It may surprise you to find this is the subject of the first real chapter in the book. Most books either leave it out or put it towards the end. Take a moment to reflect: do you realize how much of your enterprise is now on those disks (or soon will be)? This is the most important topic in the entire book!

You might find out something interesting with the following exercise: Try to estimate how much the data on one machine is worth. If it is an Accounts Receivable system, how much money are you owed? If it is an order entry system, how much is in your backlog? If it is just all your word processing for the last year, how many person hours would it take to recreate it and what would that cost? This might give you a new appreciation for the problem, even without the worry of loosing your entire enterprise.

The first thing you should do is to have a formal published backup policy and enforce it. Strangely enough, the details of the policy are not too important. It does not matter so much whether you back up every day or every two days. The point of having a written policy is to put your staff on notice that backup is an important part of routine use and is to be taken seriously. It may be necessary to take disciplinary action to convince the users that you are serious about backups. Consider making this written policy a part of your Policies & Procedures so that you will have better legal standing if such action is necessary.

If you are using a centralized server, pay somebody to stay a little bit late or let them come in late & stay late to run these backups. Do not ask somebody to do it without compensation because then it looks like something unimportant. The compensation will stress the importance of the information.

Keep a log of the work. Make a log-book with several columns: date, time, operator initials, disk or tape number(s), media taken offsite/brought back, comments, etc. Again, this will bring focus on the importance of the process. It will also prove that you did the backups if legal questions ever occur. It may help you find missing files faster as well.

My suggestions are these. If a drive is in use:

I never take a full backup of my hard disk. Instead, every time I finish using the system I back up what I have just done. I keep separate diskettes for different projects and keep each file backed up continually. If you have a data base that several people will work with, this technique will not work. It also requires considerable diligence and is therefore is not for everyone. From time to time I forget something and get burned. Since most of what I do is not business-critical information, I just take the risk that I will forget to do something. I can normally recreate anything I have created once with much less effort than it took to create it in the first place.

Eventually you will have an operator who makes an error and deletes an essential file or you will have a hard disk crash and need to install a new one. Having a current backup close at hand will allow for quick restoration. That much is obvious.

If the building burns down, however, the backup stored in the box next to the computer probably goes with it. The same is often true of theft, tornadoes, or deliberate mischief such as unhappy ex-employees or jealous competitors. (The computer security people estimate that eighty percent of computer crimes of this type are committed by insiders!) Having the prior week's backup available off-site will limit the damage to a few day's work. This trauma is still better than loosing your whole enterprise.

Your backup should work in a rotation. You should have several (at least 3) sets of backup media. When you make a new full backup, put it in a safe place. Take the backup from the prior cycle and send it to an off-site location. Bring the previous backup back on-site and reuse the media for the next backup. If you have more than 3 sets of media then you can implement more complex rotations. For example, you might have sets for each weekday. You might run for a week, then take last weeks set to the offsite location and bring back the previous set.

Make the off-site storage place at least four miles away from the computer installation. This will limit possible damage from widespread natural calamities. Most insurance auditors accept this as a safe limit on the risk of loosing everything.

Storing these offsite backups under your bed at home is fine if you never take vacations. (This assumes that your home is not your office.) Having any other person take the backups home regularly is somewhat of a security risk and is prone to lapses during vacations or prolonged illness. You should consider finding a commercial storage facility and using it.

After your media has been through the loop of backup/storage/off-site/backup a few times, retire it. Keep it - you never know when something will turn up that someone now needs desperately that was deleted just one cycle ago. But don’t keep writing on it until it wears out. You won’t know that it wore out until you start to restore from it, and then it will be too late. Put it in dead storage if you have such a place. Media are cheap – lots cheaper than people time. Treat them as you would paper. Don't try to use them indefinitely. They do wear out.

From time to time have somebody besides the people responsible for the operations audit the log and the process. Verify that the logbook is being updated and that the information is correct. If the media have identifying numbers, make sure that the correct media are on hand and away at the archives. (O.K., make sure that the ones that are supposed to be in the archive are not on the premises.) If practical, have the auditor observe the entire process once in a while. Again, this will help focus on your seriousness about backups.

The first time you use a new diskette or tape you should select a full VERIFY operation with your software. This will make the package compare the hard disk with the backup after the write takes place. It will take longer but will insure that the media are good. Once a backup has been successful with a given floppy or tape you can probably safely turn off the verify so that it will run faster.

This is only applicable to older machines. These programs will do the job in a pinch. Unfortunately, they are so hard to use and so error prone that you will either get bad or incomplete backups or will take none at all. In addition to their many other problems, they are generally not compatible when going from one release of DOS to another. Do not use them if you have another choice.