What is the 3-2-1 Backup Rule? – Supply Chain Game Changer™

Your data is like your treasure. You don’t want to lose it or let anyone steal it. That’s why you need a good way to keep it safe and recover it if something bad happens. If you ask some experts how to do that, they will probably tell you about the 3-2-1 backup rule. 

This is a precious backup practice that has been used for a long time and still works well. If you don’t know what the 3-2-1 backup rule is, we will tell you why it is important and how it can help you protect your precious information.

The Basics of the 3-2-1 Backup Rule

Backup is like having a spare key for your house. You don’t want to be locked out if you lose your original key. But sometimes, having one spare key is not enough. What if you keep both keys in the same place and someone steals them? That’s why you need the 3-2-1 backup method. 

This backup method has been a smart way to protect data for a long time. It is like a rule of thumb that many experts agree on. It is a simple idea that works well with most backup tools and services, it follows the principles below.

• You need to make three copies of your data: the original one and two backups. And, you need to do this often, maybe every day or every week. 
• You also need to use two different kinds of storage for your backups. This is to make sure that both backups don’t fail at the same time. 
• Finally, you need to keep one backup in a different place from the other one. If something bad happens where you are, like a storm or an earthquake, you still have one backup safe somewhere else. 

The 3-2-1 backup rule is definitely not a new way of keeping your data safe. Back in the day, people used hard drives that could only store a little bit of data and CDs that could break easily and malfunction at the worst time. 

Now, we have bigger storage devices and cloud services that can keep your data online. Also, the focus of the approach has shifted from how much data you can store to how well the storage device can protect your data from threats.

And, using the 3-2-1 backup method means you can use different kinds of storage devices. It depends on what you do and who helps you with backup. A business may need to use a mix of storage types. If you are just a regular user, you can use whatever storage is easy for you.

How the 3-2-1 Backup Rule may Benefit Users

The 3-2-1 backup method is a reliable and practical way to keep your data safe and available for everyday use. It is still recognized as one of the best practices used by data protection professionals. 

It doesn’t mean that your data will never be lost or stolen, but it makes it less likely to happen. The backup method helps you avoid some of the problems that can happen when you backup your data.

Here is a quick of how the 3-2-1 backup strategy works and benefits users.

• If you can’t use your original data, you can try to get it back from the backup copy that you have in your house or office on another device or storage. 
• If that backup copy doesn’t work either, you can use the backup copy that you have in another place, like online or somewhere else. 
• After you get your data back and everything is working again, you should start the 3-2-1 backup process again as soon as possible.

Challenges with the 3-2-1 Backup Rule

The problem with the 3-2-1 rule is that it was made when people used tapes to back up their data. Now, people use disks and cloud services more than tapes, although tapes are still useful in various settings sometimes. 

Backup companies also say that cloud backups are good enough for the 3-2-1 rule. This is not wrong, but the 3-2-1 rule was not made for cloud backups. Remember, it was made before cloud backups existed.

This is not to say that the 3-2-1 principle is badly outdated. It is hard to deny that the basic logic behind the method works greatly. So, with this fact in mind, all we need to do now is figure out a new way to back up our data that works better for today.

The 3-2-1 rule is still a good name for the backup method. But we can change what the numbers mean. For example, we don’t have to stop at three copies of our data. When this method was made, having two backups was hard. But now, we can make more backups easily.

Also, with today’s availability of cloud solutions, it seems that the idea of having a copy on an off-site location has become impractical and, thus, obsolete. It will only create a lot of trouble for an organization that needs rapid access to data backups.

On top of that, different ways of storing data can make things more complicated and costly. This is especially true when you have to follow some rules about how to keep your data secure. It is best that you make sure that your data is treated the same way no matter where you store it.

The Takeaway

The 3-2-1 backup method has long been a reliable way to keep your data and information safe and accessible. But today, there are new threats that can harm your data in more complicated ways. That’s why some people use newer approaches to backup and recover their data. 

They make more copies of their data and store them in different places. This way, they can protect their data better. If you want to do this, you need to have different options for storage and the ability to make as many copies as you want, no matter how much workload you have.

Article and permission to publish here provided by Tech Social. Originally written for Supply Chain Game Changer and published on October 17, 2023.

Cover image by Thomas Breher from Pixabay

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