Disaster Recovery or ‘Dude, Where’s My Data?’

I've been having problems with notebooks recently.  As a business we rely heavily on them and it's fantastic to be able to just pick up your 'office' and take it with you, but of course you need a backup strategy if the notebook should fail, as mine did last week. Windows failed to recognise the network or any usb devices, in fact I think it barely realised I was there. Thank goodness for replacements.

The replacement lasted about a week before the disk crashed, (just after I'd returned home from doing a demonstration, close call). While most of my data is backed up, I'm still looking at a half day or so to get back to a full working environment that I'm comfortable with.

This led me to wonder whether the majority of retailers have checked to see if their disaster recovery strategies work. What would you do if you lost mission critical data? Have you checked that the systems you have are working, (do you have a comprehensive recovery plan in place or do you use a bandaid solution i.e. minimum fix when problems arise)? Like changing batteries in a smoke detector, testing your recovery strategies should be something that is done regularly because after disaster strikes, (and we all hope it doesn't), it is too late and could prove a very costly mistake.