I don't want to continue to harp on this subject but if the tragedy of September 11 taught us anything, it should have taught the necessity of being prepared. The chances of being where such a tragedy might occur are slim but there's still fire, flood, tornado, hurricane and earthquake. Certainly, the primary function of any disaster plan should be the safety of you and your family. However, once you know you and your family are safe, you have to deal with picking up the pieces of your life.

If that life is on your computer, you should have a plan for recovery. Many of the businesses inside the World Trade Center were very quickly able to pick up where they left off because they had offsite storage of their backup. You see, the most dispensable part of your setup is your hardware.

You can insure your computer. Whether in your business or a part of your homeowner's policy, most such insurance policies offer the option to "schedule" or list specific items. If you've insured your computer for replacement cost, that will usually give you state of the art hardware if you need to replace it if disaster strikes. The schedule usually allows you to specify a cost. First rule, over insure, not by a lot but enough to give you a cushion.

If your system cost $1500 to $2000, figure $3000 to $3500. Remember, you will not only have to replace your hardware but your software. Your hardware will include a new monitor, printer, probably a scanner and one or two UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) units for power backup. Hence, you need to build in that cushion I mention above. Obviously, any other peripherals or special software requirements you have, need to be included in your thinking as well.

The next step takes some consideration. I have some friends whose primary form of backup is to image their drives. That's fine as far as it goes but in a real disaster, that image may not serve you. Unless your imaging software has the option of allowing you to restore individual files without having to restore the entire image it might turn out to be worthless to you.

Remember, insurance buys you a new computer; you can't simply restore your old image in its entirety. The new computer will have its own drivers and hardware setup. Hence, all you'll need from an image is the ability to restore your data files. However, there's another Catch 22 with imaging, most media isn't large enough to hold an image file.

Many of those same friends of mine who use Imaging as their primary mode of backup keep that image file on a separate partition or on some backup computer. In a disaster where you must leave quickly, you can't simply pick up your primary system or your backup if they both happen to be desktop computers. One way around this is a removable hard drive. Just be sure you always have one drive with your most recent backup disconnected from the system. If not, when disaster strikes you might have to shut the system down before you could remove the drive and impending disaster usually doesn't give enough time for that.

New DVD rewriteable drives may help with this issue since for many, an image might be stored on one or two disks. If you have a laptop computer that mirrors what you have on your desktop, then, in a disaster all you would need to do is pickup the laptop and exit the premises. A laptop is an expensive solution so unless your business or other computing activities require a laptop there are other options.

Instead of an image a good backup of your data, stored on CD-R or RW disk would be the next best thing. You simply pick up the disk containing your most recent backup and walk out the door. I can't emphasize enough the importance of a good backup. Things we take for granted such as System Restore or GoBack won't help in the type of situation where your system is destroyed in a disaster and neither was designed nor should be used for backup.

Of course, a backup is only of value if you can reach it. In a business, you should consider some sort of offsite storage. There are some services that will do this online but they can be expensive and unless you have a broadband connection, they will be slow.

If your business and computer are your own, you might just get into the habit of placing a copy of that day's backup into your briefcase to take home with you each day. If you have one of those storage sites, you might go there each day or once a week and place a copy of your backup there as long as it is a secure location.

The point is, we don't know when such events will strike. Being prepared is easy; reconstructing all your files and perhaps years of financial data is not. A few minutes each day backing up your data and making sure that backup is in an easily accessible place for quick retrieval if you must leave in hurry is a small price to pay for peace of mind now and later.