Backup Recommendations for Small Businesses
Inadequate or no backup is the number one reason Small Businesses take a major hit due to IT. Here are some easy solutions for you to avoid these mistakes.
Automated online backup service
This is a great backup solution for many small businesses because it is automated, secure, easy and offsite. Basically you set it up and forget about it. It automatically backs up your files to an off-site location. You need an internet (preferably fast) connection. However if you need to backup a lot of data (say over 200 gigs), it may become more cost effective to choose a different backup solution.
Backup to external hard drives
This is a good solution for the small business who has a lot to backup and a person that will take the backup offsite every day. Yes mostly automated, secure and easy, but you need someone to change out hard drives and take the backups off site. This has a higher up front cost as you will want to rotate between multiple hard drives.
New computers are coming with an eSata port, which is faster than usb 2 and regular firewire. eSata will allow you to do backups quicker.
Other Solutions
Tape is another way to go, however people are moving away from tape due to cost and failure rate. Backup to CD/DVD is not recommended for backing due to their small size (a cd holds little more than half a gig, a dvd holds 4.7gigs). However, if you have less than 4.7 gigs of data to backup, a DVD backup may be a great solution for you. Remember a backup is better than no backup.
What bigger, small businesses use
Your computer systems getting too big and you need a more robust software or you are moving from small to a mid-sized business. Symantec's (Veritas) Backup Exec is arguably one the best out there. You can use it with both hard drives and tape backup.