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The options, as you can imagine, are almost endless.
This first thing I normally do on any development system is to partition the hard drive into at least 2 segments giving me a C: and D: drive. All the data is stored on the D: drive and only programs are loaded onto the C: drive. This means that, in the unlikely event of having to reload Windows, the data is still there (99% of the time) so I only have to reload the software. It also means that if the C: drive is corrupted and can't be reloaded then there is a fair chance of being able to install the drive in another system and recover the data if necessary.
That's not a backup but it is a bit of insurance.
Well Now - Backups.
Firstly lets start with NOF data. (This could also apply to any type of development)
When you start a project NOF creates a .NOD file where it stores all the project information and references to images and external script/HTML files. NOF knows where all this data is on the local machine and references it absolutely. This means that if your images are stored in a specific folder on your machine NOF remembers the exact path to those images. If you try and copy the entire contents to another machine but, for example, decide to keep your images someplace else, then NOF can’t find them itself and you would need to manually tell NOF where the new location is. This is very tedious.
By far the better option is to save the entire site as a template. NOF will then keep all images and other external bits and bobs in the one zip file it creates and you can move it to any machine you want to, open the site from the template on the new machine (or your backup media) and it should all be there just as if it was on the original machine. There is an obvious advantage to doing this when you want to backup your site because you know that, if the system crashes, you have a backup that will run immediately on the new system.
The second thing to consider is making incremental backups of your project as you develop it. So you start a new project called “Fred-Site” and do some work on it and it starts to look good. When you get to a point where you don’t want to lose what you’ve done :-
- Save the site as a template and keep it in a separate folder on your D: drive.
- Do a save as with NOF but call the site “Fred-Site-01”
Now you have achieved two things Firstly you have got a backup copy of the work you have done so far and can archive that to your backup device (see a bit lower down) and even take it off site. That way, if all else fails you have at least still got something from the fruits of your labours. Secondly, if you totally mess up with “Fred-Site-01” you can always go back to the last good copy and start again. Thirdly, you may find that, at some point, you may need to create a similar site for another project and that one of your backups could give you a good starting point for the new project. (as a point of interest for people who have spotted it - it is also said that there are three types of accountants. Those who can count and those who can’t.)
You should repeat this process periodically (the choice is yours when it come to the frequency - only you know how much you are prepared to take the risk of losing) and this way you will always have a recent good copy of your site. So you end up with templates for “Fred-Site” “Fred-Site-01” “Fred-Site-02” etc. These you can back up to an external device and I would personally backup all copies. It is always possible that you may get some corruption in one of the files and it may be unreadable.
Now we move on to Physically backing up the data and keeping it safe.
You could go for a tape backup system They can be expensive but are generally considered to be the industry norm for large installations. There are a variety of systems out there with varying capacities. Caveat Emptor!
Network storage is another option (if you have a network) where an independent drive sits on the network and you copy all your critical data to it, giving you a second copy which is almost instantly accessible from another system should the first one fail. It would not help a lot if you had a fire or flood as both devices would be in the same premises. There are many such drives out there - Freecom do a 160 Gb drive for around £115.00 inc VAT.
There are a number of external USB hard drives available that simply plug into the system and, again, you would copy your mission critical data to it giving you a second copy. These, like tape and optical media (see later) are "transportable". Freecom have these and they range from 80 Gb - 250 Gb and price around £70.00 - £115.00 inc VAT.
If you have a second system then you could network the two together and copy between each of them.
Do you have a DVD Burner? If so you could backup to DVDR or DVDRW media. Single layer disks will hold around 4.5 Gb and dual layer around 9 Gb. Which type you would use would depend on your burner.
If you don't have a DVD Burner then you may have a CD burner so backup to either CDR or CDRW may be an option. These will hold around 650 Mb - 700 Mb of data. This may be enough for your needs.
The benefit of external hard drives, tape or optical media is that you can remove the backup from the building easily and store it off site. Quite useful if your office burns down or gets flooded.
With Tape or Optical media it is always a good idea to run a Grandfather - Father - Son style of backup where you have a pool of media and only overwrite the oldest copy when you make a new backup. You may decide to have media labeled Monday through Friday (5 sets) for example and obviously you would use the Monday set to backup on a Monday and the Tuesday set for Tuesday etc. That way, should you need to use the backup, if the most recent copy is unreadable then you still have a slightly older copy to go back to. It would be most unlikely for all copies to be unreadable.
If your just talking of a small amount of data (such as a NOF template) then you could create a folder on your Hosting account within one of your domains and upload to that. Transmission speed is one consideration here and another would be the amount of bandwidth it might take from any total allocation you have for that domain. It is not an option I would recommend for anything other than relatively small files.
Another form of on-line backup would be to have 2 broadband connections at different locations with two systems, one at either end, and copy critical files, say overnight, between the two premises. Software such as Laplink or PCAnywhere would manage such a system. The long term benefit of this is that once you have got an identical copy of your data at either end the software can be set-up to synchronise the files and only copy files which have changed thus cutting down the amount of time it takes to perform the transfer.
If I can think of anything else I'll let you know.
14 September 2005
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