One of the most common backup solutions that I see when I visit new prospects are external drives connected up to their server. Most companies only have one external drive. Some will have two that someone is responsible for switching out once a week.
External hard drives are just one step up from using the old backup tapes of the 80’s & 90’s. Here are just a few reasons why you should not rely upon external hard drives to back-up your companies data:
- If your office (and everything in it) gets destroyed by a fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, or other natural disaster, your external backup devices that are stored onsite will be destroyed as well.
- Backing up to external drives may not be secure. If any data is leaving your office, it needs to be secure and encrypted. This is especially true if you have client information on your backups.
- Your backups are only as good as your restores. Backing up to external hard drives does not give you the ability to ensure that what you are backing can be retrieved later.
- Your backups should be continuous. Another feature to look for is ongoing or “continuous” backup versus a nightly backup. This allows you to restore a file that you worked all morning on and saved right before the server crashed in the late afternoon.
If you are currently using external drives to back-up your critical data, give me a call at 317-372-7625 and develop a solution that fits your company.