Last week, my laptop died a sudden spectacular death-by-drowning, as a full cup of coffee poured into its keyboard. It emitted a pop sound, and the screen and the power shut off.

What would your reaction be? Mine was to immediately unplug the power cord and remove the battery. Then I took it over to the sink and poured out the coffee. Remembering tales of people flushing keyboards with water, I ran some fresh water over the keys and then set to work. I removed the keyboard, the palm rest, a few of the inner cards, and let it sit without power for several hours. Apparently, not long enough.

Later that day, anxious to find out whether it was really dead or just comatose, I plugged it back in, crossed my fingers, and pressed the power button. The power light came on, I heard the fan start, and for a second or two, I was hopeful. But then… another pop, and it was dead. No further cleaning, drying, or care could resuscitate it over the next few days, so it’s currently back at the IBM factory going through open-heart surgery, if not a total replacement.

Being prepared for disasters can make life easier if the event actually occurs

What can go wrong?

Obviously, if I didn’t have a good backup of my data, such an event could have been catastrophic to my business. As it was, the loss of my laptop was merely an expensive hassle. Actual events such as this one can provide a good reality check for your disaster recovery strategies.

Many things can happen that have a similarly disasterous effect. Being prepared for disasters can make life easier if the event actually occurs. Let’s take a quick look at some possible computer disasters:

• Coffee fries the laptop.
• A service technician copies sensitive data from your computer.
• Your laptop is stolen.
• Your data is erased by a malfunctioning airport X-ray machine.
• Your house burns down.
• Your PDA is stolen.
• A virus infects your files, and your recent backups.

Which of these disasters could make you go out of business? Or subject you to identity theft? Or to a lawsuit from your customers for leaking their information?

Many things can happen that have a similarly disasterous effect. Being prepared for disasters can make life easier if the event actually occurs

Several issues come into play here, and you need to consider all of them:

1. Loss of use of your equipment.
2. Compromise of sensitive data.
3. Loss of data, including corrupt backups, deleted files, or important files you change accidentally.
4. The overall risk of any of these events.

These are some of the considerations to be made when planning your disaster recovery strategy, and I’ll get into more detail in future issues.

How do I back up my data?

There are several approaches to doing backups. It used to be that most places would get a tape-drive and put entire system backups on a schedule to run overnight. Tapes aren’t always reliable, though, and it can be very difficult to retrieve individual files.

These days there are a lot more options. Writable CDs and DVDs provide a cheap way to create permanent backups, and create historical archives. USB thumb drives make for a simple way of instantly making a copy of important files. Large hard drives are cheap to buy, and when installed in an external drive enclosure or removable casing, become the most economical way to back up large sets of data.

If you have a Local Area Network (LAN), you can backup important files by simply copying them to other computers. If you’re in an office environment, I highly recommend having a server, and concentrating your backup efforts onto the server instead of individual workstations.

The best backup system is one you don’t have to think about at all. Ideally, your laptop or workstation should have no data that’s not also stored somewhere else. We’re all human afterall and the more work it is to do a backup, the less likely you are to have done one when you need it. So how did I do, when my laptop died?

The best backup system is one you don’t have to think about at all. Ideally, your laptop or workstation should have no data that’s not also stored somewhere else

Painful self-analysis

I probably rely on my laptop for a wider variety of data than most people. An important part of your backup strategy is identifying what data needs to be backed up, how often, and where. Here’s a list of what was on my computer:

• Email
• Contact addresses
• Calendar/Schedule
• Password database
• Sensitive customer files
• Sensitive business data
• Finances
• Non-sensitive customer files
• Non-sensitive business documents
• Prototype databases for web application projects
• Prototype web applications under development
• The operating system and application software
• Configuration details about the machine itself