End of Year, backups to be retained on individual schedules. You might retain your daily backups for 31 days, and then run a special backup job at the end of each month and retain the monthly backup for a full year, and then run another special backup at the end of the year and retain that yearly backup for 7 years. Lets say you are still using tapes for your backup media, and each backup can be contained on a single tape; you would need about 50 tapes to implement the above strategy and retain 7 years worth of backups. You would need 31 tapes just to keep 31 days worth of backups on hand; 19 additional tapes would allow you to keep a fairly good set of backups for 7 years.

The retention policy outlined in the previous paragraph is essentially how most large business retain backups. The backups are probably run by some type of automated scheduling system. The tapes may be changed by a robotic tape library system. Human operators are required to review the results of each backup run and pull the appropriate tapes and place them in a container that is picked up by an off-site storage service. Every morning a courier arrives and picks up a few containers of tapes and drops off a few containers of tapes that are being rotated back on-site. The tape devices need to serviced frequently and the media is replaced after a set number of uses. This backup and retention policy requires significant investment to implement, often in the millions of dollars per year for large businesses.

Online backup systems, such as Rhinoback, allow you to implement the same backup and retention policies as outlined above for very little cost and effort. First of all you don't need any tapes, drives, or media. No human intervention is required for mounting or storing media.
No courier or effort is required to move media off-site. With Rhinoback you just download a simple agent, pick the files or directories that you want to backup, select a schedule for the backups, and then set a retention policy. You're done! Actually it is easier than that, just download and install the Rhinoback agent and by default your documents will be backed up every night with a default retention policy. Rhinoback has a very robust system of managing retention. You can specify that the backups made on a certain day of the month, quarter and year be retained for different periods of time.

The better online backup services actually offer better retention policies than what is found in commercial backup systems that use media. For example; Rhinoback maintains the current versions of your backup files indefinitely, older versions of files and files that have been deleted from your system are maintained according to daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly retention policies. There is no need to setup special jobs to run at the end of the week, month, quarter or year. The same job can run everyday, and if the date meets the criteria specified in the retention policy, then the files that are no longer current are retained according to the retention policy. Furthermore, Rhinoback can be set to maintain only one copy of each version of a file, unlike tape based systems that may keep multiple copies of your files on different media so that they can be retained for different periods. Rhinoback's ability to maintain a single copy, makes your off-site storage space more efficient, while having no impact on your ability to restore versions of files from any date that is within your retention policy.

The advanced retention and off-site capabilities that Rhinoback offers makes it practical and affordable for small businesses and home users to reap the benefits and protection that was previously only available to larger corporations with deep pockets. Check out www.rhinoback.com and I think you will find that the simplicity and low subscription rates make this a no-brainer for anyone who is serious about their backups.

Uh Oh!

Last night I was doing some testing that required a number of carefully constructed test files. I was testing a file import function that is flexible and tolerant with the format of the file. To properly test it, I needed many test files with various valid and invalid formats. Not only was I trying to validate that the import would work with valid data, but I also want to make sure the program would detect invalid data and handle the errors appropriately.

At the eleventh hour a colleague reported to me that he knew of a circumstance where the program would fail. I decided to take one of my test files and modify it so that it contained the same invalid construct that was purported to fail. I found a file that had some suitably formatted data and did some "search and replace" operations and some other manual edited. After about 15 minutes, I had a new test file that should produce this new error. I clicked the save button in my editor. Suddenly, I had a sinking feeling, I forgot to change the name of the file. I had just overwritten one of my test files that I spent significant time constructing.

The sinking feeling didn't last long. Thank goodness, my files were backed up with Rhinoback. I right clicked on a little icon in my system tray, selected restore, and selected the file that I had just overwritten. In less than 2 minutes, my file was restored to it's original state. Whew, that one little restore saved me enough time to cover the monthly fee I paid for Rhinoback a few times over.

Rhinoback is a professional grade online backup service that is priced for the home and small business users. It has all of the features and security of the big expensive alternatives at a fraction of the cost. Don't let a mechanical failure or a simple human error ruin your day. Give it a try, free accounts are available. www.rhinoback.com

Insurance For Your Data?

Most of us purchase insurance policies to protect our assets from losses due to fire, theft or disaster. If you own a home, then you probably have a homeowners policy that covers your home and contents. If you are a small business owner, then you probably have a similar policy to cover your office equipment, furniture and other fixed assets. You should read your policy carefully and understand the coverage limits on computer equipment. You may find that you need to increase your coverage for electronics and computer equipment. Although you may have purchased a policy with increased coverage from a reputable firm, your most valuable asset may not be covered.

Even if your insurance agent assisted you in selecting the appropriate policies and coverage, chances are that there was no mention of protecting your data assets. Most insurance companies don’t offer policies that cover the loss of data. And for good reason, the financial loss can be staggering and it is almost impossible to determine a fair value for data. The data on your computers can be much more valuable than the hardware itself. The loss is not limited to the value of the data itself, technical support and lost productivity are also costly side effects of the actual data loss.

Consider this incident: A sales representative for a chemical products company has a home office that he often uses to make phone calls and follow up on leads. Unknown to anyone, a power cord to a laser printer was slightly damaged by a vacuum cleaner in such a way that strands of the conductors were able to make contact with each other. Eventually these wires sparked and ignited a stack of paper that was on the floor next to the desk. Fortunately, he was home at the time and smelled the smoke before the fire got out of hand. He quickly extinguished the fire before major damage was done. However, the computer which sat on the floor under the desk was severely damaged and the bottom drawer on the left side of the desk was charred. The insurance adjuster promptly visited the next day and generously allowed $1000 to replace the computer, (which was 2 years old and probably worth only $300), $650 to replace the entire desk, and another $1800 for carpet and smoke damage. The problem is that the computer contained over 1200 MP3 files, 3000 digital photos, dozens of spreadsheets and documents, and hundreds of contacts (including prospects). Most of the files were backed up a few weeks earlier, but the CDs that contained the backup data were melted in the bottom left desk drawer.

In some cases, some kind of insurance policy to protect against data loss may be appropriate, especially if there is a risk of liability if data is lost. In most cases, a financial settlement to replace lost data is not adequate. How can money replace 4 years worth of digital photos? How can you determine how much productivity you will lose while you track down contact information that you need to replace over the next few months? The answer is in the way you backup your data.

While most of us know that our data needs to be backed-up, most people fail to make adequate backups. The reasons are many, but the fact is that any reliance on manual procedures has a high probability of failing. Any backup process that leaves your backup data in the same house or building as your computer cannot be considered adequate protection. Online backup services are the closest to a sure-thing for protecting your files from fire, theft, disaster, or human error. There are many providers, and a few of them are priced very reasonably. Be weary of the very cheap and free services, they may not be around for the long term, and your data may not be protected. There is no excuse for not having good backups, the services are readily available and they are very simple to setup. Once configured, an online backup service will consistently backup your data with no manual effort.