Where to store backups

Choosing the storage place for your backups is the next step.

The main criteria are:

• How far will be backups from the original files? The farther the backups are the better your files are protected.
• Is the storage media reliable? The more reliable the media is the less nightmares you have.
• Is your storage device fast enough? Knowing that your backup storage device is too slow and the backup creation takes too much time, you might leave your important files protected poorly.

The ABE offers you the following options:

• Local hard drives (HD). The most fast device with large capacity. However, HDs may fail due to large number of reasons: program and OS bugs, virus attacks etc. Other negative thing is that original files are on the same media as backups. In other words, when backing up to the same HD, you keep all your eggs in one basket. Having two HDs allows you to back up to the second HD.
• CD, DVD and other removable devices. The ABE supports any removable device that appears in the system as a drive (has the assigned drive letter) with the permission for writing. Shared LAN removable devices are supported also. When writing to a removable device, the ABE spans backups by filling all free space on the inserted media and continuing on the next media if needed. You can take such a backup wherever you go, post it anywhere, place it to your bank for storage. However, commonly removable disks are much less reliable as hard ones. Today's market is full of removable devices that differ by speed, capacity, reliability, price.
• Local Area Network (LAN). If you're a network admin (see corparate network backup for details), with the ABE you can either centralize the backing up of your LAN workstations and servers on a single backup server or choose more complicated scheme. If you're a home-user and your home network consists of two PCs only, store your backups on wife's computer and tell her to store her backups on yours (see home/small office network backup for details). The Professional ABE edition allows you to select any shared network resource with the write permission as a storage devise. With the Standard edition you have to map the shared resource at first. As a rule shared LAN resources are either HDs or removable devices (see the first two options above).
• Wide area network - intranets and Internet (WAN). The ABE allows you to have online backups on a remote FTP server as well as to send backups by e-mail. By storing your backups remotely, you place them to farthest location from the original files. It can protect your data even from an earthquake and a meteorite falling. However, as a rule it's the slowest of the possible locations. You should consider the security issue when placing your backup in the Internet.

With the ABE you don't have to make a once-and-forever decision what storage to choose for a project. You're free to change the storage every time you're about to create a backup. You also can keep several copies of the same backup by exporting it to a different folder of your HD as well as to any other location.

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