This Will Kill Your Business, 5 Times Out Of 6


The lightning flashed, the lights flickered, and the nightmare
began. Before it was all finished, he gave my business one
chance in six of surviving.

Let me step back a bit.

I had just finished 3 days of work on a new report I was 
planning to offer to the folks who visit my blog. It was 60
pages of some of the best stuff I've done in a long while, and
I was going over it one more time, to add a little "zing" to
the thing.

I was in the zone, and didn't really notice when it started
raining. When the lightning flashed, I didn't pay much
attention. Then the lights dimmed and my monitor winked out.

Hard to miss that.

I didn't get too excited, as I'd been saving my work as I went
along. I figured I might have lost 5 minutes or so of edits.

When the power came back on, I started the machine up.

I quickly found out just how wrong I was.

....

It might be better to say, "I turned the power on." My 
computer refused to start. I tried going to Safe Mode, but it
didn't get that far into the boot-up.

I felt my heart drop into my stomach. My whole business was on
that machine.

I couldn't even think about what that meant. After the panic
settled down a bit, I called the only guy I know who I thought
could fix it. My buddy, Jim.

....

When Jim showed up, he took a look around my office and said,
before he even tried to start my computer, "Bill, you're in
trouble." Before I could ask why, he said, "Let's see if we can
fix the immediate problem first. What happened?"

He somehow got the machine to display a screen I'd never seen
before. He made some changes, popped a CD into the drive, and
restarted it. What came up on the monitor looked nothing like
my desktop.

"The good news is, your computer still works."

"And the bad news?," I asked. "Your hard drive may be fried,"
was the answer. "Do you make regular backups?"

I admitted that I didn't. He just shook his head, said, "Start
praying," and pulled out a box he'd brought with his laptop.
While he worked, I prayed. And sweated. And did a quick mental
inventory of all the things that were on that drive.

I prayed some more.

He took the drive out of my computer and hooked it up in the
box. He connected that to his laptop and started it up. After a
few minutes of doing things that I couldn't begin to
understand, he looked up and said, "Pray harder."

My heart started rolling around in my stomach. I thought I was
going to puke.

A few minutes later, Jim said, "This should work, but it's
going to take a while. You're buying lunch."

I didn't have much of an appetite at this point, but out we
went. Over lunch, Jim asked me some questions. Mostly about
what kinds of insurance I had, and whether I had investments
for retirement. When we added up the costs of those things, he
asked me one more question:

"Bill, is feeding your family a hobby?"

When I indignantly replied that it obviously wasn't, he said,
"Could have fooled me."

He launched into a lengthy explanation of the things that could
have caused my problem. Basically, they all boiled down to
power fluctuations, like those caused during a lightning storm
or a summer brownout. They could have destroyed any or all of
the components, along with whatever data was on the machine.
Along with that, a simple hard drive failure could wipe out all
my records and all my work.

Then he told me something that shocked me. "Bill, computers are
easy to replace and they get cheaper all the time. If that
strike wiped out your data without you having backups, though,
you have about one chance in six of still being in business in
two years."

From the look on my face, he could tell I didn't believe him.
Or maybe that I didn't want to believe him.

"Yeah, really," he said. "Roughly 85% of businesses that 
suffer catastrophic data loss go out of business shortly 
thereafter. Most fail within 2 years. Almost all serious data
loss is a result of power problems or hard drive crashes,
combined with a lack of current backups."

When he was finished, he said, "Come on. We're going shopping.
We still have plenty of time before we find out whether you
dodged a bullet."

As we walked out to my car, he casually asked, "By the way. If
you lost your business, how would you pay for all that
insurance you have to protect your family?"

Ouch. That hurt.

....

When we pulled up to the local computer store, Jim grabbed a
cart. I could tell this wasn't going to be a $20 fix.

We chatted about more casual things as Jim started loading
stuff into the cart. It wasn't as much as I expected, at first.
A USB thumb drive, a spindle of blank DVDs, and an external
hard drive. Those all fit in the child seat.

When we grabbed the last item, I realized why he'd gotten a
cart: The thing seemed to weigh as much as my computer, a
bowling ball, and the spare tire for my RV, all packed into one
medium-sized box.

We rolled up to the register and he said, "Pay the nice man,
Bill."

A little over $500 later, most of it for that mysterious 
monstrosity he'd nearly strained himself moving, we were 
headed home.

When we got back, he looked at his laptop and told me we had
some time yet. He started unpacking things, and then unplugged
my computer and monitor. As he set each item up, he told me
what it was for. He started with the big one.

"This," he said, "is called an uninterruptible power supply - a
UPS. It protects your computer and other components from power
fluctuations. Plug the sensitive stuff - your computer,
monitor, backup drive and cable modem, into these outlets here.
If your phone goes out when the power does, you might want to
plug that in here, too.

"It also acts as a battery backup unit. If the power goes out
completely, it will start beeping. From then, you'll have
anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes before whatever you have plugged
in has to be turned off. Depends on how much juice you're
drawing. My advice: As soon as this critter starts beeping,
save your work and power down.

"Your desk phone uses a lot less power than your PC and 
monitor, so that will last longer if it's all that's running
off the battery. You can also plug your cell phone charger into
it to get juice for that in an emergency, as long as you don't
run the battery down with the computer itself.

"When we get your computer back up and running, I'll hook this
up so it automatically shuts down if the power goes out and
you're not at your desk.

"You could probably have gotten by with a cheaper one, but
there's no sense risking it. For this, you get the best you can
afford. The smaller units are okay, but they don't last as long
or give you quite the same protection. The last thing you want
to depend on is one of those stupid power strips that claim to
be surge protectors. They're almost as useless as nothing at
all.

"This will help protect your computer AND your data, both.

"Don't count on it completely, though. A UPS won't protect you
from drive crashes caused by other things, or viruses or simple
human error. You wouldn't be the first intelligent person to
accidentally wipe your computer."

The whole time he was talking, I was thinking to myself, "All
this trouble could have been prevented by plugging my computer
into one of those?" So I asked him just that question.

"Yep. Hell, as small as the fluctuation was, you could have
gotten by that time with one of the $49 units."

Ouch.

"I recommend replacing this at least every two years. Every
year is better. They're tough, but they do wear out."

While I pondered my own stupidity in not asking about this when
I got the machine, he started setting up the external hard
drive. "This," he said, "is for regular backups. You can do
those one of two ways. There's software with it that will do
regular updates to your backups at scheduled intervals.

"The plus side to that is that you don't have to think about
it. The down side is that it means you have to leave the unit
plugged in and turned on. As long as you have it plugged into
one of the outlets on your UPS that has battery backup, that
should be fine.

"The second way is to do backups manually. That's a bit of a
hassle, but it lets you unplug the thing completely when you're
not doing backups, which adds a bit of security. Plug it into
one of the battery outlets when you're doing backups, and the
only thing that's likely to mess up your data is if your house
catches fire. If that happens, you have more immediate things
to worry about.

"I do mine manually, but I have a routine for this stuff.
You're just not going to remember, so I recommend using the
automatic system. I'll set that up for you before I leave."

Okay, okay. You're right. I wouldn't remember. Could you be a
bit more diplomatic?

Then he pointed at the spindle of DVDs. "Those," he said "are
for off site backups. As soon as we get your computer working
again, we're going to make backups of every bit of important
data on the machine, on those disks. You're going to store them
somewhere away from your house. With a trusted friend, in a
safe deposit box, anywhere but here.

"That way, if your house should burn down, or something else
happen that ruined everything in your office, like a roof leak,
virus or human error, you'll still be covered.

"I'm going to set up a firewall and anti-virus software on
here, too. They're not guaranteed to stop everything, but
they'll cut the risks even more."

"How often you do new DVD backups will depend on how much your
data changes, and how bad it would be to lose it. I recommend
at least twice a month, and preferably once a week. This is for
the really important stuff. Stuff that would be very difficult
or very expensive to replace.

"You're going to have to remember that on your own. The 
alternative to remembering is to get a second external hard
drive, just like the one you got today, and swap them out
weekly. Keep the one that's not connected somewhere else."

Okay. I'll have to think about that one. Where do I go every
week that I could store the off site one?

"The thumb drive is for very short term stuff, and really
critical files that change often. Like that report you told me
you were working on when things hit the fan. At the end of
every day, take your work in progress and copy it to the thumb
drive. When you've got it copied, unplug the drive and leave it
on your desk. That covers the stuff you do in between backups.

"Any questions?"

....

As Jim went back to his laptop to check the progress of 
whatever he was doing with my old drive, I thought about what
he'd just said. If I hadn't just been through this, I would
have thought he was being paranoid.

Not any more. I don't ever want to have to go through this
again.

"Good news," Jim said. "Your prayers were answered. The drive
wasn't toasted. Just had a few files wiped out that I was able
to recover. Let's get that puppy hooked up and get you back to
business."

....

While he did that, and all through the time we were making my
initial backups, I kept thinking of what a close call this had
been, and what would have happened if that drive really had
been destroyed. Or if I hadn't had a friend who could fix it
for me.

Not a lot of people know someone like Jim.

I have backup housing, in the form of homeowner's insurance. I
have backup income for my family, through my health and life
insurance. Hell, we even have a backup car in the garage.

I thought I was smart. I thought I was covered. And yet, 
something as simple as bad weather could have wiped out the
business that pays for all of that.

"Roughly 85% of businesses that suffer catastrophic data loss
fail within two years," he'd said.

All for the lack of $500 worth of hardware. Or, hell, just a
$50 battery and some blank DVDs.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. But never again.

Now, where do I store those off site backups?

--------

As I said, comments are, as always, welcome. Email me at 
paul@talkbiz.com

But first, go make some backups.