Preparing for the worst

In early December the computer in our office came very close to a one-way trip to the tip. We were lucky that Leon managed to bring it back to life, and it is now running as before. But it was a bit of a wake up call for us. I've always been meticulous in backing up data regularly to either another PC or an external hard drive (or even to both), but this scare made me think about the difficulties I would have it I had to move to another computer. So, in the middle of the night when I wake up and my brain jolts into gear, I've been planning a Disaster Recovery Strategy. I wanted something that could be kept up to date and implemented painlessly.

The office computer does three main jobs -
1 - connects to the console that wirelessly connects to the weather station, processes the data, and updates our Internet weather page every 15 minutes.
2 - stores the local version of our main website, (which we edit on that computer) and updates any changes on the web server.
3 - runs ImpelPro , our herd management software, which is downloaded to the milk recorders laptop, and updated from NMR's website

All three present challenges in preparing for, or avoiding disaster.

But as I've nothing urgent to do now, being a Lady of Leisure (!), I've spent some time sorting out the issues. And, in no particular order, here's how.

The office and kitchen PC's are on the same network, so transferring files is easy.

2 - I copied all the web stuff to the kitchen PC and checked that I could edit it. For many years I've been using CuteFTP to transfer files, so I dug out the disk to install on the PC. But things have moved on and it didn't like Windows 7. So I found another free programme (SmartFTP), downloaded and installed it. I set up the web server using the same settings and passwords etc as before and checked that I could upload changes. (You may, or may not, have noticed a small change to the News section)

3 - I contacted NMR and discussed the procedure to move to another computer. When the disk with the latest version of the software arrived I installed it, downloaded our data from the website and copied the database from the old computer. We've given it a thorough check and it's working perfectly. The only fly in the ointment will be when we prepare the data for the milk recorder. Their laptops are old and sturdy and use a floppy drive, rather than USB pen etc. But I have an external USB floppy drive, so that shouldn't be a problem

1 - the weather. This will stay running on the current computer for as long as possible (the other two programmes have moved for good), but I wanted to be able to switch to the backup plan without any hassle. Luckily I have an old laptop (remember - never throw anything away). With the wonders of the internet I found an artilce on how to move Weather Display (and more importantly keep all the settings, configuations and history). So this morning I have been copying, configuring, changing registry settings etc and after downloading the latest version of the software, got a Hot Spare to store in the Box Room.. It even updates our weather page if switched on (if you didn't blink about one o' clock you would have seen a slightly different looking weather page).

I would like to think that having done all this "it will never happen" - but I'm now prepared, with a warm glow from a job well done.