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What Price Your Data?
Each of the stories that follow is absolutely factual.
- When their clothes dryer blew up, the young couple escaped with her cell phone, their toddler son, and one shoe. The house was incinerated in fifteen minutes. She was supporting the family with her home-based business while her husband looked for work. Her business computer was now part of the ashes and rubble that had been their home.
- A talented and creative freelance writer and curriculum developer had no time to grab her computer when she and her husband had to evacuate their house during Southern California’s wildfire season. All her current and past projects were lost.
- Leaving her laboratory office after a long day working on a grant proposal, the neurobiologist had no idea that when she returned the next morning to review and submit the proposal — due that day — her computer would refuse to boot up. Fortunately, the problem was not the hard drive; even more fortunately, the proposal had been sent to the university’s finance department for review, and was submitted on time.
I have heard so many heartwrenching stories about people losing family memories, captured in photo albums and personal correspondence, in fires, floods, and other disasters. In this digital age, many of these treasures are stored on our computers: digital photography starts as a computer image before being printed and framed, and nowadays most correspondence is handled through email.
People admit, albeit reluctantly, that yes, they should back up their computers more often — or even at all! Despite my dislike of the word “should,” I completely agree. We really, really should back up our computers, on a planned and regular basis!
So, what keeps us from doing so? There are three primary reasons.
- We may be unaware of how many treasures — financial and medical records, digital images of family and friends, emails from college-student sons and daughters and, yes, those all-important business records! — are stored on the hard drive whose reliability we take for granted.
- We don’t like to think about unpleasant possibilities, especially when there’s no way to prevent such surprises. The young couple whose clothes dryer blew up certainly never dreamed that their house would — or even could! — burn to the ground that quickly.
- Many people are confused and baffled by what to do and how to do it. Even for those who are technically proficient, creating a personal backup and disaster recovery plan ranks only slighly higher than cleaning the bathroom; for the many who find technology confusing and scary, cleaning the bathroom starts looking downright fun compared to figuring out a backup plan!
The good news is that help is available for both planning and for the technology. The biggest job facing you is deciding how detailed you want your plan to be — which depends on how valuable your data is to you. There are three primary questions.
- If you were to lose everything on your computer tomorrow, what would it mean to you?
- Is there crucial business, medical, and/or financial information on your computer?
- Do you know where your software CDs and license keys are?
Once you have answered those questions, you can use my Backup and Disaster Recovery worksheet to create (and then implement!) your own plan. (Find the worksheet on my website at www.svahaconcepts.com/backups ).
Whatever you do — please take the time to do something. For your own sake and for the sake of your family, who need the history and the memories that are stored so tenuously on your computer, complete your own personal backup and disaster recovery plan. You’ll be glad you did!
“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.” Ken Olsen, President of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1977.
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