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Choosing appropriate backup hardware is key to effectively implementing your backup strategy. As with any technology, there are probably several “right” solutions for your organization. Here are some guidelines for choosing backup hardware that will work for you:
- Determine how much data you need to back up.Take a look at the machines on your network — or at least a representative sample. How large is each user’s documents folder? How large is the email file? How much data is in your organization’s primary shared folder? Add up the totals for all your machines, or multiply the average by the number of machines in your organization. Be sure to leave room to add a few new staffers, and to plan for growth — it’s very possible to add 1 GB of data per person per year.
- Now double that number. Choose a backup solution that allows you to store double the amount you think you need to back up. This will give you room for growth, and will also allow you to store incremental backups on the same media as full backups.
- Consider your drive’s speed and how it interfaces with your computer.When you have a large amount of data to back up, a big storage device isn’t much good if you can’t write data to it quickly. Make sure your hardware can support reasonably fast data transfer rates.
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