How safe is your data storage

Very often, when we think about data security, we are referring to the inability of unauthorised persons to access it. We should also be thinking in terms of its overall stability. Is your data backed up? If your computer drive failed, could you access it from a different source? Do you have any backup solution at all for your personal or business data..

We will discuss some effective and secure methods of adding backup and redundancy to your data storage. This will ensure your data is backed up and safe from loss. It is important to note that there is no such thing as 100% data safety. What we can do, is try our hardest to ensure redundancy along the way.

How is your data stored

Most of us will be using standalone computers with their onboard storage. The storage may be a hard drive, although in this day and age it is more likely to be an SSD (solid state drive) or even better an NVME SSD (Non-Volatile Memory Express). Regardless of your storage media, the principles remain the same. You have one disk and one point of failure. If that drive fails, you will lose your operating system and your data.

If you do suffer a drive failure on your computer, it is possible in many cases to have the data professionally recovered. This can take time and can be fairly expensive. However, if your data is important, the cost may be favourable compared to losing the data.

Avoiding data loss

What you should try to do is have multiple copies of your vital data. There is a saying “unless you have three copies of your data on 3 different drives in at least 2 locations, you do not have a backup”

The three drives could be your computer's default drive, an external drive and a 2nd external drive in another office location. The types of storage you choose will depend a lot on the type and amount of data you store.

NAS Network Attatched Storage

When we refer to external drives, generally this means plug-in devices that allow you to copy files from your main drive to the external drive for backup purposes. You could also take this further and use a NAS or Network Attached Storage device. A NAS is a server that is located on your network. It allows devices to log in to access and store files. A NAS can be a simple, small device that’s designed with consumers in mind, through to a fully fledged server built for the enterprise.

Backup your data

No matter how good your backup hardware is, it is vital that you create up-to-date backups. There are solutions available to automate this, and many commercially available NAS systems will have this feature. At a very minimum, you should back up all your important files and folders onto an external drive or NAS regularly. Especially when you have made changes

The third drive

We mentioned before that your data should be on at least 3 drives, and one should be in a different location. This could be a 2nd external drive or even a cloud storage service.

Your NAS is not a full backup solution

Many NAS systems come with multiple physical drives and often offer some form of RAID. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. This gives some level of redundancy to the device, but it should always be considered a single copy. There are different types of RAID.

Raid 0: The data is spread across 2 or more drives and offers no redundancy. If one drive fails, all data is lost.
RAID 1: Generally requires 2 drives. Each drive will be a clone of the other, providing redundancy should one drive fail.
RAID 2: A very niche form of RAID that is not used for consumer products. It provides fast read and write functionality, but does not support multiple simultaneous requests.
RAID 3: Again, a niche form of RAID that is not common or suitable for consumer-level hardware.
RAID 4: Another uncommon form of RAID that is not generally used in consumer-level hardware
RAID 5: A very common form of RAID. RAID 5 uses a minimum of three drives and spreads the data across the drives. If one drive fails, the raid will stop being able to serve data, but once the drive is replaced, the raid array can be rebuilt, and the data will become accessible again. In theory there should be no data loss.

The most common type of raid used on a modern NAS is RAID 5. This means you can spread your data across all the installed drives and have some level of redundancy. Many people will see this as a backup solution, but this is false logic. Imagine if you lose more than one drive or if the NAS server itself fails. You are then left in a situation with potential data loss. With RAID 5, if you lose more than one drive, your data is gone.

RAID in simple terms

Let's imagine you have a NAS and it contains 5 SSD drives set up in RAID 5. Each drive is 1 TB so in total the disk space is 5 TB. You will lose the equivalent of 1 drive (1 TB) for redundancy. This is sometimes called parity. This is how the RAID array can be rebuilt in the event of a drive failure. Each drive gives up some storage to provide a recovery for any other drive. A good rule of thumb is that you will lose the equivalent of 1 drive of storage, regardless of the size of the drives you choose to install. It is important to note that each drive in an array should be the same size (ideally identical drives). Say, for example, you installed 4 x 1 TB drives and 1 x 500 GB drives. Each drive will be considered 500 GB, so this is a very inefficient use of drives.

Your safe data

So, we now have one copy of our data on our computer. One copy that we copy each day to an external drive and a cloud storage server that we sync with on a regular basis

For an office environment, using external drives for each system may not be practical, so a NAS would be a great solution. Each user can copy their files to the NAS and have access to them if and when needed. The NAS is then periodically backed up to a cloud service or perhaps a 2nd NAS in a different location.

Plan to recover

Now that you have a great backup solution in place, you need to understand how this will work in a data loss situation. If the drive that has failed is your computer's main drive, then this will need to be replaced. This should only be carried out by a computer technician or, at the very least, someone with experience and who knows what they are doing. Once you re-install the operating system you can then copy your files back to the system and you should be good to go.

You need to pay close attention to any part of the chain that breaks. If your external drive fails, you need to replace that as soon as possible. Even though you still have access to your files and data on the computer, you do not have an effective backup in place. You need to ensure you have all your backups working correctly

In summary

Every situation is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to backups. You need to consider how much data you want to back up and how important that data is. You can then work out the most effective way to safely and securely store your data.

Plan for failures. Work out your recovery process for each possible failure. If you use commercial products, ensure you know how they work and use them effectively to back up and recover data as and when needed.

Planning is vital. It may seem cumbersome and it may add a few steps into some of your processes but it is always better to have your date stored safely than turn on your computer one day to the horror of data loss.