My computer crashed. My business is run from that computer. My clients never knew what happened. Oh no! Not another lecture about doing backups, please! No, not a lecture, but I will relay the story and you may take from it whatever you want…
My computer problems started when a client said they were not able to fax to me. I run a payroll service and clients fax a one page form with employee’s hours and my Apple Mac Mini is setup to send and receive faxes over the (one) phone line I have. So when I went to my office, the computer was half way shut down and had to be restarted. Odd, I thought, but a few days later it did it again. Now, I knew it was not a power outage because the Mini is also set to automatically re-start itself if it loses power and it’s also hooked up to a UPS (battery backup).
Then, when using it to work, applications started “unexpectedly quitting”. A little at first, then more frequently. By the time crash day came, I knew I had problems. Let me tell you about my setup. As I’ve said the computer is an Apple Mac Mini. I have next to it an external hard drive hooked up by Firewire and Apple’s Time Machine software constantly backs up automatically to the external HD without me having to do a thing. Sweet.
On “crash day” as I call it, which was half way through my payroll work, everything was crashing, every application, frequently. So all I did was manage to copy the data files for my payroll program and my accounting program ( I keep my own books and also for other businesses) to a jump drive and to the desktop where I could drag whole folders down to the mail icon in the dock and email them to myself. I also saved them to the Documents folder of my Dot-Mac account- the online service by Apple. I managed to do that before it became totally useless. I wanted multiple redundancy.
You see, the Time Machine backup would do me no good in this instance unless I restored the entire backup to another computer. Normally, you are able to “go back in time” and retrieve a lost or deleted file in Time Machine, assuming your computer works. But now my entire computer was crashed. I have a newer MacBook laptop and an older Mac Mini with an older OS and is nearly full. So, restoring to the older Mini was not an option and I didn’t want to replace everything that was already on the laptop. It was easier to get the data files via jump drive or by email attachments then it was to hook up the external hard drive to the laptop.
So then I went into the repair and restore phase of this ordeal. First order of business was to call Apple support as the Mini was still under warranty. They were very good at walking through the steps, which I won’t go into all that but in the end they concluded the hard drive was toast. I took it in to be repaired after they had me wipe off the hard drive contents completly and try to restore the OS, which didn’t work either. (It turned out not to be the hard drive at all but the RAM that was shot)
Anyway, phase two was that I had to continue in business, especially mine, people kind-of get used to being paid, so I had a payroll business to run. At first I just restored those critical payroll software data files to my laptop which already had the same application programs, hooked up the printer and was able to finish that week’s payrolls. I knew there was a reason I had not sold my old Mac Mini on eBay. I then hooked it up and began the process of setting it up to do payrolls for the next week. It had an older OS version, I had not used it in a long time so the printer driver needed to be installed (newer printer) and everything had to be ready to go by Monday. The latest payroll software had to be installed and updated on the old computer.
Well, it all worked. I figured this was a good exercise anyway since now I would have a fully functioning spare Mini to run my business with. I set it up to receive faxes and I was back in business! Another helpful thing about the .Mac online account, I use it to store my email, instead of having email reside on my computer. So, no matter what machine I use, I can go back and retrieve an email and all my email is in the same place, accessible from the main computer in my office, from the laptop anywhere else, or even from my iPhone. Instead of faxing, some clients email me hours on an Excel spreadsheet they send me. I prefer that because I can then import hours into the payroll program.
After the computer was repaired with new RAM, the really cool part- I fired up the blank hard drive with the OS startup disc, went to the Utilities menu, clicked on “restore from backup”, and restored the ENTIRE computer from the external hard drive that had the Time Machine backup on it to it’s exact state on crash day. You see, only that one, main computer had my iPhoto library of pictures, my iTunes library of music and podcasts. Every now and then you should burn photos and purchased music to DVD’s. Then I restored the data files from my work in the meantime, and that was it!
The most important thing to me is that my clients never knew what happened. I now have a fully functioning spare, I love Time Machine, and I have added the step of carrying in my pocket a little Lexar jump drive and back up all critical data files to it every day. If this should happen again, I will be even better prepared, I will shoot for 5 minutes to be back in business…
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
When computer crashes it is a real tragedy. I had such an experience twice in my life – and both times it was a headache even with almost all the info back-upped… You lose time and nerves repairing it, installing all programs, searching the DVDs with back-ups and then start manically saving and re-saving everything afraid of another crash…
I also remember that my computer crashed several times before – it’s big problem.
I can empathize your feeling since I’ve deal with numerous of my customer facing the same issue like yours. More importantly is to practice good backup habits.
That’s very bad. My computer crashes when I most need it, and I hate that.