Automated Backups vs. Manual: Which Is Better for Small Businesses?

For most small businesses, automated backups are better. A backup only protects you if it actually runs, and a manual backup is the first task that gets skipped on a busy week. Manual backups still have one job worth keeping: an occasional copy kept off your network, where ransomware or a hacked account can’t reach it.

With a manual backup, a person starts every copy. Someone on your team drags files to an external drive, copies a folder to a USB stick or uploads files to cloud storage by hand.

With an automated backup, software makes the copy on a schedule, every night, every hour or as files change, without anyone having to remember. It can save to a local device, to the cloud or to both.

Here’s how they compare:

• Who starts it: a person, every time, versus software on a schedule.
• How often it happens: whenever someone remembers, versus as often as you set it.
• What gets missed: files saved in the wrong folder or added since the last copy, versus anything the backup wasn’t set up to include.
• Cost: a drive you may already own, versus a monthly or yearly subscription.
• Where copies live: often in the same office, versus usually offsite or in the cloud.

Manual backups give you full control and cost almost nothing. The trouble is people.

• They get skipped. The backup that was supposed to happen Friday turns into next Friday, then next month.
• Things get missed. New folders, files saved to a desktop and the one computer nobody thought about are easy to leave out.
• The drive sits in the same office. A fire, flood or break-in can take the computers and the backup drive at the same time.
• Nobody knows how old the last good copy is until the day they need it.

Manual backups can work if someone owns the job and does it on schedule. Most small offices don’t have that person.

Automated backups run whether anyone remembers or not, so you lose hours of work instead of weeks. Most save copies offsite, keep earlier versions of files and let you restore a file by picking a date.

They aren’t set and forget, though:

• They can fail quietly. A full drive, an expired password or a changed folder can stop a backup without anyone noticing. Make sure failure alerts go to someone who reads them.
• Sync isn’t the same as backup. Folders that sync to the cloud copy your changes everywhere, including deletions and files scrambled by ransomware. Version history helps, but it only goes back so far. A real backup keeps separate copies you can go back to.
• A backup you’ve never restored is a guess. Test a restore every few months so you know the copies are good and you know how to get them back.

Use both. Let automated backups do the daily work, and add a manual copy once a month or once a quarter on a drive that’s unplugged and stored somewhere other than the office. If ransomware or a hacked account reaches your connected backups, that offline copy is the one it can’t touch.

That’s the idea behind the 3-2-1 backup strategy: three copies of your data, on two different kinds of storage, with one kept offsite. If you’re still deciding where the automated copies should go, see cloud or local backups.

• How often your data changes. If your team updates client files, schedules or billing every day, you need backups at least daily. That’s a job for automation.
• How long you can afford to be down. If losing a day of work would hurt, choose a setup that restores quickly and test it.
• What rules apply to your data. Medical, legal and financial records often come with requirements for how long you keep them and how they’re protected. If you handle health records, ask whoever handles your compliance what your backups need to meet.
• The cost of a subscription against the cost of starting over. Automated backup costs money every month. Rebuilding lost client records costs more.

Is a synced folder like OneDrive or Google Drive a backup?
Not on its own. Sync copies deletions and damaged files too. It helps, but you still want a backup that keeps separate copies you can go back to.

How often should a small business back up?
At least once a day for anything that changes daily, with a separate offline copy at least once a quarter.

Are manual backups still worth doing?
Yes, as the extra offline copy. They just shouldn’t be the only backup.

Backups are how you recover after something goes wrong. Your network and firewall are what keep a lot of it from going wrong in the first place. Our free IT health check reviews your setup remotely and rates five areas, including your firewall and security rules and whether your equipment is still getting security updates. You get a plain English report on what’s working, what’s at risk and what to fix first. No cost, no commitment, and the report is yours to keep.

Book your free IT health check or call (310) 734-2572.