Backup Vs Redundancy: What will you choose?

We’re sure everyone is familiar with the phrase “Better Be Safe Than Sorry”. This idiom best suits for organizations that entirely rely on data storage. Backup & Redundancy are basic essentials for any business today. Both the terms are similar, but they work on different grounds. Like for an example, if you accidentally delete a file – redundancy might not save you, since the redundant file might also get deleted from RAID system. Though a backup can still intact on a completely separate, independent storage medium, where you will have all your data safe & secure. But still everyone says “Organizations should have good backup in place, as well as redundant hard drives (in a RAID format) in their servers.

Read the blog & explore your queries about its need & importance in a business:

Why Redundancy?

Imagine a situation, wherein you spent an entire week to prepare a presentation. After giving it final touches and polishing you share folders on the network, so that your colleagues can also access it. But as they switch their computers on, it shows they are unable to access those files. Tensions are sure to fly through the roof, when you find that even you can’t open the presentation.

Since all important data of your company is stored on these folders on a central server. You just go to rectify the situation and check out in the server room, take a look on the screen and see NOTHING. Your server has crashed as it experienced disastrous power surge!

But there’s a way out –  Your IT team tells you that your server come with four hard drives in RAID Format, which helps in case any of the main drives break down. In case one fails, all your data would be saved on other hard drives.

This is where Redundancy shines, and save you from a huge problem. But what if the situation comes where you find that your main server is crashed, you don’t have access to any of the hard disks, though they are redundant & stored in RAID format, but ultimately will be of no use.

Why Backup?

In this kind of situation, Backup Service stands to save you from a big-time trouble. As one of the person from IT Team reminds you about the data service your organization have, which saves everyone’s data at the end of the day. Big thanks to your IT provider that make backup of all your data, and restores your presentation.

Through this instance we can understand how important it is for an organization to have redundant hard drives plus backup system, which can help to recover data and files even if the entire server goes down.

Backup Vs Redundancy

Backup are just a clone of original files & data, which are stored for the time if in case the original source is lost. It can be recovered anytime, in order to witness data continuity. Backup can protect you against failures like human errors, files being overwritten, catastrophic damage, malware etc. which is a pretty good challenge for redundancy.

Backup can be referred as a stronger form of redundancy as it doesn’t have a single geographical point of failure. Cloud backup services offer more protection, where data stores in more than one place.

The biggest virtue of redundancy is that it protects the data against the drive failure at times. It is an immediate fail-safe measure that enables a storage unit to work properly if in case one of the internal drive fails. The system will automatically switch to the redundant copy of internal drive and notify for the occurrence of drive crash and recommend that you back-up your important data. Redundancy is very much similar to carrying two plastic bags for carrying groceries and if in case one gets tatter you can always use another one.

Though, both helps in safeguarding data, we usually want to avoid redundancy of data as it’s like “same thing over and over”. It’s repetitive and alliterative. Often redundant data attributes the performance problems and led to slow down your device. As duplicate & unwanted files drag down the speed and operability of machine, because its working demands a considerable amount of added stress on systems, as it struggles to keep up. These files overload machine’s background and led to slow down the entire system.

To overcome the problem of redundancy- either you can manually delete the copies, but conclusively nobody has such time to sit and delete copies of files, photos, data etc. Other option we can suggest is doing it by an easy & friendly software Duplicate Files Fixer which helps in recurring this issue in no time.

It accurately identifies identical files and also offers you the option to back up your deleted files. So, all problems solved!

You can download Duplicate Files Fixer, from here:

Types of Backup which can help you to reduce Redundant Data?

As we have already told you the importance of redundancy in an organization, but there are some aspects where it lacks behind and lets Backup to move forward. There are several ways through which you can lose your data like software bugs, malware, accidental deletion, drive failure, theft, damage, file corruption and many more. While redundancy only protects you against drive failure, an accurately backed up data can protect against every aspect mentioned above. So, it’s very necessary how you back up and take care of your data. Various Backup apps offers several types of backup operations.

It’s your decision how you want to create backup, here’s pitching different types of backup:

• Full backup

It is the most basic of all types of backup. As the name implies, entire set of data will be copied to a chosen place. Though full backup makes use of resources such as disk space and time but it offers a great advantage when backing up process is much vital and that is the least RTO (Recovery Time Object). Data Centers that have lesser amount of data to deal with often undergo full backup frequently to ensure continuity of critical tasks. In most cases Full backup are performed with a combination of incremental and differential backup.

Advantage: Restoration to different versions are faster and easy to manage as the entire data is restored in single backup set.

Disadvantage: As entire files and folders are copied, this leads to copying of redundant data occupying unnecessary disk space.

• Incremental Backup

The solution to needless storage occupancy anomaly is the incremental backup. Incremental backup only backs up the data that has been changed since the last backup. Each time the file is backed up, a timestamp is associated with it which helps to track the changes that have been made since last timestamp.

Advantage: Since incremental backup restore the recent changes it requires a lesser amount of storage than a full backup.

Disadvantage: As it is a faster process it results in slower recovery process with maximum RTO. It still stores a lot of duplicate files.

• Differential Backup

A differential backup restores all the changes that have been made since the last full back up every time it’s run. Thus, it will occupy more storage than a incremental backup. Suppose on day 1, full back up is done, on day 2 differential copy will be made that have changed since Day 1’s backup. Next day the differential backup will again copy the files that have changed since Day 1’s full copy was made.
Advantage: Requires lesser amount of recovery time than incremental backup. Possible retention of different versions of same file.

Disadvantage: Still requires more time and space. Full back up is needed initially to perform a differential backup.

Above mentioned were some common types of backup, other than these there are Synthetic full backup, Mirroring, Reverse Incremental, Continuous data protection. Read about them in a jiffy.

Synthetic Full backup:

A synthetic full backup is very much similar to a full backup but it is created using the data from the previous full back up or subsequent incremental backup. It is created when the system requirements do not allow a full backup.

Mirroring:

Mirror Backup is a absolute mirror of the source being backed up. Whenever a file from the source storage is deleted it eventually gets deleted from the mirror backup also. The advantage of using a mirror backup is that it is fastest of all kinds of backup and it prevents needless growing of backup reducing the redundancy of old files and data.

Reverse Incremental:

A reverse incremental backup backs up the changes made between two instances of a mirror. If a reverse incremental is applied to a mirror, it will result into a previous version of that mirror. The keen advantage of using such a backup process is its recovery efficiency since it eliminates the need of incremental during its restoration.

Continuous Data Protection (CDP)

It is continuous or real-time backup that automatically saves a copy every change a user makes to a file. Its main advantage is that enables the user to restore data at any point of time. This kind of backup process does not require scheduling, it is an automated background process i.e. whenever a data is written onto a disk by the user it automatically is written onto a second location.

When deciding what type of backup is needed, the real question is when to use each & how combinations of these can benefit your organization in terms performance, cost, availability goals & security.

Best Solution for all Types of Backup?

From Full Backup to Incremental to Differential Backup – We have all in one solution for you, which makes your data backup hassle free. It’s name is EaseUS ToDo Backup which is available for both Mac and Windows.

EaseUS ToDo Backup offers you several benefits like:

• It offers two options: Easy Scheduling & Automatic Backup.
• With this, you can take backup of important folders like Photos, Videos, Files/Documents, Music etc. It basically takes backup of all default folders.
• EaseUS ToDo Backup helps you compress data to save storage space.
• Its Secure Storage feature makes it a trusted product by the users. Allowing users to securely store their data to ensure total safety of your data.
• It comes with a File Sync feature to help you synchronize files and folders on another computer or mounted disk.

If you ever lose your data accidently, don’t worry about it as EaseUS ToDo Backup will ensure you always have it stored in backup.

You can download the EaseUs ToDo Backup for Mac from here:

You can download the EaseUs ToDo Backup for Windows from here:

It’s crucial for businesses to have redundant hard drives in RAID format in their servers, as well as good backup in place to ensure they never face accidental data loss, especially due to human error.

Read Also: Different Types of Data Backups? Why Do You Need Each of Them