Backing Up Data

• Data can be used for a variety of purposes.
• It takes time to compile, a long time! It takes time to input the data into the computer. To recompile data or re-enter it into a computer is expensive because you have to pay someone to do it, when they could be doing something far more productive for your company.
• You need information about an order placed with your company so that you can process the order and then be paid for it - that's how your company makes a profit!
• You need to know when to pay your bills and taxes so that you don't get taken to court. You need to be able to chase up people who haven't paid you so that you can pay your bills and keep trading.

• Commercial data can be used to see the historical sales of products and give you advice as to what you should order lots of.
• If you were in the business of offering loans to people, you would want to be able to check their financial background before you handed over any money to them, in case they had a criminal record for fraud, for example!
• If credit agencies suddenly lost all of their data, then loan companies wouldn’t be able to ask them about individuals who have applied for loans.
• If you were in the business of data warehousing or data mining then losing your data would be catastrophic due to the whole business being based on having historical data to work with.

An organisation needs to implement a backup strategy so that if data is lost, the activities of the organisation aren't compromised. A sensible organisation will have a backup policy written down so that if a serious problem happens, everyone will know exactly what to do. There will be less panic and fewer hasty decisions made if the company thinks through what might happen and what should be done if a problem actually occurs well in advance of a problem actually happening. The policy should deal with the following things:
- The hardware/software that will be used to backup a system.
- The person responsible for backups.
- The frequency that backups will be done.
- When they will be done.
- Where backup copies will be kept.
- How backup copies will be labelled.
- How the company will know the backup system is working as it should, how it will be tested and how often.

• It is not common for data to be stored on site, because if there was a fire, then the backups would be destroyed. If they have to be kept on site, there is usually a fireproof safe that the backups would be deposited in
• It is more common for backups to be stored off site, for example on a cloud server or data centre. Companies such as Microsoft offer S3 services (Azure), for companies to back up their data.

• Operating systems usually come with utility programs to allow you to take back-ups.
• Typical options include the ability to take an entire 'snapshot' of your hard drive (called a 'system image') so that if your hard drive fails, you simply replace it, and then run a recovery program on a pen drive or CD that loads the system image onto your new hard drive.
• Another option is to schedule back-ups so that back-ups happen automatically at a particular time of day.
• You can also tell your computer to do a full back-up (all of your data files), only back-up files that have been added or altered since the last time you did a back-up (called an 'incremental back-up') or only back-up files from certain folders.
• Most people used to back-up to an external hard drive but it is becoming more common to back-up to cloud storage now. (as mentioned previously)