Protecting your digital empire

After some of the conversations I’ve seen lately about backup strategies, I have been reminded that I’m not on my A-game when it comes to backing up my digital assets. It’s not just manuscripts; it’s the book covers, ad images, videos, podcasts and everything else related to the publishing empire. I’ve had bits and pieces backed up here and there, but not a comprehensive strategy.

So hubby and I have just splurged on a Synology (a raid array storage device with redundant drives to back up computers, so even if our computer dies and our backup fails, there’s another backup) and we’ll be syncing it with Backblaze for offsite storage.

Sound like overkill? Here’s the thing: hard drives die. It only takes your computer harddrive dying once to realize you need to back it up regularly. But what if your backup drive dies? Those don’t get the same attention as a computer drive, and you’d be surprised by how often they fail. (The one we’re using right now? Over 10 years old. Statistically, it should have died years ago. Before that, I’ve had two other backup drives fail.)

The raid array means that a backup drive can fail, too, but the information is stored in such a way that the other drives contain enough information to recreate the failed drive’s contents. There’s redundancy across drives, so one drive in the array can fail but the others still have enough data to protect everything.

But then what about a horrible disaster - like what if, God forbid, your house catches on fire, or gets destroyed in a hurricane? Your carefully-planned raid array is useless - you need an offsite backup solution.

A lot of people use Dropbox for this, which can be OK if you’re just talking a few documents. But if you want to back up terabytes of data, Dropbox isn’t a great solution. We currently have a 2TB backup drive that contains about 1.5TB of content. We also want to store content that we have on other drives, like videos from our trips, so there are a couple of other 1-2TB drives scattered around the house. Dropbox gets pricey when you go over 2TB, and more importantly - I’m not happy with some of their business decisions lately. I’d rather stop using them entirely.

So: Synology for the raid-array backup on-site, and Backblaze offers a Synology integration to back up our content offsite. It’s cheaper than Dropbox, doesn’t have the same icky business practices, and gives me a trusted company to keep my digital content safe even if a disaster should strike my home.

When your entire business is based on digital assets, this stuff matters. I have tons of documents (literally thousands - or maybe verging on tens of thousands at this point) from my freelance career. I have manuscripts from the publishing empire. I have cover art, ad image art and videos that have been professionally designed - I’ve paid thousands of dollars for - on my computer. I have podcasts for Bright Little Light Press. I have tax returns and accounting stuff. These things are assets, with real values attached, that my business can’t afford to lose. So it’s about time I’ve gotten serious about my backup strategy.

These are the types of expenses you don’t necessarily think about when you start a business. I know a lot of businesses that don’t have a good storage strategy, and an emergency data recovery plan with an offsite element in the event of an emergency. But these things can absolutely have a catastrophic impact on your business if you don’t take the proper precautions to safeguard yourself.