Blogs and Posts

Why an Imaged Based Backup Can Help When the Worst Happens

• By: Garry Feldman
• Date: February 10, 2016

Business downtime is costly, so having the right backup in place is critical. The new currency of today’s business world is data, which is why you need to do everything you can to protect it.  Inevitably, something is going to happen to corrupt or destroy critical data. Having a backup is necessary to recover it.  What happens when you lose more than just one file or a database? In those cases, an incremental or partial backup might not help. That is why it is critical that you have a full image backup.

Imaged Based Backups Are Faster

When you need to restore your critical data, you often don’t have time to wait. Restoring incremental backups can often take a long time, precious time that you might not have that requires you to access an archive, download the backup files and then work through the restore process.

Restoring from a full image backup is a quick process. Many times you can restore an entire server in less than an hour because the image is restoring the machine to a good working snapshot. Imaged based backups also give you the granularity to restore anything from an individual corrupt file to an entire workstation or server.

Easier Remote Recovery

Traditional backup methods often rely on having some form of media on the site and a copy of the media offsite. This means in order to restore a computer or even a file, IT staff must travel to a remote site and collect the physical media located there to get the job done. The other option is to have untrained staff attempt the recovery with the assistance of phone support. This can lead to disastrous results.

Cloud based remote recovery options that are available with imaged based backups address this problem by letting your IT staff perform full or partial restores regardless of where they are located geographically. Your restores can be done anywhere at any time, simply with the push of a button.

No Longer Restricted by Hardware

Was there a critical motherboard or processor failure that is causing the need for your backup recovery? With other backup methods, you may not be able to retrieve your data quickly or easily. An image backup is not tied to hardware, and you can restore to any blank hard drive or even a completely new system that has similar hardware.

This means that instead of waiting for an exact replica of a server to be ordered, ship and then arrive, you can get a backup restored to another machine and get back up and running as quickly as possible. It also offers budget savvy IT departments the option to repurpose older hardware to tasks that are better suited to their lower processing capacity and memory without having to order brand new hardware.

U.S. Computer Connection Can Help with Your IT Implementation

Are you looking for more information about image backups or disaster recovery in general? Come to our event on network security and meet your local DATTO representatives!