Data Backup and Recovery

Data backup and recovery planning involves implementating ways to mitigate potential disasters and making preparations to enable quick restoration of key services. It also identifies what those key services are and how quickly they need to be restored.

Data backup refers to the copying of data for the purpose of having an additional copy of an original source. If the original data is damaged or lost, the data may be copied back from that source, a process which is known as Data recovery or Restore. The "data" in question may be either data as such, or stored program code, both of which are treated the same by the backup software. Backups differ from an archive in that the data is necessarily duplicated, instead of simply moved.

state of the art data backup and recovery plan considers:

• A backup should be easy to do.
• A backup should be automated and rely on as little human interaction as possible.
• Backups should be made regularly.
• A backup should rely on standard, well-established formats.
• A backup should be able to run without interrupting normal work.