Disaster Recovery

DIY-Computer-Repair can help!

When a disaster happens how will you recover?

A disaster isn't just a natural event, such as a fire or an earthquake. In this day and age information is King. Cell phones, PDA's, laptops, computers are everywhere. And to top it off all your information is on a computer. You use it everyday in your job, your bank and financial information, your correspondence, every bit of information you have is on a computer. So how would you cope if your computer became inaccessible? Say the hard drive died, or the power supply burned up or in the event of a natural disaster?

We all have a reliance on computers, do you have a Disaster Recovery Plan? The big boys do. They hire loads of experts to insure your bank account is safe not only from hackers but tornado's, earthquakes, floods, fire, you name it. They have banks of servers in different parts of the world that have duplicated information about your accounts.

But the question is do you?

One way to insure you have adequate protection is to duplicate your computer, if not in your home or business, maybe someplace else. There are online services now that will back up your data to a place far away from your location. The theory is that the same disaster will not happen to two different locations because of the distance. A earthquake in California will not effect New York. Or a flood in Omaha will not effect Anchorage. Distance makes a difference. It maybe expensive and if your current computer isn't available you will need a backup computer.

Now the normal person will not have the resources to duplicate their data in more than one place. Be that Grammas house or your own. Still having a back up will ease the pain of a hardware failure or a natural disaster.

How would you go about creating a Disaster Recovery Plan? Well the big boys create reams of procedures (I was on two DR teams, believe me when I say your banking account is safe!) and it is quite involved and expensive. But you can have a DR all setup and waiting.

How?

Consider this, what did you do with that old computer when you bought your new one? Gave it away? Trashed it? Well that would have been sufficient to cover you in a disaster.

Why?

Well if you have a hardware failure you may need a computer to use for work while the other one is being fixed. You could rent a computer (like a car) while it is being fixed. But you would have to install all the applications you use and then restore your data to the rental computer. (Then insure it is wiped when you return it - wiping means erasing all your data to a degree it would cost more to recover it than it is worth to the thief).

Question: You DO have a BACKUP of your DATA? Right? NO?? Read this page: Data Backup

So you have the old computer and I can see your face. You don't want to use that 'ol dog, the reason you bought a new computer was the old one was so slow, the hard drive was full, and on, and on. But if you cleaned it out, got rid of all the junk, maybe upgraded the memory and hard drive it would get you by until your good computer was repaired or replaced

Things to consider for a DR Plan:

Where the backup computer is stored. Will it be accessible to do backups of your data to?

What to backup? You will need to consider a typical day, what do you use on a daily basis if you use the computer for your business. What records are on the computer that you can not do with out or are irreplaceable. What records will take a lot of time and effort to replace?

How much money can you spend on the DR computer?

If you have an 'off site' DR computer will it have all the applications setup and ready if you need it? The email works, the word processor, spreadsheet, data base (like Quicken) are all operational? Most software publishers will allow you to make one back up of their software with out another license (All ways check the End User License Agreement before assuming this is true!).

And the last thing is to test, test all your applications, test the recovery of you backup data, then when you are satisfied that the recovery computer will work until the good computer is ready you will have a valid and functional Disaster Recovery Plan.

Note:

If you are going to use the old computer you upgraded from to be your DR computer check out  these pages for information on how to....

• Clean out all the old files:  Cleaning a computer
• Get the most space you can before prepping the computer for the DR Plan: Defragment your hard drive
• Make the computer as fast as possible: Performance optimization
• How to do the back ups: Data Backup
• How to upgrade the memory and hard drive: Upgrade Index

With a little effort and maybe some money you will be covered in the event of an emergency.

Remember: It is your data and only you can protect it.

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