Privacy, Security & Virus Information

SFG - The key to effectively backing up your data

Most computer users have lost count of the times important files are lost when a disk drive fails or back-up disk is mislaid.

Putting a back up strategy in to action is imperative for everyone who stores valuable business and personal data on a computer.

Firstly, any system based on keeping data in one physical place like your home or office will fail.

Data disasters do happen – and it’s not uncommon for two disks to fail simultaneously, like in a power cut, or for your backup system to be stolen or destroyed by flood or fire.

Forget tape back ups. Tapes stretch and distort over time and are not reliable in the long term.
You need to adopt a professional SFG system – SFG stands for son. father and grandfather.

• The son is the hard drive on your server. This is the data drive for your network and all users should only access this drive to create, edit or delete files.

• The father is another hard drive attached to your network that mirrors the data drive on your server. Backup software on your server is configured to instantly overwrite any changes to files held by the son.

• The grandfather is a remote online backup service that holds all your important data at a secure server. The father backs up to your grandfather.

With these fail safes in place, if the son and/or father hard drives are inaccessible for any reason, all you need is a computer connected to the internet to restore your network data.
Specialist back up software on your server and the remote server generally keep backups for 30 days, so if you have accidently edited or erased a vital file, you should be able to catch your error.

SFG backup systems are relatively inexpensive. You can buy a terrabyte hard drive (1000 gigabytes) for a few hundred pounds and the price is steadily reducing.

Hundreds of companies are offering online backup services. Some are free for low personal use but you receive better features and more storage space if you pay. Expect to fork out about £1-£2 per gigabyte of storage.

Home users can back up their entire computer, including operating system, and program files for a few pounds. If the computer is lost, just plug in the new one and download the missing computer’s entire disk drive and start working again exactly where you left off.


< Back