10 PROVEN TIPS TO SURVIVE A COMPUTER CRASH
by Eve Abbott,
the Organizer Extraordinaire
10 PROVEN TIPS TO SURVIVE A COMPUTER CRASH By Eve Abbott,
excerpted from her new book, How to Do Space Age Work
with a Stone Age Brain TM
COMPUTER CRASH Do these words strike fear into you?
If not, maybe they should! A computer crash is at best
time consuming and expensive, and at worst a genuine business
disaster. Here are things you can do now to prevent a
crash and/or insure a smooth recovery whether you use
your computer at work or for your personal life-or both,
like me!
The first rule in minimizing computer disasters is backup.
The second rule in easier data recovery is BackUp. The
third rule in computer organizing is BACKUP. I am astounded
at the number of people (in large and small businesses)
who do not back up their work regularly. Without good
backups, you risk losing everything if your hard drive
goes belly-up.
Start by setting all of your programs to save automatically
after 2 minutes. This will protect your work against temporary
freeze-ups and unplanned shutdowns.
Second, plug your computer, monitor, and other electronic
equipment into a UPS Battery Backup unit to protect it
from power surges and outages. A unit like this one will
give you 5 minutes to save your work and shut down your
computer normally if the power goes out.
Then-BACK UP! (If you're not sure what the best way to
back up is, keep reading.)
I bought a brand new Hewlett Packard Pavilion XP system
and began to back up weekly. Seven months later, I returned
from making a cup of tea to hear my computer going click-click-click
loudly. My hard drive had just crashed for no reason at
all. As is often the case, I lost everything on it.
I felt confident because I had my data backed up by
copying my entire working C-drive onto a CD-but even with
backups, and even if your computer is still under warranty,
let's get realistic about how much time and money a crash
can end up costing you.
It took four days for me to get the special shipping
box HP sent me to return the computer. They replaced the
hard drive, and it was returned within 10 business days
at no charge for repair and shipping. This still adds
up to three weeks without my computer.
First, I rented a laptop and spent hours installing
the programs I normally use. Laptop rental cost me $250.00
for one month, with a $500 refundable deposit. I could
have rented a desktop system for a little less per month,
but I would have had to wait a week to get the computer.
It was great to have the laptop to use until my repaired
computer arrived. But, I had to go through the same restoration
process again when it was returned with a new hard drive.
More time lost and more frustration, too.
Second, I spent hours importing my data from backup
CDs. I still lost almost a week's worth of data (Quicken
entries, Word documents, calendar and contact information)
because that's how long I go between backups.
Third, I spent hours recreating the custom settings
on my software. Fourth, I had to install some smaller
programs that I'd forgotten I would need. THE DAMAGE:
Sometimes data can be recovered from a dead drive, depending
on what has caused the crash. Professional data recovery
services charge from $500 to $1500 to get your data back,
and you have to pay whether or not they recover anything.
You can find more information about data recovery services
at http://www.drlabs.com/pricing.html
and http://www.dtidata.com/data_recovery.asp.
I paid $1,000.00 in computer consultant fees to get
the laptop set up, and my computer taken apart and set
up again to get it running A-OK. That's apart from data
recovery costs, which my backups saved me from having
to pay.
The grand total: $1,250.00 and 7 days in lost time.
Pretty expensive considering that I had all my current
data backed up onto CDs.
BACKUP OPTIONS
There are many ways to back up information. Diskette,
CD, Zip drive, External hard drive and Web (on-line).
I will not discuss tape drive backups simply because tape
media is unreliable and awkward compared to newer technologies.
If you have more than one computer, you can back up from
one to another via network drives-but that only protects
you in the event that disaster strikes one machine at
a time.
There are four questions you need to ask yourself regarding
your back-ups:
1) How critical is your data? (My business and life
are on my hard drive = critical)
2) Do you add or process high volumes of information?
3) In what time frame do you add enough to make it a real
loss? (day, week, per project)
4) Do you work with very large files of any type? The
more information you process or add to your computer hard
drive, the more often you need to back up. For high volume
or crucial files you need to backup daily.
Diskette: There is the small file backup onto diskette.
For example, you just entered a lot of Quicken data and
you don't want to take a chance on losing it but you don't
want to do a full back up, or you have a single Word file,
just pop it on a diskette. Remember to label any and all
backup media with contents and date.
ZIP drives and disks: ZIP drives and disks can work
well for back ups of larger projects. I had a client who
was an author and she kept one ZIP disk for each of her
books, which contained every file related to the book
- not just the text. If you are satisfied using a ZIP
drive and disks for your data storage - don't change to
another media. Note: many more people have CDs than zips,
so if you need to share data you may need to switch to
CDs.
CD: In the same way you archive paper every year after
taxes (along with a backup of your accounting program
and data), consider backing up entire projects onto CD
when you're finished. This keeps the data available and
safe, without cluttering your hard drive. You can file
a project closeout CD with the matching archived paper
files. Or keep a variety of backups in a CD organizer
(date labeled) divided up into Projects, Backups and Programs.
The backup CDs I use are 'data only' to safeguard important
information in case a problem develops in between system
backups. If you are going to archive (e.g., taxes) and
may not access the backup for a long time - go with CDs.
CDs are more stable, and you are less likely to run into
trouble with irretrievable data. Always use premium brand-name
CDs (or other media). Discount media is more likely to
fail.
Disk 'Cloning': For $70 or less, you can back up your
entire drive (operating system, programs and data) using
"disk cloning" software (Norton Ghost, Paragon
Drive Backup, or PowerQuest Drive Image. You can store
this "image" of your drive on removable media
like CDs and ZIP disks, on tape, or on an external hard
drive. You'll still have to spend a lot of time doing
the backups and most people will end up with a set of
at least 10 CDs for each backup, since the copy of your
drive will take up about 50% of the storage space as your
drive itself. (That's not the size of your whole drive,
just the part you have filled up.)
You can get more information about disk cloning software
at: http://www.powerquest.com/driveimage/
http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/
http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/
http://www.drive-backup.com/
Web: There are on-line services (e.g., www.connected.com)
which will automatically back up your computer (either
totally or just the changed files). This backup and restore
option is limited only by the speed of your connection
to the internet. Some people leave their computer on all
night to do the backups. The reverse process will be more
complicated, because you cannot restore directly from
the web. Many information technology and graphics professionals
use web services because of the massive files they process
each day.
Your backup files are stored on their server. This is
good because it is off-site in case of disaster recovery.
Unfortunately, your data is only as secure as the server
it is on. I don't use this option, because I don't think
there is any function on the internet that is as secure
as doing it myself and keeping control over all the data
at all times. If you don't use massive files, you don't
need it.
External Hard Drive (XHD): I chose this option after my
crash disaster because I can recreate my entire system
without the wasted time of restoring my operating system
and settings, downloading programs and data from backups,
and resetting application customizations, etc.
An external hard drive ($200) with 'disk cloning' software
lets you put your entire drive onto your backups. If you
don't use the ghosting software you can only put programs,
and data backups onto the external hard drive, not the
operating system itself. The ghosting software will enable
you to make a 'boot disk' just for restoring from the
external hard drive to your main computer.
This option will allow you to completely restore your
computer, if necessary (with no hard drive damage). Or,
install a new hard drive on your computer and then restore
immediately.
Just plug the external hard drive into the computer and
start the backup, which verifies the data. Then, you unplug
the external hard drive. This takes about fifteen minutes
total for my backups. After backing up, I store the XHD
in the trunk of my car (in a laptop case for protection).
Even if the house burns down I still have my entire computer
capability just outside in my car.
First, put an XHD ghost of just your operating system
and programs with all the custom settings. Second, do
a ghost of your entire system (operating system, programs
and data). Third, do regular working drive data backups.
Make sure any programs you ever use are in the second
XHD backup, and/or in your working hard drive for your
'regular maintenance' backups.
I can get a new computer, copy everything I need and get
to work. One possible downside to this; if you have to
'recover' on a new computer with a new system (different
configuration and drivers), you will have trouble using
the restored system until you reload the correct drivers
and eliminate the 'old' ones.
Backup, BackUp, BACKUP! So, how can you combine these
different backup choices to work in your particular situation?
Take the simplest method that will safeguard your information.
If all you need is a diskette file box for backups - great!
I use the XHD once a week for a programs and data backup.
In between I use diskettes or CDs, depending on the size
of the files and how long I want to maintain them. There
is enough room on my XHD to put 4 total system-program-data
backups of my entire XP system into it. Once, you've done
an operating system backup, unless you change your configurations
or programs, you don't need to do it again. For regular
maintenance, do your working 'data' drive.
If you do nothing, you are guaranteed to have a disaster
sooner or later. Choose what works best for you and set
a reminder to BACKUP as often as you need to stay sane
when it does happen.
For more time saving tips go to http://www.organize.com
Copyright 2005 Eve Abbott. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Copyright, Eve Abbott All Rights Reserved. The Organizer
Extraordinaire's new book "How to Do Space Age Work with a
Stone Age Brain" TM is available online at http://www.organize.com
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