Monday morning I walked into the office that Bob and I share only to discover a soggy mess. We’d had steady rain for five or six days and Sunday night brought a veritable frog strangler. All the waterproofing and precautions that we took to correct this situation 10 years ago have held the rains out of the office until now.

My first thought was, “I hope Bob backed up those files he was working on.” Sure, all of the electronics are well off the floor, but you just never know. You know? I wasn’t worried about my own files because I knew I’d backed up everything before leaving the office Friday evening.

As it turns out, all the information was safe—no need to rewrite entire articles or any of the other nightmares that flash through your mind when you’re sploshing over what should be a nice dry office carpet. It did cause me to remember, however, just how we became so conscientious about backing up files. One disaster in data recovery and you’ll never forget again!

So please let my soggy saga be a warning to all of you who don’t backup your files as regularly as you should. Nature can throw you a curve ball any time at all. Yes, it takes a few minutes to do a daily backup. But having to recreate or recapture data takes a whole lot longer. If you’re letting your backups slide—even for a day or two—write yourself a big note on a can’t-miss-it-because-it’s-so-bright sticky note. Or print a poster. Whatever it takes to remind yourself and your staff. The old adage is true: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 3:37 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.