Backup vs Archive: Back To Basics Video

welcome to back to basics, today we'll be going over something that's vitally important to the security of your work and the continuation of your business backup and archive. So back up and archive terms will all be probably familiar with but in our experience they can get a little confused.

what's the difference between the two and are you actually doing either of them now? you might be rolling your eyes thinking yes i am in which case skip ahead but just in case you're not stick around. There are three main places you'll store files, your working system or primary storage, your backup system and your archive. You work from your primary storage that might be your computer a direct attached drive some shared storage or even the cloud. Your backup files or you create copies of them when you hit key milestones that might be at the end of the day when you're about to make some big changes or when you complete a particular phase in a project but you don't work from your backups, they live somewhere else in case your primary storage fails over and explodes metaphorically speaking of course. When you're done with your project completely you'll archive it and delete it from your primary storage and maybe also from your backups so backup and archive are completely different concepts.

Backups ensure continuity of data against all kinds of problems including against hardware failure, human error, disasters, ransomware or viruses. Backups are usually scheduled too which implies that you've got something to back up from your primary storage. Backup should live somewhere other than your primary storage if they don't they're just copies and not true backups because you need built-in security against hardware failure. Archive on the other hand is a long-term preservation of your data you'd normally archive content when you've finished it but you don't want to delete it completely just in case it's valuable in the future. Original source files may also be archived at the time of creation and businesses mainly archive content to preserve it long term and free up space on your primary storage. You'll probably refer to backups from time to time like if there's an error in your working file but with archives you'll only dig into them once in a while for that reason archive storage technology can be slower than backup or primary storage but usually is far more cost effective and offers much much higher capacities.

let's look at this in the context of a single project, say this video we're filming this on a nikon z6 with an atomos ninja 5 to record in 12-bit raw. When we're finished those files are copied to our primary storage and then we make a backup copy onto a second disk. We'll edit in premiere pro from our primary storage which in this case is a lacie one big dock ssd pro and then make regular backups to that second disk. Our process for that here is to make a version named copy of the premiere file just before we're about to make some more changes so there's always a fallback so we don't lose everything in the case of a problem. When we're done with the edit we'll make one last backup and then archive it onto LTO tape using a tape library to free up space on our primary storage. The different types of backup and archive media available now, when we talk about media we're referring to the physical device you keep your files on.

There are two generally speaking types of media tape and disk which includes hard disks and solid-state drives flash and optical disk technologies. For those of us of a certain age you'll immediately recognize the concept of tape from vhs home video or analog cassettes tape backup for long term storage is essentially just a modern digital data format rather than an old analog format and substantially more efficient with a hell of a lot more capacity too the tape cartridges you see in businesses around the world are mostly based on open standard called LTO. This is a kind of magnetic storage tape that's economical and fantastic at preserving huge amounts of data for long periods of time it's literally designed for highly reliable data storage and you'll need dedicated hardware and software tools to write data to or read data from those tapes.

Tape also provides an air gap to your important data something that things like ransomware can't get to and it's designed to have a 30 year shelf life which is good. So there you have it backup versus archive one is for continuous protection and the other for long-term preservation.

Contact your BackupWorks Account rep today at 866 801 2944 and ask about Tape Drives and Tape Libraries for your backup and archiving needs.