For many small to medium sized businesses, data protection remains something they do not have a lot of confidence in. Prior to low cost disk solutions most companies would backup data to a tape drive, slip that piece of tape media in their briefcase and head for home. Which ironically was not too bad; the data was protected (assuming the backup worked) and it was off site, assuming the briefcase went home with them that night. Of course similar to other larger businesses, the SMB market struggled with getting reliable tape backups but unlike larger businesses, the adoption of disk as a backup device in the SMB market has been widespread if not total. 

External USB disks, Apple's Time Machine / Time Capsule combination and Network Attached Backup Disks have all been widely accepted as a way to make backup quicker and less painful. The challenge is taking the backup drive out of the building. Most of the time it is not done every night, if ever. In some cases, Apple's Time Capsule being an example, the unit serves other purposes like being a WiFi router, print server or being the company's fileserver, and so removal would have too much impact on the business operations. 

The challenge is that data is no longer leaving the building and as a result is at risk to fire or flood. While the amount of data that a small business retains is not typically as large as a big corporation, that data is at least as equally important to the small business as it is to the large. Like a large business they have seen the same changes in their business; more information in created, modified and stored electronically. Even hard copy documents that were printed for signature are likely to be scanned in for storage. 

To the rescue has been Online Backup Services such as EVault or Carbonite and now a newcomer, Disaster Proof Hard Drives (DRP) like those from ioSafe or SentrySafe. Both attempt to address the same problem; protecting data in case of a disaster, but do so from different angles. Essentially Online Backup gets the entire backup out of the building where Disaster Proof Hard Drives keep the data in the building but are immune to fire and water. 

When comparing the two techniques, assuming that disk to disk backups are currently being performed, Disaster Proof Hard Drives are the least disruptive to the business. The drive itself is virtually indestructible, and in the case of ioSafe they bundle it with a Data Recovery Service in the case of an actual disaster. The DRP drives act like any other drive and appears like a normal disk backup target to the software. It can be installed internal to a server or mounted into an external NAS. This means no change in backup software, no change in backup scheduling and no remembering to carry something home every night. 

This also means that you can use the right software for the task and that if you become unhappy with your current software solution you have the freedom to switch solutions. Almost every modern day software backup solution supports disk. You can also mix backup solutions. For example many small businesses run Microsoft Access or Filemaker, both of which have limited support from backup software applications. Both have a relatively simple backup routine built in to the programs themselves which backs up the database to a disk file. Simply direct this backup at the DRP drive and you have a fully hardened backup of your critical Access database. 

DRP Drives are a very protected and hardened disk drive at its core, which means you can also use the drive for more than just backup solutions. For example if you wanted to you could use a replication utility and have a real time replication of your most critical server being copied to a Disaster Proof Hard Disk. 

Typically Disaster Proof Hard Drives use industry standard interfaces like SATA or USB and can connect to virtually any operating system. Fire protection requires special air cooling techniques and endothermic insulation. Water protection can be provided by a water barrier around the hard drive while still allowing for heat dissipation during normal operation. 

While disaster proof hard drives to protect you from a localized disaster they don't facilitate the data leaving the building. In the event of a situation that causes you to not be able to get into your building, then you would be down until the quarantine of your building is released.

 
Online Backup typically involves subscribing to a service and then installing that service's software in your servers and workstations. This means completely replacing your current solution and learning a new software application. This backup software then transfers all this data at a block level across an internet connection. The initial backup of your environment can be very time consuming but subsequent incremental backups tend to take much less time. 

Online Backup solved the problem of getting data out of the building by getting all the data out of the building. There are two big challenges with online backup. First it can be expensive, especially over time. You generally pay by month and by storage capacity required. As is the case with all businesses, a small business' data is going to continue to grow. Also once you have the baseline complete, you don't typically want to do a data purge, so even though you are deleting data locally you are not deleting data on the backup side. It just continues to grow. 

While most Online Backup Services provide the software "free" (its not really free, it is factored into the monthly cost) there is also a cost in learning a new backup software application. The software itself may not cover all the operating systems you have, or may not have support for your database. Always confirm that you have 100% coverage of your data, including specialized databases like Access and Filemaker. 

The second and larger problem is if you need to do a full system recovery, all the data must be downloaded back through the internet onto your local servers. This will be at least as time consuming as the initial backup. Some services provide a local system to backup to first and then that system backs up to the Online Backup. While this solves the recovery problem it does add another cost to the solution. The services that offer these solutions are focused more on larger businesses and their pricing reflects it. 

An ideal scenario is to marry the two solutions. We recommend always starting with a Disaster Proof Hard Drive and then adding Online Backup as your needs require. If a server fails now you can recover from a local source, if your building fails and you can't get to your Disaster Proof Hard Drive, you can use Online Backup to just recover the data you need that day to get your operation back in business and recover the rest of the data from your DRP Hard Drive when building access allows it. You can also use this combination to keep online expenses down by only backing up the most mission critical files to the Online Backup, thereby minimizing the amount of Online Backup Storage you will need. 

The decision is not really Online or DRP Hard Drives, they are complimentary. Start with a DRP Drive and then add Online. If you are already using Online then consider back-filling your solution to improve your ability to recover locally.