The Hurricane Katrina Disaster has lessons for all business owners. Now is a Good time to look over your Disaster recovery plan and see if it would survive a Hurricane Katrina Type Disaster. You may be surprised how easy and cheap it is to have a Disaster Recovery Plan that will protect your business from all types of Disasters from simple theft to a Hurricane Katrina Like Disaster.

As a small business paying for 3 backup data centers might be more like taking a Ferrari to a bicycle race. For many small businesses the key is to have critical data ready and available as soon after a disaster strikes as possible. If you run your business off a computer or even a server then an offsite back-up of key customer and vendor data is a minimal requirement for a good Disaster Recovery Plan.

Most of your Major Fortune 1000 Companies have extensive off site back up plans. A company based in St Louis for example may contract with 2 or 3 companies around the country to provide essential computer services in case a Disaster occurs in St. Louis that makes it impossible for their Data Centers to continue to function in St Louis.

Major Companies in St Louis may have backups in 2 or 3 remote sites like Chicago, New Jersey and Arizona. These Sites are located in different directions and distances from St Louis. Once a year this company may send key Data Center employees to these location to test the back up plan.

As a small business paying for 3 backup data centers and running annual test might be more like taking a Ferrari to a bicycle race. For many small businesses the key is to have critical data ready and available as soon after a disaster strikes as possible. If you run your business off a computer or even a server then an offsite back-up of key customer and vendor data is a minimal requirement for a good Disaster Recovery Plan.

At one time My own personal Disaster Recovery Plan consisted of placing a tape back-up weekly in a safe deposit box in a bank a few miles from my home based business location. If the Area of my home had suffered a Hurricane Katrina like Disaster even if the bank and the contents of that safe deposit box survived the Disaster that backup may not be available to me for weeks or months. Clearly a delay of weeks or months could mean the end of my business.

Keeping Data in an Off Site Local location is still a good idea so you can have fast access to your data and recover from small disasters like fire or theft that only effect your location. Clearly in light of what we learned from Katrina you may want to mail a DVD backup to a trusted friend or relative in another part of the country. A 2nd solution you may want to consider is a service that backs up your computer daily via the Internet. Clearly you would want to make sure the provider you choose for this service is not lo acted across town.

A lesson to learn from Hurricane Katrina is that 1 or even 2 back-up plans may not be enough. You need to judge how valuable your business is to you and possibly mail a DVD to one or more trusted associates in remote off site lo actions and still maintain a local and Internet back ups as well.

While you may not be able to fly cross country for a week to test your back up plan, you could test your back-ups by trying load them on a 'clean' computer.