Design-Design - Design and Designing For The Client

We have all made the mistake of not creating backup files and then at some point deleting the only copy of some important document. There are a few handy hints and tips that can really help in making sure this unfortunate event does not occur or, as it most probably has at some point, how the potential for this to occur again can be reduced!

Policy

Have a company policy, even as a sole trader, in the way that files are stored, backed up and deleted. Deleting your files can be a way of keeping your system healthy and running at optimum speed. There are many ways to reduce efficiency on your hard drive including letting temporary files build up, setting restore points too often, installing programs you will never use or simply clogging up the desktop with documents, shortcuts and other assorted items!

My own company policy is to install software onto my PC only and to use an external 320Gb Hard Disk Drive [HDD] for data and a copy of this drive on a portable HDD for working on the move as you never know when project information will be needed on the road. Every 6 months I backup the previous 6 months of data to DVD+R discs. This is one example of the frequency of backup to optical media and you may wish to backup sooner – it depends on your attitude to risk and your own hardware.

Is Deleting Permanent?

Deleting your files with no backup can be remedied if the problem is identified relatively quickly and by relatively quickly we are talking about a couple of hours. Essentially there are a variety of programs that will allow the user to undelete or restore deleted files. I recently evaluated Piriform’s Recuva – a free download designed to perform the task of recovering ‘lost data’ and the results were that the program delivers a no-frills solution to recovering your data. It is worth considering some of the paid solutions to this problem for those people who need more guidance and assistance with separating their files into original folders as this is a function that Recuva will not perform. Other examples of data recovery files I have found from searching the net [and have not tested!] are:

• RecoverMyFiles
• PCTools
  

Storage Methods Overview

It is important to be aware that heat, dust, electromagnetic fields and other physical elements are out to ruin your data so be aware of the pro’s and con’s of storing your information on:

• Tape Drive where data is reasonably stable, stored in mass but can be damaged by magnetic fields and is very slow to retrieve. Many companies use this as a once-a-day process to backup the days work from all users in the office as it is a way to comprehensively collect massive amounts of data, usually in an automated process, for retrieval should any data from individual users be lost. Cost per Megabyte: low.
• Cloud Storage is becoming more popular. This is where your information is stored on the internet and can be retrieved by logging in to your server via a web browser. Typical examples would be www.acrobat.com from Adobe, Skydrive from MSN or Dropbox – all of whom offer free [or at least low cost], worldwide access to your data. Bandwidth speeds and hacking issues are the biggest concerns here and its not really an ideal way to store secret or confidential information – however, this is a useful tool for non-essential, low security class information when on the move.
• Internal Hard Disk Drive where data can be quickly retrieved and written to but can also be easily damaged by the HDD reader head crashing onto the disk if suddenly impacted eg in a laptop. Cost per Megabyte: medium. Most users use a HDD for local single user purposes only before backing up onto tape or other secure media. Hard Disk Drives now run into Terabytes of storage.
• External Hard Disk Drive has many of the features and problems of normal HDD’s but they need to be slightly more resilient to knocks, drops and loading. They are of course, still very fragile but provide users with a massive amount of storage in what is now a pocket sized item. Great for taking large video, audio or other media files on the road.
• Blu Ray and standard DVD+R or -R are very useful for creating additional backups of work on individual projects so that should tape or HDD fail, there is always another type of media that may have survived. I tend to find that I break down my file system to web, print and other document discs – I then refer to the recording date of the disc and find any information that relates to files created after that point.
• Pen Drive is a convenient way to transfer your files for projects or demonstrations with these small chip based devices providing on average around 16 or 32Gb of data storage in a keyring sized item
• Paper is the least favoured in the modern office. It would be great if we could truely generate the paperless office but we still need proofs, backups of accounts and other important document on yet another medium that will withstand different pressure from the elements.