Blog
Why Versioned Backup Files Are Important
While full-scale data disasters are rare, many businesses experience significant data loss and business interruption from common incidents. In fact, for most computer users, it’s almost inevitable that you will eventually experience some form of data loss incident that results in lost or corrupted computer files.
The most frequent incidents that result in data destruction are:
- Corrupted Files — A corrupted file is essentially a file that has become damaged and refuses to open properly. Your files can become corrupted by logical errors, which might be caused by software problems or invalid entries in files. Hardware issues are also a major contributor to file corruption.
- Accidental Deletion — Accidents happen. Everyone will accidentally delete a message, contact, email, calendar item, task, or an entire file at one time or another.
- Saving Undesired Changes — Saving undesired changes can overwrite or unintentionally delete files you need. Now that collaboration and syncing are more popular, This problem is even more important since many users can make conflicting changes to files without notifying anyone else.
What is the best way to prevent the common incidents of data loss?
It is as simple as setting up an automatic backup process that saves versioned copies of your files and changes to an external hard drive… preferably at an off-site location. This will create multiple versions of your file and allow you to go back in time and fully recover the correct versioned backup edition.
It’s also important to note that replication is not backup. If you’re just copying your data to an external drive periodically, any errors in your files will also overwrite the data on your other storage device. When you need to recover, your mirrored copy will also contain corrupted files. (That’s not good)
That’s why synchronization and mirroring are no substitute for proper versioned backup.