Disaster Recovery

Do you have a disaster recovery plan? For when your computer fails? And you think you've lost all your precious data files? If the answer is Yes, brilliant! If the answer is No, keep reading.

I am having a disaster! It started on Sunday when my computer told me that files in the Windows startup area were either missing or corrupted. I went all hot and cold! And then I put my Disaster Recovery plan (such as it is) into action. Now read on!

My data files had been backed up only the day before, and I'm usually careful about doing a regular backup. But I need a plan set in stone, never to be deviated from.

So, Learning Point 1: do backups on a particular day at a particular time.

But what to back up? My list has:

• Internet Explorer/Firefox Favorites/Bookmarks
• MozBackup for Firefox and Thunderbird backups
• use the export function on my Diary and Address Book (I use Palm Desktop because I have a Palm Pilot that I sync with Palm Desktop)
• use the Backup function in Outlook (which I use for my business emails)

All the above backups go to a separate internal hard drive, where I also store all my data files, both personal and business.

• use SyncToy to backup my internal data hard rive to an external hard drive. (SyncToy is a free Microsoft program)

Learning Point 2: Regularly review what is backed up and where.

So, seems pretty organised, eh? Yes, but the panic still set in. There are hardware problems to sort out now. What happened next? Watch this space for updates on the process.