The subset of my blog says, “Data loss and corruption are unfortunate realities that you need to guard against proactively” and it is one of the famous laws of “Murphy”.

The question arises, How to guard against data loss and corruption?

The answer is quite simple “Devotedly take backups and follow a strict backup plan”.

Backup techniques are different with respect to the user and computing environment, a SOHO user data primarily consists of emails, personal documents, photos, video, and audio, which is generally a collection for a long time and is a treasured piece of data.

They may also have specialized data generation which may include data generated from financial backup application such as “Quick books”, CAD, CAM packages like AutoCAD and many others.

The SOHO user with such type of data would use DVD, CD or external fire wire or USB hard drives to backup his data. To manage backup they can take help of applications such as Handy Backup, which can manage such data backup, the software is extremely easy to use and offers much easier restoration of backed up data.

Whereas, data backup requirements with large enterprises is complex and requires specialized hardware and software techniques, generally the data generated with enterprises is mainly large SQL or Oracle databases, also many type of financial, invoicing or ERP package generated data.

This huge volume of data requires special software, which can work in heterogeneous environments, for e.g. a company, might be hosting oracle databases on a Solaris server and SQL database on Windows 2003 server. Special backup agent applications can travel through all these different flavors of operating systems and can take backups or snapshots of data on periodical basis over network in SAN or NAS devices connected over fast Fibre or iSCSI network. There is lot of development in new data migration and backup techniques by companies like Symantec, CA (Computer Associates) when it comes to backup software and companies like EMC, Hitachi, and NetApp for backup hardware, which includes NAS and SAN devices.

Nevertheless, for users who are new to backups, I have come across this website, which has highlighted very good details on the history of backup’s i.e. History of Backup the website describes the evolution of backups with punch cards and the current backup market which includes SAN, NAS or online backup strategies. The website has valuable information presented on backups.