Computers and Technology

If you work on a computer, a computer disaster is just waiting for an opportunity to happen. Yes, that sounds dismal, but computers should not be trusted too much. Even techies and data backup fanatics like myself are not safe; we are just more aware of the dangers than most computer users, and we know they are a reality. You will have something bad happen, it's just a matter of time if you have not already had some kind of computer disaster experience.

My own computer disaster was just over a year ago, and ironically, I have been warning others about the dangers of computer disasters for years. I was working on projects just like any other normal day when it happened. Suddenly, the computer started acting weird, and then I received a cryptic error message that said something like this, "Your computer is totally screwed up. You will need to reinstall the operating system."

Since the computer was locked up, I had to no choice but to restart, hoping it wasn't really that bad. Upon the attempted restart, my computer was worse than the day it was made. As far as that computer knew, my hard drive was missing and the operating system did not exist either. Being a knowledgeable computer tech, I knew of several ways to access "lost" data. Every one of those techie methods failed.

So I proceeded to find a computer disaster recovery program just like any computer guru would do in this situation. I found a recovery program and then ran it. I was able to recover the drive, but, the most recent data, and the job I was working on when the computer failed, was unrecoverable. This recovery program was impressive. It recovered a drive that was completely inaccessible before. It recovered almost all of the data. That is an unusual level of success in this situation.

Guess what the recovery program was not able to recover. It effectively recovered all of the data I had already backed up, but almost none of the new (in progress) data was recovered. It was as if my computer selected everything that was not yet backed up and made only that data unrecoverable. It seemed like a conspiracy, but computer disasters are like that. The fact that any of the data was recovered is more than should be expected, but I wanted my new data, and I never did get it.

I can't help but think of all the data loss horror stories I have encountered. It's especially sad that four out of every five businesses that experience catastrophic data loss never recover. Eighty percent, and please read that again, 80% go out of business!

Data backups are your only defense if you lose your primary data. I was able to recover my data, but I had backups so I was not worried. I did learn to follow my own advice and back up more frequently, simply because I lost so much new data in this computer disaster experience. You will never be sorry when you have good computer backups, but you could very well be sorry if you don't.

The reality is, you cannot afford to gamble with data loss. I have dedicated a section of my web site to computer disaster prevention and computer data backup for quite some time. Now I can give personal testimony that taking the necessary precautions is extremely important. You can't stop all disasters from happening, but you can prepare for the worst so they don't wipe you out. It could very well save your business.