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Small and medium-sized businesses should pay more attention to data backup.

Why do I raise this topic here? Well, as we know, server computer is wildly-used among enterprises to store the most important data, regardless of its high cost. However, more and more enterprises encounter with data loss and ask for help from computer technicians to get their data back which takes up lots of budget. This is especially a tragedy to enterprises that don’t have abundant budgets. And that’s not their purpose to buy sever computers. Allowing for this, data backup should be put into the routine work list for small and medium-sized businesses.

The reasons why small and medium-sized business back up their data.

For a start, here's a question. In this information age, what is the most precious treasure for you? Not the computer software, nor the computer hardware. The answer is the data in your computer.

While more and more data are added to your computer, preserving these data is also an increasingly significant task for you. In some cases, such as the loss of a document, it is merely an inconvenience and results in lost productivity when the document must be re-created. In other cases, such as the loss of a customer database, it could make you out of business.

Yes, you can retrieve your data via some technological ways. However, as I’ve said, most small and medium-sized businesses cannot afford so much extra cost. So, you’re supposed to back up your data regularly.

Do not regard the possibility of data lose as remote.

Failure can come from many sources, including hardware failure (e.g., hard drive failure or a desktop PC or server machine failing to boot), file corruption, Operating System failure, accidental deletion, or loss due to theft or destruction of equipment. Additionally, a rash of new viruses spread by email attachments (such as the Melissa virus) threatens to corrupt their victims' files or reformat their hard drives.

Thus, data lose might happen to everyone. Instead of thinking yourself as always the fortune, take preventive measures now. To conclude, it’s of vital importance for small and medium-sized businesses to back up their data. Or, more exactly, all enterprises should protect their company’s information asset by backing up data.

When was the last time you backed up the important files on your computer? Last year when your best friend called in tears after the Blue Screen of Death ate her thesis?

Yeah, I thought so.

Hard drives fail. It's a fact of computing life. It's not a matter of whether or not your computer's disk will fry, it's a matter of when. The question is how much it will disrupt your life.

Don't expect yourself to remember to back up your data, or stack your closet full of burned CD's or DVD's. Today we're going to set up automated nightly, weekly, monthly local and off-site backups for your PC using free software. Once you get this up and running, you'll never have to worry about losing data again.

What you'll need:

1. A Windows PC. (Sorry Mac folks, you're another article.)

2. An external hard drive.

I've had great luck with a LaCie FireWire drive, which of course, requires your computer has a FireWire port. When choosing size, go for 4-5 times the amount of data you want to back up (i.e., 4 times the size of your My Documents folder.)

3. An FTP server.

This is optional, but if you want off-site backup, it's a must. See previous post, Ask Lifehacker Readers: Web hosting provider?, for recommendations on companies that provide not only web hosting, but FTP-able disk space.

Here's how to get your backups up and running.

1. Set up your hardware and software. Download and install the most excellent free software, SyncBack Freeware v3.2.9. SyncBackSE version 4.0 is also available to buy at $25. This tutorial will use v.3 for the cheapies and those of you giving SyncBack a try for the first time. Once your external drive is connected to your computer and turned on, name it "Backup" and browse to it in Explorer. (On my computer, it's the F:/ drive.) Create 3 folders named "Nightly," "Weekly" and "Monthly" We're going to store our backups into these folders.

2. Create the backup profile. Fire up SyncBack. Create a new profile called "Nightly Local Backup." Set the source folder to your documents folder, and the destination to your backup drive's "Nightly" folder.

3. Select the directories to backup. You can backup the entire "My Documents" folder, but I didn't want to do that, because I've got about 75 gigabytes of music, photos and video that don't change too much and aren't world-ending in subdirectories of "My Documents." I don't have the space on my drive to keep copies of multi-gigabyte media in triplicate. So I chose the backup "selected subdirectories" option, which lets me tell SyncBack to ignore "My Music," "My Pictures," and "My Video" each night when it runs. To do so, click on the "Subdirectories" tab. If you've got tons of subdirectories, it'll take SyncBack sometime to traverse the tree and show 'em to you. Go grab a drink of water and come back to check off the directories you want backed up each night.

4. Set up e-mail notification of backup failure. Since we're a bunch of smart cookies, enable the advanced options in SyncBack by hitting the "Expert" button at the bottom. To keep tabs on whether or not your nightly backup is completing successfully, in the E-mail tab, check off "E-mail the log file when the profile is done." I don't want an e-mail every day; I just want one if things go awry. So also check off "Only e-mail the log if an error occurs." Set your SMTP server options as well and hit the "Test E-mail Settings" button to make sure you can receive messages. Click to enlarge image.

5. Schedule the job. Now hit up the "Misc" tab, and hit the Schedule button. Here you'll tell Windows to run this Nightly backup profile, well, nightly. I set mine to run at 2:00AM every night. Be sure to set your Windows password for this scheduled task by hitting the "Set Password" button.

Wash, rinse and repeat twice for Weekly Local Backup and Monthly Local Backup profiles, but point them at the appropriate directories and also set the schedule to, um, weekly and monthly, respectively. Once you're all set up, you can run each job as a test (it'll take a long time, depending on how much data you've got), or just leave things to run on their own. Once all 3 profiles have run, you'll have 3 copies of your most important data on your external drive getting updated every night, week and month. If something goes wrong and the backups fail, you get an email notification letting you know.

This means if your hard drive fries? The most data you'll lose is a day's worth. If you overwrote an important file? Recover last week's or last month's copy.

Now, our backup plan doesn't stop there. If your computer's hard drive buys the farm, you're covered, but what if your house burns down or gets burglarized? You want your most important data somewhere OFF site as well. This is where your FTP server comes in. Create a last SyncBack profile called "Nightly Remote Backup" that sends all your important data over the wire from, say, your hard drive in New York to your FTP server in Atlanta. If you don't like the idea of your data on someone else's server, check out the compression tab: you can have your files zipped up and passworded before they get FTP'ed for a little extra security.

Update: An astute reader points out that compression is not enabled for FTP backup. So, create a profile that compresses and passwords your files and set it to run BEFORE your FTP profile which transfers the zips. Thanks, Ralph!
backup02.jpg

That's it! Once your automated backup system is up and running you can rest easy knowing that if Something Bad happens, chances are your data will be safe.

Backup geeks and the curious should be sure to paw through all of SyncBack's tabs and options, there's tons of them. For example, in the "Autoclose" tab, set SyncBack to shut down any programs with a word you specify in the title bar before it runs a backup job. The "Programs" tab lets you set commands to run before and after backup happens - handy for database or source repository dumps, exporting your Instiki wiki to HTML and anything else you want to move or mash before you back up.

Many different operations would be taken during the backup procedure. These include optimizations for dealing with open files and live data sources as well as compression, encryption, and de-duplication, among others. Some software try to have confidence that the process is working as expected and work to define measurements and validation techniques. However, it’s also important to recognize the limitations and human factors involved in any backup scheme.

Here are some advices for backup:

The more important the data that is stored on the computer the greater the need is for backing up this data.

Backup is only as useful as its associated restore strategy.

Storing the copy near the original is unwise, since many disasters such as fire, flood and electrical surges are likely to cause damage to the backup at the same time.

Automated backup and scheduling should be considered, as manual backups can be affected by human error.

Backup will fail for a wide variety of reasons. Verification or monitoring strategy is an important part of a successful backup plan.

It is good to store backed up archives in open/standard formats. This helps with recovery in the future when the software used to make the backup is obsolete. It also allows different software to be used.

Purpose: This tutorial is designed to provide a quick and easy way to back up your Microsoft® Outlook® or Outlook Express® e-mail. For many of us, our e-mail is our lifeline to our business. It is important to make regular backups in case of a hardware or software failure. You never know how important your e-mail is until you lose it.
This tutorial will also provide a means to easily restore you e-mail and contacts. For example, you may need to restore your e-mail and contacts following a system rebuild or you may simply want to move your information to a different computer.

Cost: Free, nothing to purchase.

Time: 10 Minute

Requirements: Ability to navigate Windows and copy folders and files.

MICROSOFT OUTLOOK 2007
BACKUP
The following procedure is valid only for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. You can determine which version you are using by opening Outlook and clicking on Help > About Microsoft Outlook.

The Personal Folder file (.pst / PST) is the place where Outlook stores its data (when you're using Outlook without Microsoft® Exchange Server). Each Personal Folder file contains all of your Outlook folders, including the Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts. You may have a single .pst file (usually called "Internet Folders" or "Personal Folders" in your Folder List), and you may also have an additional .pst file that you use to archive messages (named "Archive Folders"). By backing up these PST files you will be backing up all your Outlook information.

In previous versions of Outlook, it was difficult to locate the folder containing the personal folder files. Developers have made this task much easier in Outlook 2007.

There are two ways to access the location of your data files. In the main menu, you can either click File > Data File Management... or Tools > Account Settings...

If not already selected, click on the "Data Files" tab. You may have a single data file or multiple data files. These "Data Files" are where you store your email messages, calendar, tasks and other items.

Highlight the data file that you are interested in backing up and click on the "Open Folder..." icon. Clicking on this icon will automatically launch Windows Explorer and take you to the location where this data file is stored.

Within the folder you should find an outlook.pst file . Burn this file to a CDROM disk or other backup source. If you archive your email, be sure to backup the archive.pst file as well. Prior to backing up these files, Outlook will need to be closed.
The table below lists key Outlook files that you may want to back up in addition to your Personal Folder(s). You will need to completely exit Outlook prior to copying these files. Depending upon your configuration some or all of these files may be present in your Outlook directory.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Type of File Name or Extension
Personal Folders .pst files
Outlook Bar shortcuts .fav files
Rules Wizard rules .rwz files
RSS subscription names .sharing.xml.obi files
Known feed list for RSS .xml.kfl files
Nicknames .nick files
Customized toolbar settings outcmd.dat
Customized system folder views Views.dat
Macros and VBA programs VbaProject.otm
Signatures .rtf, .htm, and .txt files
Stationary .htm files
Templates .oft files
Dictionary .dic files
Stores a reference to which extensions (addins) you have loaded.
extend.dat files

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Compatibility Note
Microsoft introduced a new .pst format with the release of Office 2003 which has a greater storage capacity and supports multilingual Unicode (Unicode: A character encoding standard that enables multiple languages to be represented by using a single character set.). Personal folder files (.pst) created using Office 2003 or 2007 will not be able to be opened by earlier versions of Office. To create a data file that is compatible with Outlook 2002 and earlier, you must first create a new data file in the Outlook 97-2002 format using the "Add" icon in the Data Files dialog box. Then you must select File > Import and Export from the main menu and import your email from the 2003/2007 .pst data file to the new 97-2002 data file that you just created. Visit this link for more information.

RESTORE
If you have followed the steps above to backup your Outlook data, restoring is simple. All you do is copy the backup PST file(s) into the folder that you located when you initially backed up your work.

MICROSOFT OUTLOOK 2003
BACKUP
The following procedures are valid only for Outlook with Internet Mail Only option. You can determine this by opening Outlook and clicking on Help > About Microsoft Outlook.

The Personal Folder file (.pst / PST) is the place where Outlook stores its data (when you're using Outlook without Microsoft® Exchange Server). Each Personal Folder file contains all of your Outlook folders, including the Inbox, Calendar, and Contacts. You may have a single .pst file (usually called "Internet Folders" or "Personal Folders" in your Folder List), and you may also have an additional .pst file that you use to archive messages (named "Archive Folders"). By backing up these PST files you will be backing up all your Outlook information . The hard part is locating the files...
You can find the location of this file by:
Right-clicking on the Outlook Today icon found in your Outlook shortcuts, or the Outlook Today icon found in your folder list and then left-click "Properties".
Once the Properties dialog box is displayed, click the "Advanced" button.

The "Path...", shown below by the red arrow, indicates where your Personal Folder file can be found.

Write this path down and navigate to the designated folder (Outlook in this example)
OR
use your mouse cursor to copy (CTRL + C) and paste (CTRL + V) the path into Windows Explorer. Then, delete the "outlook.pst" at the end of the path and press the "Enter" key on your keyboard. Explorer will automatically open the folder containing your Personal Folder.

Within the folder you should find an outlook.pst file . Copy and paste this file to a Zip disk or other backup source. It will probably be too large to copy to a floppy disk. If you archive your email, be sure to backup the archive.pst file as well.
The table below lists key Outlook files that you may want to back up in addition to your Personal Folder(s). You will need to completely exit Outlook prior to copying these files. Depending upon your configuration some or all of these files may be present in your Outlook directory.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Type of File Name or Extension
Personal Folders .pst files
Outlook Bar shortcuts .fav files
Rules Wizard rules .rwz files
Nicknames .nick files
Customized toolbar settings outcmd.dat
Customized system folder views Views.dat
Macros and VBA programs VbaProject.otm
Signatures .rtf, .htm, and .txt files
Stationary .htm files
Templates .oft files
Dictionary .dic files
Stores a reference to which extensions (addins) you have loaded.
extend.dat files

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RESTORE
If you have followed the steps above to backup your Outlook data, restoring is simple. All you do is copy the backup PST file(s) into the folder that you located when you initially backed up your work.
Keep in mind that if you overwrite your existing PST file with your backup PST file, any new data since the time of the backup will be deleted. If you have recent data that is not on the backup copy of your PST file and you don't want to loose the recent data, then you can use the "Import" command to add data instead of overwriting data.
Click on File > Import and Export...
Highlight "Import from another program or file" and click "Next>".

Highlight "Personal Folder File (.pst)" and click "Next>".

Browse to the PST file that you desire to import, and click "Next>".

If needed, repeat the process for other PST files such as your archive.pst.

AUTOMATED
BACKUP
Microsoft has provided an automated backup application for Outlook 2000/2002 users. Simply download and install the program and you will be able to perform routine backups of all your Personal Folders.

MICROSOFT OUTLOOK 2000
BACKUP
The following proceedures are valid only for Outlook with Internet Mail Only option. You can determine this by opening Outlook and clicking on Help > About Microsoft Outlook.