Earlier this week, in an incident involving an 8-month old, an open water bottle and a serious lapse in attention and sound judgment, water spilled on the keyboard of my MacBook Pro.
Luckily, I recovered from my heart attack quickly enough to shut down, turn the computer upside down and ask for help (thanks to all of my Twitter friends who shared their expertise and equally painful flooded computer stories)!
This was a serious reality check that forced me to confirm all of the checks and balances I have in place to keep my business and my sanity afloat in case of a disaster. And happily, I passed the test. Plus, the computer booted up last night without a pause, and I lived to tell about it.
Of course, there were a couple minor hiccups and a lot of lessons re-learned. So I thought I’d share some with you as a review that will hopefully help if you ever face the potential disaster of a drowned or otherwise ruined computer.
Make sure your data is backed up and know the backup schedule.
I think everyone backs up their data these days. But how often do you check your backed up files to make sure the data is sound? And how often do you review what the time lag is before your files are synced?
Being the overachiever that I am, I have a few different backups, local and online, and I use them regularly so I know the data was intact and usable. I didn’t, however, have time to verify if everything I had worked on that day was synced before pulling the plug. It was a minor time drain comparing files and figuring out what was missing.
Have a second computer that works (and has what you need).
What’s your plan for continuing your work if something happens to your primary machine? Do you have a backup computer with comparable software that has access to your backed up files?
I work concurrently on a PC and a Mac every day, so I was able to shift right over to my PC and continue working with only a small pause. But if I didn’t already use my PC regularly, moving over to a new machine would take some time. It would take even more time if you haven’t booted the backup computer in a while and had to run updates and other maintenance before getting started.
Have a way to access your “right-now” data.
It’s funny how quickly we forget what we’re doing when something yanks us off task. And if you tend to have multiple apps running, windows opened and brain processes chugging along, it’s nearly impossible to pickup where you left off on a different machine at a different time.
This was one area I neglected to consider when I setup all of the backups and contingency plans. I didn’t have a plan for being able to access the exact information I was working on at the exact time of the “incident.”
For example, my inbox acts as my running reminder list. While I had access to all of my email messages, I didn’t immediately know which ones I had flagged, sorted and tagged in my email client. Another minor headache that was quickly resolved once my Mac came back to life, but could have been much more serious if it had died.
Your lessons?
Have you ever been in a similar situation? What were the lessons you learned?
Image credit: dreamjay
Alyssa GregoryAlyssa Gregory is a digital and content marketer, small business consultant, and the founder of the Small Business Bonfire — a social, educational and collaborative community for entrepreneurs.
