Which backup service is the best for you?

Backup can be a matter of life and death for your personal data. There are files and documents that require daily control. Inventory, client databases, accounting, etc. Losing this information would mean a significant stoppage in the company’s activity that we cannot afford. Hence the importance of knowing and choosing well between the best types of backups.

In a previous post we already told you about the differences between the. incremental and differential backups as well as the “full copy” method. If you need to review what these types of backups consist of, we recommend that you read that article before continuing.

Today we would like to talk to you about what are the best backup solutions for your company depending on its size and characteristics.

What types of backups can you choose?

Let’s be clear; not every business can afford the option of making a full backup of all data generated during one day, 365 days a year.

There are many aspects to consider:

• The storage costs of such backups. That may not be stored on the computers that generate such information, but on separate servers.
• The speed of the backup process; the more backups we make (files), the longer and more laborious the data recovery process will be.

However, we can combine different types of backups to have greater recovery and restoration options. For example:

• Make one full backup per week and daily incremental backups.
• Create one full backup per week and daily differential copies.
• It is also possible to combine incremental backup with a differential copy.

What is the best backup option for an SMB?

It is recommended that small and medium-sized businesses that do not generate too much data per day can go for full backup.

Cloud storage is the one that offers the most guarantees of data recovery. But it is only advisable to use it in case your data size is not enormous.

If you look at backup offers for companies the cheapest one offers you 50 GB of storage space for as little as $30 per month. Depending on the size of the files you are going to store, this space can be used to a great extent for the fundamental data. But let’s just say that it offers you enough storage scalability to keep growing, even if you exceed that storage capacity.

For every additional gigabyte you want to add, increases the price by $0.6 This way you have the advantage that your backups will never stop at any time. In addition, you will be able to know when you have exceeded the limit to see if it is in your financial interest to switch to a new storage plan.

And here comes the important point: full backups are generally much heavier than incremental and differential backups.

For what data should you make backup?

There are individuals and companies that backup absolutely all of their data. However, there are ways to prevent this habit from increasing costs too much.

For example, by determining which essential files require daily or weekly backup. Having a storage plan in place to deal with a possible loss or computer attack that results in the deletion of such data.

When faced with anything we want to back up, the question is: can I afford to go a week without backing up that document? There will be files with which you can and files with which you cannot.

You don’t want to backup, for example, accounting files that you are updating daily. But you may find it more convenient with documents that are updated every few months. Actually, you don’t need to schedule a daily backup for them, since the previous copies would also allow you to recover the document in the period that suits you.

Backups for big size files

The larger your company is, generally the greater volume of data is going to produce per day. It is therefore in your interest to have more frequent backups. But it is also in your best interest to select, for cost reasons, which items to backup.

In this sense, incremental backup can be much more convenient if you do not need access to outdated data. For example, if a backup copy was created on March 1, and on March 3 you edited the document, you would not need to keep two backup copies, one from March 1 and one from March 3. On the other hand, if you made differential copies, the old versions of these documents would also be kept.

Did you know about the types of backups as well as the available online backup services? Are you making backups in your company? We invite you to learn more about online backup solutions. If you have any questions or doubts, please contact us.