Disasters Really Do Happen

The Need for Computer Backup

By Robert Ringer

If you don't have a computer backup system in place, heed what I have to say. If I've learned anything at all about life, it's that disasters really do occur. I've always been amazed at how most people live their lives on the assumption that worst-case scenarios haven't yet been invented.

Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 are obvious examples of what I'm talking about. But Murphy's Law did not come into existence just on the basis of an occasional natural disaster. Houses burn down every day, people die without their loved ones knowing where important documents are located, and viruses regularly wipe out computers. We live in a complex world where the loss of valuable documents and other items can change a person's life — overnight and forever — for the worst.

Many documents, both hard copy and digital, are like a gun: You may not need them often, but when you do, you need them badly and you need them fast.

One of the few good things that can come out of the wind-and-flood debacles that hit Mississippi and Louisiana is that perhaps more people will begin thinking seriously about their important hard-copy documents as well as their digital files. It's hard for me to fathom, but surveys show that computer backup is performed by less than 25 percent of computer users on a regular basis.

I have tens of thousands of documents, folders, graphics, e-mails, e-mail addresses, macros, AutoTexts, AutoCorrects, templates, spreadsheets, and other files stored in digital form. Every evening, I back all of them up on an external hard drive. The backup hard drive has allowed me to continue working on another computer for as much as two weeks in an emergency.

Note that I said external hard drive. If you try to back up to a second hard drive that is internal, it's like sawing the branch off a tree while you're sitting on the end of it. In other words, if your computer is stolen or wiped out in a fire, flood, or by a killer virus, you still lose everything that's on the internal backup hard drive.

Now, understand that I'm not one of the 20+ percent of computer users who back up their hard drives once a week. Not even close. I back up my hard drive every day. I have fourteen separate backup folders on my external hard drive, and each night I assign a new date to the folder I'm using for the computer backup. That way, I always have a complete backup for each of the last fourteen days.

If you're chuckling and thinking "anal retention," you either don't know much about computers, don't use a computer to any serious extent, or have never experienced a computer disaster. If it's the latter, congratulations on your good fortune. But, trust me, it won't last. No one makes it through this computerized world of ours without experiencing a computer disaster. Whether you like it or not, it's coming. It's only a question of whether you'll be ready for it.

In addition to the external-hard-drive solution I've mentioned, serious computer users would be smart to look into offsite backup as well. I emphasize that this is not in lieu of backing up to an external hard drive, but in addition to it. There are many good companies who charge as little as $10 per month for five gigabytes of storage and $100 per month for twenty-five gigabytes.

To put this in proper perspective, think about how many people in New Orleans probably paid hundreds of dollars for Saints and LSU tickets on many occasions, yet could have saved all the data on their computers (including important hard-copy documents stored in digital format) for a fraction of what those tickets cost over the years. If nothing else, what the Katrina catastrophe should have taught everyone is how important it is to get serious about backing up their computers.

When I say serious, I mean adopting an extreme philosophy toward backing up. No matter how overboard you go to protect your files, the costs involved are relatively small, especially when compared to the high cost of regret. And, as a bonus, you won't have to take a sleeping pill when you go to bed each night.

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