In this series of GDPR tips and tricks I will be going through the various services and products we can offer to help with your compliance for GDPR, which will be made the law on the 25^th May 2018.

The first part of this series is discussing your data backup, something that Server Store specialises in.

The need for data backup has been around since the dawn of storing data on computer systems and emphasis has been placed on it more and more over the years due to our rapidly growing requirement for data storage. Data backup is not a requirement for GDPR compliance, however it should form part of your IT upgrade strategy in line with GDPR legislation.

In very simple terms, GDPR is there to protect data from theft and loss, but that loss is in fact not a loss as in “I’ve deleted my important data by mistake and lost it all forever”, but in fact lost as in “Someone has stolen my PC with all customer data on it, which is not encrypted or password protected”. In either case, data backup is something that should have serious consideration.

We have a wide range of data backup solutions, including portable encrypted USB drives, which will be immediately GDPR compliant, portable hard drives as well as NAS systems for fixed installations.

How do I know what I need? I’ve put together a quick walkthrough for these three very different products;


Encrypted USB Drives
If you need to store small amounts of data – sub 256GB, and need the peace of mind your data is portable and recoverable in the event of a substantial problem (e.g. theft of PC, Server or fire)

We supply iStorage encrypted USB pens. These all have 256 bit military grade hardware encryption built in. They are incredibly secure. To unlock them you must enter a PIN number into the system and by default these are set so if the PIN is entered incorrectly a number of times it permanently wipes the drive, for that added piece of security.

These aren’t expensive either, with a 16GB at a price of only £34.10 (correct 10^th Jan 2018).

To view a range of our iStorage USB drives please click here


Portable, Rugged Hard Drives
Whilst you could certainly use any standard USB HDD as a backup solution, for both on and off-site backup, this isn’t particularly recommended for the following reasons.

1. Most do not offer hardware encryption
2. They are not designed to be frequently moved around and therefore could get easily damaged by mistake.

Our suggestion is a product from HPE, called the RDX series. These are a two part product, the desktop connected docking station and the portable, rugged hard drive.

The hard drive itself is encased in a rugged, plastic and shock proof enclosure. Inside the enclosure is a semi-standard 2.5” HDD, with capacities ranging from 320GB up to several terabytes.

We supply the HPE model, but it is also branded up by other manufacturers such as DELL.


We have a deal on the 1TB model, click here.


NAS Systems
These are typically a permanent/fixed and non portable solution, but offer large capacities and features. They are a bit more technical than a USB drive or portable secure hard drive, so would need some IT knowledge to properly setup.

Server Store has a huge catalogue of NAS products from all major vendors, suitable for home users and small businesses.

These products typically have two or more hard drives internally, which are setup in RAID. If used to recommended configurations, this means that if one of the drives fails, then the data is mirrored or kept on the remainder drives and there is no loss of data. This makes a NAS system an excellent proposition for both archiving and backup, but also storing live working files on. We wouldn’t recommend though that live files are stored on the same location as where files are backed-up on to.

To view our range of NAS products please click here.


A fourth option, which we don’t currently specialise in or supply is a web based backup solution, otherwise known as Cloud Backup. There are many cloud backup providers firmly seated in the market place and choosing the right one is fairly simple as they tend to be based around your budget. Providers may include Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Dropbox, Google Drive and many more. There are also hundreds of independent providers of cloud backup.

I hope this has helped identify the right backup product for you, to help with your compliance but also to give you peace of mind that your data is securely backed up.

If you need any help choosing the right product or solution our sales specialists are available to speak to – Just give us a call on 01283 576162 or email [email protected]