Don't be an idiot!

[cd34]

With any disaster recovery plan, you should always test it to make sure everything works as expected.

I remember years ago a client was doing backups on a tape -- the tape was never verified after it was written. Mammoth issued a rom fix that allowed backup tapes created on their drives to be able to be read. Backup/Verify or testing it would have eliminated that problem. I of course was called in after a failure to reconstruct. It took 9 days to get that Rom fedexed because Mammoth had to burn new ones for each client.

If you are using norton ghost or some mirroring utility, take the time to try to boot off your backup -- or learn the procedure to get your data back over and test it.

No sense waiting until disaster to figure out how to do it.

One of the people in the WTC on the 71st floor went back for the company's backup tapes and his palm pilot. He walked away and singlehandedly saved his company weeks of lost data because they moved things offsite every 30 days on the 15th.

If it takes you a week or two to get your system back together, how much revenue loss are you dealing with?