As it is New Year I felt like I needed to make a dramatic statement.

So what did I do?

Well, I purchased half a dozen 2.5” 120Gb Portable USB drives. Wow.

We have around 60GB of essential data that I would like to get my hands on quickly if need be. So, the idea behind these devices is that they will contain weekly backups of this essential business data, then they will be rotated offsite at our secure storage facility. We already do tape backups onto 8mm and DLT so you may wonder why I feel the need to back it up again onto disk? Ask anyone in IT who has ever tried restoring data from tapes and they may well tell you that as a format it is great but it takes a long time to restore data and sometimes the tapes just don’t work - even though they have been post verified. The added benefit of course is speed.

When a system is being recovered - being able to get data back quickly is a great bonus. It also comes in handy when users have deleted files from a few weeks ago and need to recover them quickly - this happened to a user yesterday!

Now these things are very low in price they are perfect for storing data for quick retrieval - obviously I will always have master backups which will be checked rigorously but at least I can now sleep a little easier at night. The disks also have plenty of room for future growth so I am now on the look out for other data I may back up to these devices.

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