The Need for Regular System Backups

Time is a scarce resource for web site developers and web hosting owners. They spend their time focusing on web content for their clients. Because time is limited, website owners forget about the basic day-to-day operations of their web hosting business.

Regularly perform system and file backups. By doing this, you are ensuring the safety of your data.  You may never need it, but if you do, you will be glad that you performed regular backups.

Performing regular backups is not a complex task.  After you have automated your backups, you will only need to test them a few times every year. Testing your backups is very important, because backup files that do not work are a waste your time and effort.

You can choose to perform a full backup, or you can choose to do an incremental backup. You can also perform a combination of both the full and incremental backups, depending on how often you make changes to your site content. A full backup saves the entire set of data and files on your system every time the backup program runs. The incremental backup saves the changes to data and files on your server that you made since the previous full backup.

Pay special attention to any changes you have made to configuration files. Say you have modified the installation instructions for a specific software program.  If you have automated your backup protocol to save detailed instructions for software programs, you will not have to change them again after restoring your data from a backup. Examples of these specific types of configuration files you will want to include in your regular backups are changes to HTML and CSS style sheet files, and other types of network configuration files.

Remember to include files in your regular backups that contain XML files and databases, and any spreadsheets that contain customer or subscriber information. If you experience a system crash, the loss of this information could compromise the future of your business. It is very important that you save these files on a regular basis.

It is also important to include routine changes you made to HTML files, and any other type of file that supports a customer’s visible web presence. Small changes that you routinely make can add up to thousands of changes during the year. With regular backups, you can restore them without a problem.

Having a collection of backups that you cannot use when you need them is a waste of time and effort. To avoid storing useless backup files, routinely test your backup files at least two times every year. Pay special attention to the specialized structures found in database files.

Take a few minutes to create a regular schedule for your system backups, which you can change at any time. When the day comes that an attacking virus or malware compromises your hard drive, or crashes your system, you will have backups to restore what you lost.