Install and Configure Backup Software

If you are using your LAN for business purposes, you really should have a good backup system to protect your business data and your investment in setup and configuration. As my friend Richard Katz says, "If you don't back up, you may have to back up a long way."

If you don't already have one, install a tape backup unit and, preferably, a good commercial backup software package on at least one main computer on your network. Follow the instructions on the software to configure it to perform automatic backups. Or, use an external disk drive connected through a FireWire or USB-2 adapter; in this case the backup software can be told to save the backup set in a single file stored on the external drive.

The Windows backup utility is almost adequate for business use, but you really should have something that is convenient, that lets you save different backup configurations, and that lends itself to automatic scheduling.

Backups should ideally be made automatically every day. Typically, I suggest using a schedule that looks something like this:

• Friday: Full backupentire hard drive, reset "archive" flag. Use at least two different Friday tapes in rotation.

• Monday through Thursday: Differential backups, backing up every file that is new or changed since the last full backup. Use a different tape for each day of the week. A Saturday backup is optional.

Keep your full backup tapes offsite.

Configure the backup software to exclude certain files, if you can:

~*.*	Any file starting with a tilde
*.tmp	Any file with extension .tmp
*.bak	Any backup file
*.ff*	Fast-find index files
*.ci*	IIS Index Server index files

Be sure to test your backup system at least once a month by viewing a tape directory or by restoring a single file from the tape. This will not only ensure that your backup system is functioning properly, but will maintain your skill in operating the backup-and-restore software.

Windows Backup is discussed in more detail in Chapter 29, "Managing the Hard Disk."