At the moment, our accounts office use Zip disks for backing up and either keeping information locked up, or taking a copy off site.

The disks seem to be getting harder and harder to find, so I presume they have pretty much been phased out now.

Has anyone any bright ideas for an alternative? It needs to be something idiot proof (accounts seem to be able to make a mess of just switching a PC on about once each week ).

I'm thinking about getting a load of pendrives for them (though I have a feeling there are potential problems with them getting unplugged before the data has finished writing), but just thought I'd see if anyone had any other ideas?

 

A central server they work off which you backup?

 

USB pendrives are a good option to replace zip disks. You can go for a tape drive, but that means lots of expense.

You will just have to train them how to use the drives. Make sure you get ones with activity lights. Just let them know the drives you have are fully tested, so if there are any problems its cos they did it wrong

But as above, if they are networked use a program to backup their data to the server for you to backup reliably.

 

We don't have a server at the moment... it's something I'm looking into. We only have a handful of PC's, and one (mine) is used to store files and share them on the network so I can be sure they get backed up a couple of times a week. We don't have a massive amount of data, and there's not much of it that is critical, so as a smallish company, our IT systems aren't extensive.

I think Sage will back up to any path (at one point they were backing up to c:\ and wondering why the zip disk activity light wasn't flashing... for about a month ).

I like the idea of a network backup, but it's handy having accounts take the backup off site, so it doesn't matter if I'm not in the office to take care of the backup.

More thought required on this one I think.

 

You could use something like Mozy: Mozy Online Backup: Simple, Automatic, Secure

I use it to back up my data and it does it in the background once a day.

(I work for their parent just so you know my bias)

Steve