Keep a LiveCD around and know how to use it. A LiveCD will allow you to boot up an OS (usually Linux) directly from the CD without needing to access the files on your hard drive. This means you can get access to your documents and save them off to a USB flash drive before reinstalling Windows.

The highlights from the rest of my disaster plan:

• Most of my files were re-directed to save on my server. I never worried about losing anything critical.
• I knew exactly which files I needed off the hard drive because they couldn’t be re-directed (mostly my Outlook pst, Access databases, and QuickBooks files).
• I had a relatively recent list of all the software I needed along with all the license info.
• I wish I had an automated PC setup process, but I work by myself so it’s hardly cost effective.
• I had a “Do a backup” task on my Outlook calendar for every week, but I missed a couple recently. Now I’ve setup an external hard drive and scheduled those files to backup weekly.

If I had already had a LiveCD created prior to Saturday night, I could have been back up and running in a few hours. As it was, I spent more time getting a few files off my hard drive than I spent reloading everything.

Here’s the real kicker…not only did I reload my laptop, but I tempted fate and upgraded to Vista at the same time. How’d that go? Surprisingly well so far. I’ll give it a week and then post my thoughts.

It all started with a call first thing this morning. One of those “I can’t believe I just did this…can you help us” calls. This organization uses a Sharepoint intranet and there are a couple very proficient super users who have full control access to the site. But mistakes happen, and they accidentally deleted one of the departmental sites.

Windows Sharepoint Services 3.0 (WSS) has a very useful new feature appropriately called the Recycle Bin. Just like the Recycle Bin on your desktop, it exists to save your hide when you delete something prematurely. Documents, list items, images. Most everything you delete from WSS goes into the Recycle Bin. Most everything, of course, except sites.

So we couldn’t just undo the mistake. But no problem, their Managed Service Provider (MSP) had scheduled daily backups of all their servers. Get the tape, grab the SQL database files and do the restore. We’d only lose a few hours of information assuming the backup ran successfully last night.

Oh man. The database files haven’t been backing up because the backup software couldn’t get exclusive rights to the database. Not a single backup over the past 4 months.

We explored restoring from transaction logs but that wasn’t going to work either. Eventually we just realized that the site was going to have to be rebuilt.

So what went wrong? Well, the first thing was the action to delete the site. WSS gives you a confirmation page to make sure you really want to delete the site. But if you’re busy and not reading closely sometimes even that’s not enough. I don’t think you can easily turn off the ability to delete sites. If you can build them, you can delete them.

Next, as the primary WSS support for the client, I should have been more active in the ensuring the backup process was working. I assumed the tape backup would be sufficient. I should have been much more involved in ensuring that the applications I support are fully covered. I’ve got a Sharepoint backup scheduled now.

Finally, the MSP reports monthly on overall network performance. They’ve been reporting that a full backup has not been successful since June. There are just a few files that have not been backing up so it was never a major concern. Now they know that some of those files are very important. I’m sure they won’t be glossing past the errors any longer.

No less than 4 of the 16 tips I posted earlier this week were relevant and implemented in this situation. I only wish those preparations could have prevented this unfortunate incident.