Sometime this year i found myself very glad that i had daily backups of my MySQL databases and a home directory backup that i download to my computer every night after a small problem at the web host resulted in a bit of downtime for some of my sites and them only being able to restore up to the point of 3 days previous to that day.

I know of some webmasters who will only take weekly backups, or only when they have made significant changes to their websites and for some people they hardly ever backup their website data from the host, but as i found out, you really never know when the web host that your with will encounter a problem, and although they may be able to restore to a certain point, it may not be to that present day, like in my case.

So i was very glad that i kept a daily backup, it didn't take long to restore to the point that i required and it meant that i lost no data, whereas some of the other customers on the same server who were also affected may have lost some of their work if they had not been keeping daily backups.

Its high on my recommendation list, because its very frustrating if you have worked very hard over the last few days and then lose all or most of that work due to a failure of some sort at the web host.

Most web hosts will take backups and they inform you of that too and many people know they can fall back on the webhost when they need a backup but it just goes to show that its best not to rely on the web host for that.

If they take backups and you do too then you are lowering the chance of headaches caused by lost work, if you rely on yourself first to make sure that your prepared for server failures and other related web hosting problems then it makes the situation so much easier for you should you encounter difficulties at your web host.

Taking daily backups from your web host is like a safety net for you, should you need them like i did they make you glad that you have them when the time comes.

Filed under: General Web Hosting Info by admin Published August 29, 2008