Backup vs. Disaster Recovery: They're Not the Same Thing (and It Matters)
Your IT company says you have 'backups.' Great. But if your office floods tomorrow, can you be back online in an hour? Or a week? That's the difference between backup and BCDR.
Quick scenario: your server room floods tonight. Water everywhere. Hardware destroyed. How long until your business is operational again?
If your answer is 'I don't know' or 'a few days, maybe?' — you have backup but you don't have disaster recovery. And that difference could be the difference between a bad week and going out of business.
Backup = Your Data Exists Somewhere Else
Backup means your files are copied to another location. If you delete a file, you can get it back. If a drive fails, your data isn't gone. That's important, but it's table stakes.
The question backup doesn't answer: how do you actually get back to work? Your data exists, great. But on what server? Running what software? Connected to what network? Configured how?
Disaster Recovery = You Can Actually Get Back to Work
Disaster recovery (often called BCDR — Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery) means you can restore not just your data, but your entire working environment. Server, applications, configurations, network settings — everything. And you can do it fast.
A good BCDR plan has a defined RTO (Recovery Time Objective) — how long it takes to get back online — and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) — how much data you can afford to lose. For most businesses, the answer should be hours, not days. And minutes of data, not days.
The Test That Matters
Here's a question to ask your IT company: 'When was the last time you did a full test restore from our backup?' If they hesitate, get nervous, or say they haven't — that tells you everything. A backup that's never been tested is just a hope.
What Good Looks Like
At STR, our clients' backups are tested regularly. We know exactly how long a full restore takes, because we've done it. When something goes wrong, we don't cross our fingers — we follow a tested plan. That's the difference between 'we have backups' and 'we can survive anything.'
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