Almost a proof of my admonishment to client hospitals that no plan is resistant to failure, my computer redundancy plan suffered a catastrophic failure twice in the past several weeks.
First, my primary computer suffered an operating system corruption that resulted in an almost complete loss of data. This occurred in mid January, but I had few worries as I maintain a second laptop with a full mirror image of the data on my primary computer. I never expected to lose more than one or two day's data. When my primary machine failed, I booted up the back-up and was horrified to discover that despite regular synchronization, only the last complete back-up was intact. I had lost 2 full weeks of data.
Despite this set back I resumed daily business with and reconstructed as much lost data as possible, instituting daily back-ups until the primary computer was repaired.
Steinbeck once wrote: "The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men"
For me this would be obvious when the back-up computer began to fail in the same way that the first had done. Despite multiple negative virus scans, I began to think my computers had suffered the digital equivalent of the avian flu. Next came the feared "Blue Screen of Death."
I was computerless for a week, hence the failure to contribute regularly to this webspace. Once my primary computer returned, I restored the last data back-up only to discover that the system problem had corrupted every back-up since the 31st of December!
I am back, lacking some valuable data, but ready to write new articles and assist in your preparedness. Hopefully my next computer disaster plan works out better.
Remember, no plan is perfect.
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