Preventing and surviving today's computer disasters

Black Issues in Higher Education, April 21, 2005 by Reid Goldsborough

Disaster is interesting. We read about unspeakable murders in the paper, watch news of devastating hurricanes and hurry to neighborhood fires that destroy a family's home. We shake our heads in empathy for others and sigh in relief for ourselves.

Writers like to write about disasters for similar reasons. It's easy to find the human interest and make the emotion rise from the page, and it's rewarding to disseminate information that can help readers avoid becoming victim themselves.

Computer disasters are no different, although they typically aren't life threatening, unless a PC happens to fall on your head, likely tossed out a window by someone fed up with yet another computer bug, conflict, glitch, crash, lockup, virus or other hassle.

One of the most interesting things about computer disasters is how they've changed in recent years. In the distant computer past--five or more years ago disasters were primarily hardware--and software-related. Today, with the Internet exposing you to educational resources and criminal deviancy in almost equal levels, disaster can come at you from all directions.

So say computer experts Jesse Tortes and Peter Sideris in their new book Surviving PC Disasters, Mishaps, and Blunders', published by Paraglyph Press--and they're right.

The most common PC disasters today involve things like identify theft, viruses and hacking, says Sideris. As the Internet has become more popular, making huge numbers of potential victims available to the bad guys, these disasters have proliferated.

Though you still have to be prepared for crashing hard drives and buggy operating systems and programs, these problems have become less common as hardware and software have become more reliable.

Sprinkled throughout Sideris and Torres' readable book are boxes of text, highlighted with a gray background and preceded with the call-out 'HORROR STORY!' in typography reminiscent of a hack-and-slash B movie. There are 68 stories in all, and some are real doozies, throughout the 408-page paperback, though not all of the horror stories are accounts of real things that happened to real people; some are warnings about things that could happen.

The first two pages of the book, preceding even the title page, consist of six additional gray-background horror stories.

Sideris has experienced his share of crashed hard drives and other computer problems, both at work and at home, though nothing that was truly devastating, he says.

During the day, Sideris is a systems engineer with General Technology Group Inc., a computer consulting company in Meriden, Conn., where he spends most of this time helping clients with security, backup planning and implementation, in short, computer disaster prevention. His co-author is an IT consultant specializing in enterprise management.

The disasters they discuss in their book run the gamut: physical theft; hardware, software and network mishaps; travel troubles; Internet fraud; spam; viruses; phishing; spyware; piracy; and backup and recovery. Included in the book is lots of levelheaded advice on prevention and cures.

The best advice for preparing for and surviving any computer disaster is the advice most frequently offered: Back up. You should back up any crucial data stored on your hard disk on a regular and frequent basis.

To prevent the possibility of losing backup data, as well as the data on your hard disk because of a fire, flood or similar catastrophe, you should make sure your data is stored offsite. You can do this with any one of a number of different techniques, from using an Internet backup service to physically transporting backup tapes or discs to a different location.

To prevent the possibility of being unable to access backup data because the backup media has gone bad, regularly test your restore procedure. You don't have to restore all of your data, just selected files to make sure the procedure and media will work when you need them to.

Surviving PC Disasters', Mishaps', and Blunders retails for $29.99 and is currently available though Amazon.com and other online booksellers, as well as local bookstores. The book is a typical computer trade paperback, written more to satisfy a publisher's page count demands than to treat readers pressed for time with tightly written, well-organized prose.

But it's packed with solid information that you don't have to be a tech guru to understand. The advice might help you avoid experiencing a computing horror story of your own.

Reid Goldsborough is" a syndicated columnist and author of the book Straight Talk About the Information Superhighway. He can be reached at reidgold@netaxs.com or <www.netaxs.com/~reidgold/column>.