BACKGROUND

93% of companies that suffer a significant data loss die within five years, according to Freeman Mendel, chair of the FBI's 2006 Infragard National Conference.


WHY BACK UP

Most computer users give very little thought to a catastrophic loss of their data, believing it is such a rare occurrence, it surely will never happen to them. And besides, should it ever happen, the data can always be recovered.

Unfortunately, looking at the statistics and the real world, that type of thinking should only be allowed in La La land!

The primary sources of catastrophic (complete) data loss include:

• Computer theft
• Sabotage
• Fire
• Water damage (I personally have had 3 clients that have lost computers due to cat or dog marking their territory!)
• Entropy / aging of the drive

Less obvious, but having the same deadly potential:

• Terrorist activities
• Criminal activities
• Static electricity
• Power surges
• Power sags
• Physical shock to the drive (banging the computer, dropping, etc.)

I find the entropy/aging of the drive to be of particular interest. The only independent testing on drive longevity was recently completed by Google. Granted, their study looked at server farms, but I believe their numbers hold true for all other drives.

In the Google study, they found that hard drive damage spiked with brand new drives, then quickly bottomed out to almost no failures until around two years old. At this point, these "colts" would begin a steep rise in failure rates, By three years old we begin a vertical climb. This means that when your drive approaches it's second birthday, it is already into middle age. Just because your drive is two or older you run a significant probability of drive failure.


BACKUP STRATEGIES

Backups are an insurance policy against drive failure and data loss. Like any other insurance policy, there are different levels of coverage you can get. One of the laws of physics is that if something can happen, it will happen! I strongly recommend getting the full-coverage insurance package to cover you in the event of any data loss.

• Local backup with history. This keeps your backup immediately accessible, and maintains a history of the different versions of your documents. Think corrupted document. If your document corrupts and is then backed up, you have a perfectly unusable backup copy. But if you have the previous version backed up as well, life is good. Time Machine is the leader of the pack here. If you are using an OS that does not include Time Machine, Carbon Copy Cloner, Synchonrize Pro X, DataBackup 3, Tri-Backup, and several other 3rd party utilities will do this for you (none quite as elegantly as Time Machine).
• Local backup clone. This is a bootable exact duplicate of your drive. Very convenient in the event that your computer or hard drive goes down. Allows you to take your clone, walk to another Mac, boot up from the clone, and get back to work in under 5 minutes of downtime.
• Off-site backup clone. Think disaster recovery. Same as the local clone, but stored at a different geographical location - bank safety deposit box, neighboring business, next door neighbor. This protects you in the event of theft, fire, etc. The only problem with this backup is it is typically not fully up to date. CrashPlan is a third-party utility that makes quick work of this by allowing you to create backups to another computer on you local network, across the Internet, or to the CrashPlan secure servers.
• Internet backup. Think disaster recovery adjunct for the off-site clone. With this backup only your documents are backed up. These should be virtually up to date. There are several companies specializing in this service. Mozy and Carbonite work well for home users. JungleDisk (software) used in conjunction with the Amazon S3 servers, and SpiderOak work well for those desiring backup with history. My current favorite is CrashPlan. Though their application is $60, their monthly service fee is no more than the others, the application is well crafted, and the service is enterprise-class.

WHERE TO BACK UP

Though there are many options as to backup media (DVD, BlueRay, tape, thumb drive, hard drive), for large backups, I only recommend hard drives. For smaller (32 GB and smaller) backups, DVD, BlueRay, and thumb drives work well. I cannot recommend tape (I'm one of the few to think this way). It is not nearly as reliable as any of the other media, backup and recovery is slow, and it is not Finder readable - it requires proprietary software to read the tape. This can be a serious problem if your backup Mac takes a dive.

Hard drives are inexpensive (under $150 for 1 TB drives at the time of this writing), and as stable and reliable as any media.

Optical media (DVD and BlueRay), despite what the manufacturers claim, are not long-term solutions. Both will typically show some degradation at 5 years, and very often in a much shorter time frame. The other downside to optical is that it is really a write once/read many media. Though there are RW discs, they are not nearly as reliable as R media.

Thumb drives are also an excellent media for backing up less than 32 GB of data (most users have less than 32 GB in their home folder). The also have the advantage of being highly transportable. If there is a downside, it is cost. A 16 GB thumb drive is 10-20 times the cost of DVD.


WHEN TO BACKUP

Think of it this way: If you were to loose your computer, how horrible would the loss of the data be to you? If it would be no problem, you have backed up in time. If it would be a disaster, you should have backed up more recently!

As a general rule, your backup with history should be hourly. All others may backup at least once a day. Most of my clients are configured to create a clone backup three times a day, and Time Machine has a default setting to backup every hour.


WHY HAVE AN INTERNET-BASED BACKUP

For those individuals and organizations that do have a backup strategy in place, almost all have only an on-site backup. This is a great start. but consider what happens in the event of a fire, theft, or natural disaster. Not only will your computers be lost, but so will your on-site backup! And in most instances, so is your company (most do not survive catastrophic data loss).

An off-site backup maintains a copy of your data in a different geographical location. This should be far enough from the home or office so that a natural disaster will not impact both locations.

The difficulty with an off-site backup solution based on physical storage (hard drive, tapes, etc.) is that the logistics of actually getting the backup back and forth between the home/office location and the off-site location are difficult enough to so that it is not done consistently - if at all.

With an Internet-based backup, there isn't much to do except pay the monthly bill for storage space! The backup is handled automatically via software. Should catastrophic loss occur, all that need be done is download the desired data to any computer located anywhere on the planet.


DOWNSIDES TO INTERNET-BASED BACKUP

As good as Internet-based backup is, there are a few downsides to consider. These include:

• Cost. An off-site hard drive solution may run $100-$1,000. Internet-based backup will cost from $50-$5,000 per year.
• Performance. If you have a broadband connection, you can expect to upload 1-10 GB per day. No problem if you only have 10 GB of data to backup. If you have terabytes, it will never happen. Keep in mind that the initial backup may take a month or more. But once uploaded, only new and modified files are uploaded, often completed in a few hours.
• Difficulty in accessing backup. If you have a broadband connection, you can download/recover your backup in 1-10 days. Keep in mind that if you have 500 GB of data to download, it is going to take time to do so.

RECOMMENDED BACKUP SOFTWARE

If you came from the OS 9 days, you may have backed up by dragging your boot hard drive onto another drive. Unfortunately, OS X has a far more complex architecture which prevents such an easy and simple option. Instead, you will need a specialized utility to perform the backup for you. Fortunately, there are many options to choose from.

For the vast majority of users, I recommend one of the following. All of these programs give you the ability to perform clone backups, and most will do backups with history:

• CrashPlan is unique in that it allows for local cloning, as well as backups to remote locations, be that another computer within your LAN or on the Internet. A free version is available, but I recommend the for-fee ($60) CrashPlan+ which removes advertising and unlocks many configuration options.
• Synchronize! Pro X is one of the best commercial backup utilities, offering as much control as any product. $99.
• SuperDuper is a hybrid freeware/shareware product. In the freeware mode, it will create backup clones, but forces erasing the target drive beforehand. In shareware mode it will create backup clones and backups with history, both without forcing an erasure. $29.
• CarbonCopyCloner is freeware and a very solid cloning utility, but it will not do history. As long as all you need is a clone with no bells and whistles, this is your tool.

Internet backups are now possible for Macintosh through a few avenues. My recommendations are:

• Mozy uses their proprietary software (free) to automate backups to their site. Ideal for individual users. Unlimited backup for only $5 per month. Advantages: Cost and simplicity. Disadvantages: Lack of history.
• SpiderOak uses their proprietary software (free) to automate backups to their site. One of the most advanced internet backup options available, including full encryption and history. $10 per month per 100 GB of stored data. Advantages: Lower cost, versioning, ability to create password protected sharepoints, able to backup multiple computers on multiple platforms to a single universally-accessible account. Disadvantages: No background application - the application must be launched to perform backups.
• CrashPlan uses their proprietary software (free, or for-fee for enhanced functionality) to automate backups to their own site, another computer(s), or a local hard drive. Advantages: Being able to use another computer on the Internet as your backup (and have the other computer use yours as their backup if desired) is a completely unique option that works well for many businesses with multiple office locations. Disadvantages: None really. Depending on your needs, a free CrashPlan version is available, a $60 pro version (home/small business) or $65 (business) includes versioning and real-time backups. If you wish to use CrashPlan's servers to host your backups, add another $10/100 GB per month.

VERIFICATION

Once you have your backup strategy in place, the next important step is to verify it works. Not only upon initial installation, but as an ongoing process. Backups will stop working for no apparent reason at all, or they continue to work, but they are creating corrupted documents. It is vital to continually test your backups to verify the clones are bootable, and that your files on all backups are readable. No, you don't need to open every one of your 1,537,384 files on the backup. But randomly check your files.


MY PREFERRED STRATEGY

Every environment is unique and deserves its own customized backup strategy. However, for most individuals and small businesses I have found the following strategy to be an optimal blend of efficiency, effectiveness, and low cost.

• Purchase an external hard drive that has at least four times the capacity of the data to be held on the host computer. This drive should have USB and FireWire connectivity. This will allow it to be connected to almost any computer for immediately data retrieval in the event the host is not available.
• Partition the drive into two volumes. One volume should be the size of the host drive, I'll call this drive "Clone Drive". The other volume will have the balance of the remaining disk space, I'll call this drive "Time Machine Drive".
• Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner. This free utility will be used to create an exact clone of your host drive.
• Configure Time Machine to use the Time Machine Drive as it's target for backup. Also configure Time Machine to not backup the Clone Drive or the boot system, selecting "Exclude All System Files" when prompted. Time Machine will now backup your host drive hourly.

• With Carbon Copy Cloner downloaded and installed, open the program to configure it.
• Configure CCC to back up the host drive to the Clone Drive, specifying to backup everything, and to delete items that don't exist on the source drive.

• Click the Save Task button so that you can schedule CCC to perform this action automatically. I typically set the schedule to backup for every six hours.

This completes your on-site backups, with both a Time Machine/Historical/Incremental backup and a bootable clone backup. The next step is to have an off-site backup. Off-site backup options are entirely dependent on your unique environment, and beyond the scope of this article. Please do feel free to call our office to discuss which off-site solution is best for your environment.


DO IT RIGHT THE FIRST TIME

If you don't configure your backup strategy right the first time, you may not get a second chance (sorry to harsh your mellow). Want to know it's done right? You know who to call!

Tags: backup, clone, archive, TimeMachine, synchronize! pro x, superduper, Carbon Copy Cloner, mozy, spideroak