Would you (and/or your clients) recover from a disaster?

What would you do if your (and/or your clients') office(s) were destroyed? And/or your computer systems "crashed"? and/or you lost a hard drive(s)?

Would your (and/or your clients') business survive?

Although these are not questions we think of often (enough) or like to consider, they may be some of the most important questions to which how you are able and prepared to respond may mean the "life or death" of your (and/or your clients') business!

Further, you may find that you may not be as prepared to easily, quickly and/or completely recover from such a disaster as you may think.

We hope, in this article, to help you be better prepared for and able to as quickly and easily recover from such a disaster as possible.

We were personally, recently and "harshly" reminded of the importance of this topic due to an unprecedented series of hurricanes that hit our area followed by the devastating Tsunami that effected so many in Southeast Asia at the end of last year.

We live and work in Florida, which was hit by a record four (4) major hurricanes this year :( In advance of several of these hurricanes we were forced to evacuate the area and to face the possibility that our home and virtual office may be destroyed upon our return. Therefore, we had to "hastily" make some "final" backups of our local systems, dismantle and pack everything up and evacuate.

Although we were very fortunate to return to find our home and virtual office buildings essentially undamaged, we were without power, telephone or internet connectivity in the area for weeks. Upon restoration of these basic utilities, which most of us probably take for granted all too much, we discovered, as you may know, that computers "don't like to travel", and we subsequently encountered a whole series of various system hardware failures :(

In the course of recovering from all of these "disasters" we learned some valuable lessons which we hope will benefit you all in preparing for, avoiding and/or recovering from any such disasters that you may encounter.

Just backing up your data may not always be enough ...

1. Do you have backups of all of your data?

Regularly backing up all of your important data is critical!!! ...
Do you have backups of all of the data on your PC's? and ...

Do you have backups of all of your data for all of your web site(s) / domain(s) / on all of your web server(s)?

If your web hosting company performs regular backups of your web site(s) / domain(s), that's Great! :) However, it may also be advisable for you to also have your own backups of all of your web site(s) / domain(s) / on all of your web server(s) stored somewhere other than on the web server for which it is a backup. This is advisable just in case something happens to your web server and/or web hosting company from which you want to be able to recover from as well, right?

If you are not already regularly backing up your data, you need to first start doing so immediately! Or you may be "out of luck" when a disaster strikes you! If you do not already have a data backup system, you may want to get one of those we have listed for your benefit via the links in the resource box below.

2. Do you have a copy of your data backups stored somewhere else?

Given that some "disasters" may not only "destroy" your computer but may also destroy the facilities in which you work and/or your computers are located, it is always a good idea to keep a copy of your data backups in another location separate from the source of the data. This may be as simple as putting a copy of your backup CD's in a safety deposit box or storing a copy on a remote server, which you are sure you will have access to if your primary computers and network are unavailable.

3. Have you tested and verified that your data backup can be successfully restored?

It is almost as bad as having no backup at all, to have one that you can't successfully restore when you need it!

Therefore, verify that each of your backups may be successfully restored, preferably on your "backup computer", discussed below, before you may "rest assured" that you have a "good backup" that may be used for your recovery if/when you need it.

You may see that some of these recovery tools may also be helpful and beneficial to you in recovering any files and/or data that you may lose and/or that gets corrupted in between your regular data backups.

4. Can you restore the applications you need?

Do you have the necessary media to restore (the correct version(s) of) all of the applications you will need to

About the Author: Michael S. DeVries is the Moderator of The Virtual Consulting Discussion List (http://www.TheVCF.com/vcdl.phtml) and Principal of The Virtual Consulting Firm (http://www.TheVCF.com). Additional assistance and/or tools to help you in your backup, data storage and/or recovery efforts, in the Backup, Storage and Recovery categories, at: http://www.thevcf.com/vccenter.phtml