I had a terrible experience recently that I wouldn’t wish on anyone – my laptop hard drive stopped working and my computer completely froze.

It was the day after our Reboot & Refocus workshop. I was working on the same notebook I used a day earlier to run my presentation, a big part of which focused on how to prevent data loss by ensuring files are properly backed up.

So What Happened?

I was catching up on some work in the evening and couldn’t get my computer to start – it kept freezing when I tried to boot it up. I did what our clients do in the same situation… I called emergency tech support.

In this case it was my brother and business partner Justin who I called. He told me my hard drive was probably blown.

I had an immediate sense of panic. I starting going through in my mind what was saved on my notebook that wasn’t saved anywhere else and that I might have lost.

Thankfully I save all work-related files on our server at the office which gets backed up offsite. I simply went in the next day and Matt set me up on a new computer and it wasn’t a problem. My email, our accounting information, marketing material, client database and everything else I use on a daily basis is all on our server.

Some Things to Keep in Mind

I wanted to write about this because I told this story to a few people over the last week and couldn’t believe how many are still saving important files on their notebook or desktop.

This is very important – if you are saving any files onto your work computer instead of your company’s server, you are asking for disaster. You need to make sure your business is set up so that any one computer in your office could malfunction (or get stolen, burn out, get wiped out by a virus, etc.) and you wouldn’t lose any data.

Computers are made with moving parts that will at some point stop working and you need to be prepared for that. I had a momentary sense of panic when my computer stopped working but was relieved when I knew I wasn’t going to lose any data.

You don’t want to have that momentary sense of panic turn into the realization that you’ve lost weeks or months worth of work.

Save your data properly and make sure it’s backed up!