Can You Recover From a Disaster?
Posted On: 2008-05-12
Have you ever thought about how you would cope if things started to go wrong? Do you have some plans in place if something like your computer suddenly dies or the power goes out for a couple of days?
Most governments have what they call contingency plans for when a disaster strikes or serious problems arise so that support teams know what they need to do the instant that they're mobilized. Hopefully those plans will work and prevent the effects of whatever the disaster or problem might be becoming worse and sometimes they do and ... of course ... sometimes they don't.
In most countries those contingency plans work quite well although there have been some spectacular failures too. When things go wrong in a big way there is always room for human error to creep in and when it does the situation really can get out of hand because panic sets in.
And the same situations that we might face on a national level can come right down to an individual level. While the disaster or serious problem ... whatever it might be ... may only impact on an individual it can still be just as catastrophic for the individual as a national disaster might be for the nation as a whole.
So if nations have contingency plans for when disasters strike then we need to have plans like that too. In fact a problem that strikes at an individual level can be far more difficult to recover from than one that strikes at a national level. When nations experience disasters other nations mobilize to help but when problems strike at an individual level there's often no one around to help so the individual has to cope all by themselves.
So what are your contingency plans for when disaster strikes you or your small business? What is your plan for coping and continuing to work if the power goes out for a couple of days? What is your plan for improvising, adapting and overcoming if your one and only PC dies and can't be fixed for a couple of days?
Want to bet that it won't happen to you? Here in Australia there was a time when if you lived in a capital city and the power went out then it might only take an hour or two before it was back on but much longer outages are becoming more common as aging infrastructures begin to break down ... and it's the same in other parts of the world too.
So what would you do if the power did go out for that long where you live? Have you looked at the possibility of alternative energy sources to keep the power running so that you can keep working? Have you thought about a generator and if you have been looking at buying a generator as an insurance policy have you though about hard-wiring it into your house?
What would you do if your computer failed ... you know, the one that you use day in and day out to generate all your work? What if the failure happened on a Friday afternoon and all the computer techs where you live didn't work weekends? What would you do if, when Monday rolled around, you found that it might take days to get your computer fixed?
Don't think that it mightn't happen to you because it can and even if you have several computers in your office problems can still arise. Yesterday we woke up to find that all three computers in our home office had developed major faults ... yes, all three! As I type this only one of them is currently operating and we dare not turn that off because it may not start again.
One developed a major software fault, one has a hardware problem and one has both software and hardware problems. Even though we're involved in a computer shop it's going to be around a week before all three are repaired. I'll be heading down to the shop in a few moments with one of them, one of Steve's will be on the work bench sometime on Tuesday evening and his second one ... the one that's still working ... will be fixed towards the end of the week.
Yep, disasters like that can happen when you least expect it and with very very little warning so what would you do if you encountered those sort of problems?
You can't just fix the problem by rushing out and buying a new computer because all your files are going to be stuck on the one that died ... unless you backup regularly and you have the cash set aside for just such a purchase. And even if you do have the resources to buy a new computer and you've backed everything up on the old one can you cope with the downtime while you reload all those files and programs on your new machine?
Every one of those three machines of ours is going to need a complete format and reload so we are going to be spending a lot of time over this coming week bringing our computers back to the level they were at before they all decided they needed a break. Can you spare the time that it will take you to load all your programs back on if you've had to buy a new computer or even just format the hard drive?
And then there's the slight problem of lost usernames and passwords ... did you remember to back those up?
If you have a contingency plan in place and you're prepared then your recovery time will be a whole lot less and you will survive the disaster. If you have no plans in place then you may never recover.