Why You Shouldn’t Backup Data Anymore
October 11, 2016 by Lore Operation Team
Backup is dead. This is mostly because it’s ineffective. In a survey by Kroll Ontrack, 65% of people backed up their data, but still lost it. Why? It’s all due to the type of backup they were using.
Types of Backup Options
Backup options vary, and business owners often choose the one that falls in line with their data needs.
Full Backup: All files and folders are backed up every time the system is backed up. While this can be good in that it backs up every file to ensure it’s saved, it’s time consuming and expensive.
Incremental Backup – This backs up any changes that were made since the last backup. It’s faster, but as businesses backup, storage space can run out and more needs to be purchased.
Differential Backup – This backs up everything since the last full backup (not incremental one). It’s unclear how this differentiates from Incremental Backup
Mirror Backup – This type of backup is dangerous in that the data stored will be changed as it is on the computer. For instance, if someone deletes a file on the computer, it is deleted out of storage as well.
Cloud Backup – This form of backup handles instantaneously. All data is kept on the cloud, and changes made are synced with the cloud.
Full, incremental, and mirror backups are often done on servers, or more often, external hard drives. The problem is that external hard drives are unreliable.
The Problems with External Hard Drives
External hard drive is still the most popular type of backup with 59% of survey respondents choosing that as their primary means of backing up data. One of the biggest problems for businesses is that they don’t back up data regularly. With an external hard drive, someone has to sync it, and that doesn’t make the priority list for many businesses. Only 8% of people backup data daily, 9% do it weekly, and 19% do it monthly, according to Backblaze. Studies find that businesses that lose data for just 10 days never fully recover financially. A thriving business could quickly face bankruptcy just for failing to backup.
Even when data is backed up, data loss is still a threat. According to Backblaze, the failure rate for external hard drives in 2015 rose above the annual average. In 2016, Seagate faced a class action lawsuit over its 3TB consumer hard drives because of their unusually high failure rate. The complaint is that 32 percent of Seagate drives from 2012 failed by early 2015. This is an extremely poor rate of failure, as most drives should make it at least to their fourth anniversary.
It’s only after 6 years that half of external hard drives succumb to some sort of hardware failure.
Three-plus years is a long time, so many people calm their nerves by telling themselves they can just have the data extracted. The process of extracting data is not easy, and when something isn’t easy, it’s expensive. According to Rob Harrel, the data services manager at the data recovery and forensics firm Kroll Ontrack, “After the cleanroom engineer determines what failed, the engineer will essentially perform surgery on the drive. The end goal of those procedures is to be able to read the drive just one more time to extract the data. From there, lab engineers put the pieces of the drive back together, like a jigsaw puzzle, and then copy the recovered files to an external hard drive.” Not all data can be extracted, though. Seventeen percent of cases result in complete failure, with no data being retrieved. Even when data recovery is successful, the process could cost thousands of dollars – much more than investing money into a different means of backing up data.
Harrel recommends, “Back up your data to the cloud. It is safe, reliable, very cost-effective, and easy. Further, some options offer the ability to backup multiple devices, providing the user with a full backup of all their data and the ability to access that data from multiple devices.”
For most organizations, cloud computing eliminates the need to backup data. All data is stored on the cloud, which makes it easily accessed from anywhere there is a Wi-Fi connection. There is no need for backing up data anymore. The data lives on the cloud.
Cloud Storage vs. External Hard Drive Backup
Everyone wants to know the cost difference between cloud storage and external hard drive backup. Cloud storage wins every single time for being more cost effective. Even PC World magazine points out that the more storage you need with hard drive backup, the more money you will pay. Hard drives end up costing about 10 to 50 cents more per gigabyte. Online or cloud storage comes with lower pricing, better encryption, and multiple restore points. Cloud storage delivers more for less, so the choice is obvious.
For more information on cloud storage, contact Lore Systems. We can help backup your data once and for all, so you don’t run the risk of devastating data loss.
For more information on what to do about your data, contact us now.