How Often Should I Backup?
A Backup Article Contributed by Ashley Lister
How Often Should I Backup?
It's not uncommon to hear people ask, "How often should I backup? " and the answer is painfully simple: you should backup as often as you need to.
When Creating Your Backup Regime the Most Important Question You Should Ask Yourself is: "How Much Work Do I Want to Duplicate? " Obviously None of Us Want to Duplicate Any of Our Work but, If the Need for a Restore Ever Occurs, It is Likely That Some Information or Updates Will Need to Be Input into Your Machine.
If you have a stand alone machine which you work on infrequently, a weekly or monthly backup could be sufficient for your needs. Depending on the amount of work you do each day, and the ease with which you could recreate the information you have put into the machine, such an occasional backup could be more than enough to meet your needs.
But, obviously, if you work on your machine more frequently or if you value your work with any degree of importance, you will want to run your backups more frequently.
For those who work on a small Local Area Network (LAN) with more than one operator, it would be wiser to perform a schedule of more frequent backups. A larger number of operators invariably means a larger amount of work. In turn, this will mean that, if a restore was needed from the backup, a greater amount of users would be required to reinstall lost information. The more recent the last backup, the less work that will need to be done to compensate for any loss.
Most People Opt for a Daily Backup of Altered Files (a Differential Backup or an Incremental Backup). This is Usually Complimented with a Full System Backup Performed at the End of Each Week or Each Month.
A system of this type needs a little bit of careful administration; reminders for all users to leave the system for the duration of these backups; and a competent administrator who can remember which backups are due to occur when. But, if the end result is to have an effective system of backup and restoration in place (should it ever be needed) it is a worthwhile investment.
For those with a demand for more frequent backups, there are some SQL systems that provide "hot" backups. These are systems where the logs from database information, usually from SQL databases, are captured and stored in a separate location. This means information can be backed up on an hourly basis or more frequently if necessary. However, these systems are usually only of interest or benefit to larger corporations with many operators inputting information into vast databases.
