Surviving a computer crash

It's the day of the week when you run your invoices...You load up the paper in the printer, press print and....An error message pops up 'Unable to read drive'.

Sound like the stuff of nightmares? It could well signal the end of your business unless you plan for this eventuality. All computers are like cars – highly complex machines with many parts to go wrong at the worst possible moment.

How can you protect yourself against this nightmare?

In one word – Backup. Ensure all critical data is stored in at least one other location than on your server or main computer. This could be in the form of tapes, recordable CDs, floppy disks, external hard drives, online storage or many other options. Ensure that the backup is carried out at least daily and periodically check the backup by attempting to restore data (like computers all back-up media can fail).

Ensure you have a UPS (Un-interruptable Power Supply) running your main computer. This could buy the critical minutes you need to save open documents and shut down cleanly in the eventuality of a power outage.

Set your office applications to 'auto-save' every 5-10 minutes. This could also save hours re-creating documents, not to mention prevent the frustration should the computer lock up for no apparent reason.