Removable USB Drives are no longer a recommended solution.

For a considerable period, small external USB hard drives were a favoured means of backing up a company’s valuable data. This backup method ticked the boxes by ensuring the storage device was backed up to another destination and secondly that backup was taken offsite. It was a satisfactory solution provided there was at least 3 drives, they were rotated out daily and one of the set was always offsite in a secure location.

Unfortunately, over time the short comings of this type of backup have become painfully apparent.

The list of problems include:
• USB Drives failing due to constant handling and transporting
• Drive not changed due to designated person being on leave or off sick
• Staff become forgetful or complacent and drive changes do not occur daily
• Error reports generated by the backup software being ignored

One of the inherent problems with this backup system is that if the current backup and the source are at the same location and a disaster occurred later in the day the amount of work lost can be up to 2 days. In this scenario, the last backup is going to be at least 24 hours old and still onsite with the person who was responsible for taking it home that evening.

We know of a company where one of the backup drives had failed and they were down to only two in rotation. On the day of the February earthquake, the server was in the office, the first backup drive was plugged into the server ready for the end of day back up, and the second drive was in the manager’s briefcase ready to be taken off site that evening. When the quake struck everyone quickly evacuated the building leaving the server and all the backups in the building. Fortunately, the company was able to get back into the building and rescue the backup. In doing so they avoided a disastrous data loss and learnt a very powerful lesson.

It is for all of the above reasons that Computer Culture no longer recommends this type of backup. With the value of company data and rapid growth of cybercrime, a robust backup system is now an essential part of an organisations IT.

An offsite backup solution which is proactively managed and monitored has become the favoured solution of many of our customers. Please call us If you wish to make the move away from the rotated drive backup system.