You think you have a backup. Do you really?

An external drive, a cloud folder or an office NAS can make you feel protected. But we’ve seen businesses in Granada try to restore their data only to find the backup was incomplete, corrupted or months out of date.
We see this regularly at in4byte.

The 3-2-1 backup rule

The basis for any reliable backup

The rule is simple. Keep:

3 copies of your data
in two different types of storage,
and one copy off-site.

This reduces the risk of data loss from hardware failure, mistakes, theft or fire. A single disk or local server leaves you dependent on one device or location.

Clients on our Tranquilidad Digital plan can store an off-site backup on our NAS in Granada. Having a copy away from the office gives you a way to recover if the office or its equipment is affected.

Why it is imperative to check your backups

Imagine your laptop is stolen. You expect to recover everything, then discover the backup stopped running three months ago or the file you need is corrupt.

🚨

It happens.

Backups need regular checks, verification and alerts . With Tranquilidad Digital Pro , we monitor clients’ backups, verify they run and investigate failures. A restore is the practical check that you can get your data back when you need it.

Common backup arrangements and their risks

Here are three setups we often see:

“I use an external hard drive”

Ransomware can encrypt a drive that stays connected. A drive can also fail if it is dropped or go months without a new copy if nobody checks it.

“I have it all on Dropbox/OneDrive/Google Drive”

These services sync your files. Deletions can sync as well, and access can be lost if the account is closed, compromised or locked. Check what recovery and retention options your plan actually offers.

“I have a NAS in the office”

An office NAS is useful. It shares the same risk of fire, flood or theft as the rest of the office. Check the disks, configure alerts, review backup jobs and keep the software up to date.

We’ve seen businesses rely on cloud sync, offices miss failing NAS drives for months and users lose their only copy when an external drive stopped working.

What a managed backup system costs

A professional NAS involves more than the price of the hardware.
For example, the article’s Synology DS925+ setup with 36 TB in RAID 5 cost around €2,000. You also need to account for the drives, redundancy, monitoring, alerts and ongoing maintenance.

Running the device is the easy part. Keeping the data recoverable takes ongoing work.
We offer storage on our NAS to clients on maintenance plans that let us monitor the backups.

Putting it into practice

Follow the 3-2-1 rule and test restores so you know which data you can recover and how to retrieve it.

We can help you set up a backup system or review and test the NAS or backup arrangement you already use.

Get in touch if you’d like us to check your backups.