Disaster Strikes Three Weeks Before Our Daughter's Bat Mitzvah...

My husband broke the news to me: "Your computer's hard drive crashed."

The next few weeks of event planning loomed ominously. We had bet wrong on the odds of our aging computer holding out until after the bat mitzvah at the end of May.

Fortunately for us, in mid-April I had called Lynn Thames when I realized that our external hard drive was full - triggering a malfunction in the back up system set up by a prior computer specialist. At the time, Lynn coached me over the phone on how to modify my settings and I ran a manual back up.

The worst case scenario - total data loss - didn't play out. My hard drive was kaput, but Lynn was able to retrieve data from the mid-April external hard drive back up.  All I had to do, then, was reenter details from  RSVPs and rewrite a month's worth of event planning documents.

In retrospect, we had a wonderful celebration. However, I learned the hard way that creating a fail-proof back up system should have been at the top of my 'to do' list.  Today I use a system Lynn set up to back up continuously online and run daily incremental backups to my external hard drive. Hopefully, my tale of woe will inspire you to make sure your computer is disaster ready!

- Jessica Stein Diamond, Writer & Editor, jessica@jsteindiamond.net