I recently started a new job with a group of dental clinics. The backup policy might as well not exist at the moment.
I need to come up with a new backup solution but I’m not sure which medium to use. All of my searches on media comparrisons yeild results from at least six years ago.
Let me explain my setup. Each clinic has a server and 3-4 workstations. There is only one folder, containing clinical software data, that must be backed up nightly. The clinical software has a backup function built in but we need to decide what medium to use for off-site storage. The folder sizes, at this point, range from 300MB to 750MB with expected growth over time. If we were to take all of the folders from all of the clinics and put them in one place today, the folder would be about 4 gigabytes (Remember, this is only the data that we MUST backup. I anticipate that workstation data may be added later.). With that in mind, I obviously don’t need a ginormous capacity system.
I have been looking at tape systems but I’m not very familiar with the different formats and the (dis)advantages of each.
What is going to be the most economical, fastest, and most end-user friendly (i.e. idiot-proof) solution? Should I consider a backup service provider? What should I look for in a backup service provider if I go that way?
