swazi

Can't make head or tail of the variety of backup types offered by different hosts: instant, nightly, daily, hourly, incremental... What should I choose to guarantee maximum stability of the site?

midlandi

Whatever they offer always make your own back ups. Depending on the amount of content change will depend how often you need to back up.

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~ServerPoint~

I think that all depend on the content being hosted and on the importance of that content.

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ServerPoint.com - a true hosting company offering online presence solutions since 1998
Web Hosting, colocation, dedicated servers, virtual private/dedicated servers
Wholly owned multi homed network, servers and facilities

Alan

Midlandi, your right again. When looking after your data trust nobody else.

Consider parts to backup frequency, and type.

Frequency, how often should I back up. That depends on key factors, the first is how often your data changes, and maybe how much changes. How much can you afford to lose? This will help determins how often, the most common are daily (once every 24 hours usually done at night after the working dasys changes have been done), or weekly.

Type of backups, the choice of backup will depend on the backup strstegy you use, there are 3 basic types;
Full backup (Normal backup) - backs up all (selected) files.
Incremental backup - Backs up all files changes since last full or incremental backup.
Differential backup - As incremental backup, but does not mark the files as having been backed up.
Some vendors have other backup types such as copy backup (back up all seleced files but do not mark as backed up)

You need to analyse your requirements and determine a strategy, which medium you need to back up onto, where the backups will be stored.

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ahb Solutions Consultancy and Web Development

Seen a good post - Give some reputation click on the

olkin

Thanks Alan, this is a very comprehensive answer.
I just want to add about the frequency of backup, I'm on a shared plan from Serverpoint.com and have hourly backups as a feature of my plan, while those using VPS packages from the same host have their backup made every two hours.

I see in Hostgator's plans instant backup, what might it be?

amigo77

GlobalTap.com offers disk-to-disk backup service. They have built a state-of-the-art data storage system for their clients. Their RAID storage devices have multiple hot-spares, and are constantly monitored for any signs of impending problems.