I never had a host that was showed a good responsibility about my backups. I requested a few times my old files to be restored and just once they did it but the backup was too old, which means they do less frequent backups than they claim. How important are server backups... from your experience?

Don't know about your specific arrangement with your host, but if its your business and your data is at risk based on proper backups, its best to do this yourself. It's always best to read the TOS of your provider ... lots of them leave backups entirely up to the client.

Not sure what we're addressing here. How important are backups? Very important. Is that a good answer?

As Steve mentioned, it's a good habit to keep your own backups -- even if your provider claims that they keep them.

Being an unmanaged service provider, we don't do backups (and we try to make that quite clear with our clients). We utilize RAID1/10 setups but obviously that isn't a fail proof system.

What host(s) have given you this problem? Most reliable providers keep up-to-date off-site backups. If ever you request one, they are readily available. Additionally, you have the ability to download your own backups yourself via your control panel

Yes thats the most important thing. Your control panel should provide you with backup utility that you should perform once in a while depending on the criticality of your data

I would make backups though cPanel just incase something happens to your provider or the server your on you never know.

This is very good advise. Even though we are very confident in our ability to store up-to-date backups of all hosted websites, we still advise clients to take their own backups

As stated don't blame the host for this unless it was in the agreement also you can make one in cPanel as GCJHOSTING has stated.

I am doing my backup regularly now from a FTP client software but I would still like to see some promises kept from the host.

If your host ins't promising you anything, perhaps you should switch to a different hosting provider? Most reputable providers take daily off-site backups

As I said, they do promise a lot but they don't deliver, when backups are in question. This just goes to show that you site is safe only as much as your host is responsible.

Hi,

Backup is important, if your hosts do not have daily or regular backups, switch to a new one, or better you should also have your own backup, local in your PC or using remote backup service.

Regards,
Bobby

If you cannot trust your host to do it for you and they offer backup services, then I would find another host.

I am a fan of offsite remote backup services. Using this service, you can backup your server to a remote location. Many providers will give you access to a web portal to check your backups.

We use R1Soft's backup software and it provides a web portal as well as email reporting. This way you know if your backups are running or not.

Beyond backing up, you need to pay attention to what is required to recover your data.

I seen clients who have used their hosting providers backup service only to find out the only way to get to the backups is through the private network of the hosting provider. This does you little good when the provider is down.

Data backup is a very tricky area in IT across any industry, ranging from banks through to telecommunications. This isn't because backups are difficult, far from it, nor is the info structure to enable users or system administrators to backup their data.

The issue lies in accountability, if companies where to make steps to state that they where responsible solely for the backup of your data (or anyone elses) if such a catastrophic hardware failure or natural event where to occur that resulted in said company losing, in part or whole your data, they would likely to be liable. In short companies won't take such risks, and those that state they do will have an essential "get out clause" hidden somewhere.

I think it has little to do with how reputable a host is like Sean said, although this is based on whether such services are provided by the host. On the most part hosts do take care of the data residing on their servers for the purpose of hard drive failure more so than file restoration however nothing is fool proof and as said many times before... ensuring the safety of your own data is the responsiblity of "you" and the best methods are physical media and multiple backups (raid/location/versions) is the only real safety.

Larger, more reputable providers tend to have more money to invest in backups to ensure that they are up-to-date and reliable. Many of the larger players have backup servers for off-site backups and use more sophisticated and reliable technology for faster and more accurage backups (ie. Rsync CDP)