Earlier this week one of the biggest cloud platforms, Google Drive, experienced a major outage, leaving many people without access to their cloud files. It was very frustrating for those people and understandably so.
How do you prevent such outages from affecting you? It's pretty simple but most people do not plan ahead enough to do this.
You simply need a back up. There are a lot of way to get a back up of your system. Usually the cloud is the back up for many.
So how do you back up your back up?
A contingency plan should always be in place so that your flow of business is never interrupted and you are not relying on google or someone else's engineers to fix the issue. Here are some things to consider to keep your business and life moving forward.
Have another hard drive
Hard drives have become extreme inexpensive in the last ten years. What could have costs you hundreds or even over a thousand dollars can now only cost $50-$150 dollars. I recently purchased an eight (8) terabyte hard drive for about $180 that my 4 terabyte cloud drive syncs to. To be extra cautious, I have a third in case something goes bad on one or two if them. I even have them in separate locations in case of a fire or theft.
Have another cloud system
There are services out there that will sync two different cloud systems together in case one of them goes down. This will sync your Google Drive to your Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox accounts for a fee. While I personally do not do this myself, I have seen other companies to do as part of their quality management system for backups and security plans.
Getting this set up does not need to be too time consuming, but can be done quickly if you have some that knows what they are doing. Paramount Leadership Group is such a company that does this and can give you a free consulting session.