Freelance Folder’s How Fast Can You Get Back to Doing Business provides three big events to prepare for:
- Replacing the computer ASAP
- Setting up software and configuration settings
- Getting data back on the machine
Freelancers and small businesses might not give thought to computer disasters, but for clients’ sakes… have a process in place. I’ve had my share of crashes and fortunately such set backs don’t affect my clients. These apply to home computers, too. Here are the things I do:
- Backup data on a regular basis to an shared storage external hard drive
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- Run Belarc Advisor on occasion to stay on top of the programs I have.
- Take a screen shot of my desktop, Outlook, and any other application with lots of interface customization.
What I would like to do:
- Set up my external drive to do a daily backup of its data to another resource outside of my office.
Plenty of online backup services exist, but they can’t do this (that I know of). And I have to be realistic — I don’t have time to backup the external drive to another drive and take it off site on a daily or weekly basis. Backing up my computer to an online service won’t do since I haven’t found a service that works for me without straining my computer’s resources.
What action do you take on your computer to prepare for the worst?