Love Your Data: 7 Keys To Long-Term Success

When it comes to a long-term relationship, your hard drive is an unfit suitor. With the average shelf life only a mere six years, hard drives are hardly commitment-friendly. So if you’re looking for a data backup solution you can grow old with, here’s how to get started:   

1. Have a Plan: Without a sound strategy, data backup can be inconsistent at best — or unreliable at worst. 

2. Diversify: In a nutshell, your backup needs a backup, says Nat Maple, senior vice president and general manager at Acronis, “A good guide is the “3-2-1” backup rule. That means that people should have three copies of everything they care about, in two different formats, and one copy offsite.” 

3. Know Your Type: Data backup isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. “For some people, such as professional photographers, speed is important," says Maple. "For other people, image backup eliminates the complexity and time taken to reconfigure a new system and to ensure that everything is working." 

4. Disasters Happen: “One of the purposes of online backup is for disaster recovery,” writes Walter May for CloudTweaks, “But your service provider is not immune to disasters so also make sure that you know exactly how and when you can get your backup in case both you and your provider are hit with a disaster." 

5. Prioritize: Not all data is vital. “It is simply not efficient nor sustainable to apply the same blanket level of protection, storage and management requirements to all information,” writes security analyst, Dominic Vogel. “Once you know what data needs the most protection, you can properly allocate the funds and resources to best defend those assets.”

6. Security = Trust: “Make sure that the service provider highlights their security measures and if you happen to get into an SLA with them,” writes May in CloudTweaks. “Make sure that security the will provide is on par with industry standards or to your own.”

7. Test, then Test Again: "You must assume that each step of your disaster recovery plan could fail, writes Acronis' Sam Rougine. "You have to prepare for 'mini-disasters' and guard against Murphy's Law. For each step of your disaster recovery plan, you should ideally have a 'plan B' and even a 'plan C.'"