Backup Tips Developing your own backup policy.

     There are few important notes you have to think about to make your backup more robust:

1. Backup often because you can't restore what is not backed up. For example: if you hard disk crashed today and your last backup was a week ago, you have lost all data you have added or changed during the last week. EaseBackup is most effective if you backup everything and often.
   
   
2. Have multiply backups of your data on different backup media. There is a chance that backup media will be corrupted or lost too.
   
   
3. Always store at least one complete backup off-site to protect yourself against fire, theft or natural disaster.
   
   
4. Take care of your backup media, which can easily be damaged by the environment. Media can also wear out after as few as hundred uses. A fire-proof safe in a climate-controlled building is an ideal media storage location.
   
   
5. Periodically verify your backups are working properly.
   
   
6. Use Repair Wizard to create disks with repair information. REMEMBER: Without encryption keys, you will not be able to restore your files!
   
   
7. If you do not have large and quick storage devices, or you backup your files to FTP Server with access through slow communication lines, do not create extensive Backup Sets.  Try to divide your files, according on your work schedule. 
   
   
8. If you backup your files to FTP Server with access through slow communication lines and can physically access the server, you can use a special trick to avoid huge network transfers during full backups. more...
   
   
9. You may separate the most important and used files from the little used files. This allows to restore most important files with minimum time requirements and continue your work. You can restore all other files at a more convenient time (afternoon, ...).  Use a few Backup Sets to achieve this objective. 
   
   
10. Separate backup archives from source files.  Ideally you have to store your backup archives on another physical disk, CD-ROM, ZIP, remote FTP Server, or any other storage device, outside of your office or home.  In other words you have to save your backup archives for the potential situation when your computer may be DESTROYED or STOLEN. 
    
    
11. Be careful with patch technology. It has one big advantage and one negative one: incremental backup archives based on patch technology have a small size (reduces transfer time and necessity of large disk space), but you MUST have all incremental backup archives to restore! With standard incremental backup mode, if you lose any backup archives, you will be able to restore all files, except files from missing archives.  That's why you have to ask yourself Is it possible to lose any backup archives?.  The answer to the question will help make your decision about your preferred backup mode.
    
    
12. Put labels on disks - Don't trust your memory. An unlabeled disk might be taken for an empty or unimportant disk. No cryptic pencil-made scribbles on a piece of paper either. Use labels that clearly identify what they contain. If a BackUp Set need more than one disk, indicate on the label the disk's sequential number followed by the total number of disks. E.g., if your documents are all stored in 2 disks, label the first as "BackUp Documents 1/2", and the second as "BackUp Documents 2/2". And keep them in a safe place.

     Note these important points when you create your Backup Sets, and click here to go back into the Manual index, and read more about a Backup Set's properties.