Backup or not?

[Eric]

In office, when I request my boss to purchase backup device for file storage,
I suggest Storage Server or Server 2003, but they turn me down because of
budget, then I suggestion portable HDD device for each dept head and they
perform backup by themselves, then my boss suggests to use their desktop HDD
/ DVD for backup instead, but each PC only has one HDD, if this HDD fails,
there is no backup. On the other hands, each dept head can burn all data
files into DVD periodically, but the size for backup is 100 GB. Can they
backup using DVD? Yes, but will they do it? No.
My boss said why?
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to respond this question?
All they need is education!
Thanks in advance for any suggestion
Eric

 

[HeyBub]

In office, when I request my boss to purchase backup device for file
storage, I suggest Storage Server or Server 2003, but they turn me
down because of budget, then I suggestion portable HDD device for
each dept head and they perform backup by themselves, then my boss
suggests to use their desktop HDD / DVD for backup instead, but each
PC only has one HDD, if this HDD fails, there is no backup. On the
other hands, each dept head can burn all data files into DVD
periodically, but the size for backup is 100 GB. Can they backup
using DVD? Yes, but will they do it? No.
My boss said why?
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to respond this question?
All they need is education!
Thanks in advance for any suggestion
Eric

Backup each department's essential data, over the network, to another
department's machine. You'll be protected against catastrophic hardware
failure, but not against fire, malice, theft, or Flouridation.

 

[Big Al]

In office, when I request my boss to purchase backup device for file storage,
I suggest Storage Server or Server 2003, but they turn me down because of
budget, then I suggestion portable HDD device for each dept head and they
perform backup by themselves, then my boss suggests to use their desktop HDD
/ DVD for backup instead, but each PC only has one HDD, if this HDD fails,
there is no backup. On the other hands, each dept head can burn all data
files into DVD periodically, but the size for backup is 100 GB. Can they
backup using DVD? Yes, but will they do it? No.
My boss said why?
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to respond this question?
All they need is education!
Thanks in advance for any suggestion
Eric

Put it into terms of money! Management understands money.
"How much money will it cost in man hours/temp employees etc to put the
lost data back into the PC's?" Compare that to a few backup drives.

Now adays you can buy very simple $100 or less 2.5 inch USB drives and
use a simple scheduled backup program. Haven't finished looking at
CDBackupXP but it looks pretty good. Not sure about the schedule thing.

That way nobody would have to do anything but the data would be backed up.

You might also buy a 500gig external and put it on the server and let
everyone map to it and backup to that. Not sure if this will work in
every environment. These things are well in the 100-199$ range now adays.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

In office, when I request my boss to purchase backup device for
file storage, I suggest Storage Server or Server 2003, but they
turn me down because of budget, then I suggestion portable HDD
device for each dept head and they perform backup by themselves,
then my boss suggests to use their desktop HDD / DVD for backup
instead, but each PC only has one HDD, if this HDD fails, there is
no backup. On the other hands, each dept head can burn all data
files into DVD periodically, but the size for backup is 100 GB. Can
they backup using DVD? Yes, but will they do it? No.
My boss said why?
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to respond this question?
All they need is education!

There's really no winning with some people.

All you can do is present - in writing - your logical and well research
reasons. When they get turned down - you have proof of what you suggested.
Now - go find a job elsewhere - things will go bad where you are now.

As for your direct question of how to respond to your bosses "why" question
about whether or not an end user will burn 100+GB of data to DVD
periodically. Ask your boss when the last time they burned 25 DVDs of
non-repetative material to DVD that was all their files... and then when
they finished thought to themselves, "I can do that again next week, no
problem."

Of course - what your boss it really saying is, "We have no critical data.
If they lose it - it's their problem. We didn't need their data anyway."

Suggestion still the same - find work elsewhere.

 

[Andrew E.]

A microsoft tech has said "A great back-up is the File-Transfer-Wizard" run
from xp or xp cd.With this one can select files/data/settings,etc to back
up,&
if xp crashes,or hd gets toasted,all youre data is saved.Save data to new
folder,
once thru,move to cd or dvd.Plus,you can use this on any OS running xp...

 

[Nonny]

Backup each department's essential data, over the network, to another
department's machine. You'll be protected against catastrophic hardware
failure, but not against fire, malice, theft, or Flouridation.

That last one is the killer! ;->

 

[JS]

Department heads have little spare time to perform regular scheduled data
backups,
they will put it off till they find the time, return from a series of
meetings
(which means they didn't have the time that day) or get back from a business
trip.

Employees will invariably find one excuse or another as to why they should
not, will not or I forgot to.

If management believes the data they want to backup is valuable, have them
put a dollar value as the
worth of this data.

Then they will find that the cost of a server and raid drives and a method
for off site
(that meets security requirements) storage is not all that costly.

JS

 

[Lil' Dave]

In office, when I request my boss to purchase backup device for file
storage,
I suggest Storage Server or Server 2003, but they turn me down because of
budget, then I suggestion portable HDD device for each dept head and they
perform backup by themselves, then my boss suggests to use their desktop
HDD
/ DVD for backup instead, but each PC only has one HDD, if this HDD fails,
there is no backup. On the other hands, each dept head can burn all data
files into DVD periodically, but the size for backup is 100 GB. Can they
backup using DVD? Yes, but will they do it? No.
My boss said why?
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to respond this question?
All they need is education!
Thanks in advance for any suggestion
Eric

Simple. Is it worth the cost for each employee to rebuild their data vs. a
real backup scheme in the event of catastrophic failure of any origin? If
your boss can keep his conclusion in mind for any length of time, you should
be hiring some ITs real quick and equipment to support it.

 

[HeyBub]

That last one is the killer! ;->

No backup scheme covers ALL contingencies.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In office, when I request my boss to purchase backup device for file storage,
I suggest Storage Server or Server 2003, but they turn me down because of
budget, then I suggestion portable HDD device for each dept head and they
perform backup by themselves, then my boss suggests to use their desktop HDD
/ DVD for backup instead, but each PC only has one HDD, if this HDD fails,
there is no backup. On the other hands, each dept head can burn all data
files into DVD periodically, but the size for backup is 100 GB. Can they
backup using DVD? Yes, but will they do it? No.
My boss said why?
Does anyone have any suggestions on how to respond this question?
All they need is education!
Thanks in advance for any suggestion

It's not a specific answer to your question, but you might find
something useful to you in this article on backup I recently wrote:

http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=314