Can you afford to lose your computer? …for even one day? Today losing your PC even at home can be as disabling as losing a limb. Yet it happens to someone somewhere every few minutes. There are smart and surprisingly simple ways we can make sure we reduce our chances of losing it. Then in the unfortunate event that disaster occurs make sure we can recover fast and minimise the impact.
No sound business large or small can afford to loose their data or the ability to use their computing assets without a potentially heavy reputational, opportunity or financial loss. Usually in the event of a disaster you lose a bit of all three. The recent panic about on and off line security of data is testament to the risks and consequences. Though it seems worrying about security is fashionable and protecting from disaster is not and therefore often forgotten. However I would urge you both are just as catastrophic and perhaps disaster is more likely these days!
More and more people are now realising just how much protecting against disasters applies equally to individuals as well as businesses. Could you do without access to your bank account, reference to that critical email correspondence, access to your home budgeting finance software or spreadsheets. At the very least it’s hugely inconvenient at worst it could lead to heavy financial losses or liability.
For the purposes of very small businesses or home users protecting and managing disaster scenarios really merges the three industrial IT fields of Disaster Recovery, High Availability and Backup. Using best practice from industry and modern desktop PC’s with sophisticated hardware and software it’s amazing just how much we can do. Protecting against disaster essentially comes with two key strategies:
Surprisingly some of these industrial IT tools and techniques are now available to the home user or professional. High quality desktop computers all now come with RAID providing redundant disk drive support. So how come you have never heard of any this or many of the other techniques? Not many PC vendors can be bothered making it available as an option, configuring and supporting it or understanding how to do it right. For the average risk adverse PC vendor this just open’s up a can of worms that seems like more cost or risk of cost on the wafer thin bottom line. So they just cross their fingers and hope you don’t ask about it…
Practical things you can do to reduce your exposure
The following is a five step list of inexpensive things you can do to protect yourself from disaster and minimise the impact in the event it happens, roughly in priority order:
Security
Not really in the list as it’s a whole topic in itself (and its covered by another article) is general security and virus protection. Many tools on the market today are way over the top for what you need. You want something basic and unobtrusive so that it gets the job done but doesn’t interfere or hog the performance of your machine. In my opinion many of the small niche security software suppliers and not the big market players are the better tools in this regard. You should be able to get something completely FREE that does all you need.
Standby machines
Another option to consider is what the industry would call a ‘warm standby’ machine. Have another similar if not identical machine ready to take over your critical work if your main machine dies. Using an image backup or a hot swap disk from the dead machine to the new you can be back up and running in minutes. With the low cost of commodity machines these days you could quite inexpensively have a reduced power [cheaper] machine ready to take over the vital work in an emergency.
Conclusion
All the ideas I’ve described in this article are all best practice that industry has been doing for business for years. Now modern PC hardware and software within the reach of the domestic and home professional opens up some powerful options to make any pain due to hardware failures or data corruption completely unnecessary. Do yourself a favour and get it done for your own data no matter much you think it will never happen to you, you will sleep more easily.
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