Your FundRaiser Software Data: it's not immune to computer failure

Or, "Do as I say, not as I've Done"

Yesterday morning (Thursday, 2.21.13) was one of those unusual scenes in Southern Arizona (location of the training office), with 6 inches or so of snow on the gound at our 4300 foot elevation.  Even low-lying areas, like Tucson and Phoenix, got a bit of the white stuff.  A pretty day, and I, with no scheduled classes or pre-sale tours, was getting ready to work on my latest video project for FundRaiser Software:  task-oriented training videos.  I've been working on them for a while now, with the expectation of debuting in a month or so.  Task-oriented videos will show you the basics of, say, putting out a mass mailing, or sending out thank you letters, or creating a grouping of all your donors, or simply entering a new name record.  And then my video computer crashed.  And I found myself in the position of not having practiced what I preach.

2 Computer Types:  Have Crashed; Will Crash

I've expounded before on the necessity of keeping backups of data, both as insurance against computer failure as well as fail-safe when about to try something new in FundRaiser, like mass deletions, duplicate merging, or importing data.  My secondary work computer, the one used to create all the training videos, crashed hard, and no amount of cajoling, tinkering, recovery disk techniques, nor swearing at it was able to bring it back to life without losing all the data on the hard drive.  That's right:  ALL the data.  Training scripts, old videos, new videos, graphics for openings and closings, music, and all the programs used to create them... simply gone.  And the worst part of it all is that I had no backups, even though I preach the importance of them to all our users.

Confession as catharsis

So, since this is possibly the last blog I'll be doing for FundRaiser (people have been fired from other companies for much, much less), I find it rather healing to be able to tell you all that even a trained "professional", such as myself, can be guilty of overlooking the importance of keeping backups.  Now I've spent a full day in having to reconfigure the computer, with its 140+ Windows updates, special video drivers, etc., etc., only to arrive at a point from which I can begin re-creating lost videos.  And I want to apologize to you, our users (as well as to the staff here at FundRaiser), since this is quite a setback to one of our goals:  providing another training option from which to choose.

The Road to Recovery

I've always hated that saying "today is the first day of the rest of your life" for some unknown reason.  But I have to look at today as the day to implement a backup plan for future video-creation (again, assuming I'm not "retired" by next week) that will disallow this predicament from becoming a reality again.  The programs (operating system included) were time-consuming to re-install, of course, but the videos themselves are gone.  I can't get them back, but perhaps I can make something better to replace them, keeping a backup copy (or two or three) along the way.

Learn from MY mistakes, PLEASE!

I've said in the past that the rules for keeping backups of your data are fairly simple:  1)  keep the backup on a separate "media" (like a thumb or flash drive, or a different computer on your network, perhaps); 2)  backup often enough that it won't be a big hassle to "catch up" to the present after having to restore from your most recent backup.  That second one simply means that, if you don't want to re-enter more than a day's worth of information, you need to create a backup every day.  And you'll want to 3)  keep multiple backups on hand, so that you can go farther back in time than just the most current backup.  You may find that the most recent backup had a problem of its own, so you need a backup made prior to that one.  Multiple backups help, and having the date as a part of the backup name can speed up your selection when you need to recover from a crash.  

Training Videos still exist on our website

Luckily, all the old videos still exist in the Customer Portal section of our website.  You can log on through your copy of FundRaiser in the Help menu.  And I think I'll be introducing the task-oriented videos as they are produced, rather than waiting for several to debut the idea... and next the uneasy task of revealing my mistakes to my employers .  Wish me luck, and GO MAKE A BACKUP OF YOUR DATA...  NOW!!