Backup, backup and backup again . . .
Today I discovered the importance of having an up to date backup. I actually managed to delete a mySQL database which held all of the content of this website.
Rather that than delete a mySQL database that held all the content of a customers website, but I was very upset for a few seconds – until I realised that sitting on my desktop was a full backup of the database taken that very morning. Within a minute it was all restored back to how it was. If I didn’t have the backup I would probably still be trying to remember what all the pages consisted of and entering all the information back in manually.
So, that’s what this post is all about. Backing up! It’s said that there are two types of computer user – those who backup regularly and those who haven’t lost anything yet. The day that hard drive fails and you lose those irreplaceable baby photographs is the day that backups all of a sudden become important.
Apple’s OSX operating system has an amazing backup system built in called Time Machine. You simply buy a big external hard disk, tell Time Machine that you want to use it for backup and that’s it! OSX then takes an hourly backup until the disk is full. It then overwrites the oldest backup so you always have a good number of recent backups to choose from. You can go back and find versions of a file anywhere from how it was an hour ago to how it was last month. And it works – it really is amazing!
Working on the web makes things a little easier as the files are then on the Mac, on the external hard disk via the Time Machine backup, and also on the web server down on Canary Wharf. This is another rapidy growing service – that of ‘cloud computing’. Backups are all carried out online, your files are all synced with a server so all your precious files are held safely off your own premises. This is perfect for home users, but at Elmnet we have huge high resolution files that would take ages to upload – even on the fastest of broadband connections.
Whichever way you decide to do it, if you’re not backing up now then you really should think seriously about starting to do so very soon. The way to look at it is to consider what you would do if your computer was destroyed right now. Where would that leave you?
At Elmnet, we will shortly be introducing the facility for customers to login to their account via the web and take a full backup of their entire site and any associated databases. It’s such an important thing we think that customers data should be safe – and they should have the facility to look after it themselves.
