The Benefits of Disaster Recovery Backup for Small Businesses
Business Startup Secrets > Business Startup Tips - Technology
Another kind of backup that can save a lot of time in the event of a computer crash is a "disaster recovery backup". A disaster recovery backup
lets you restore your complete machine to exactly the state it was in when the backup was made. This includes automatically reinstalling your operating
system, all software, all settings, etc. According to Garnet Chaney, a computer technician and programmer with over 20
years experience, "Tape backups and CDROM backups are best to use for
retrieving individual work files. They are not so useful when trying to restore a crashed hard drive on a computer because they often require you
to manually reinstall the operating system, tape drivers, and backup software, and then you can get to restoring from the tape. This extra work can
add several hours to a restoration."
Better is a disaster recovery backup that allows for "bare metal recovery". Bare metal recovery means that the backup
software can be the first thing you boot up after installing a replacement hardrive, and it re-installs everything. Typically, disaster recovery
software includes a bootable CDROM that contains the complete backup software. If you previously used the disaster recovery software to make a
complete backup to an external hard drive (like a Western Digital Passport USB Drive, or one of the Maxtor One Touch drives), the restore process
is really simple:
- Fix the hardware problem, for example, by replacing the boot drive
- Boot the disaster recovery cdrom
- Plug in the external drive
- Select the "Restore" function of the software
- Select the external drive
- Start the restore process
Then go away and do something else! In an hour or so, depending on the size of the backup, and speed of the machine, your machine will be restored,
and ready for you to reboot, and continue using it.
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