Experiencing unexpected downtime kills productivity … as I recently found out with my laptop PC. In addition to the risk of disruption in daily work activities, there’s a risk of data loss if data is not backed up. Like those in place for tsunamis, early warning of pending calamity could prevent a lot of headaches.

I started having intermittent issues with my laptop last week. It’s been in service for about four years, so my anxiety rises when anything weird starts to occur. Luckily, I am confident with data protection. ESG centralizes documents in Microsoft SharePoint, has standard backup processes, and I have access to DropBox for random PC files I need to store in the cloud. My productivity was disrupted while my system was repaired (Thanks, Dan!), but the inconvenience was nothing compared to what it could have been had I not had backup copies of my data.

Coincidentally, I received a package from Acronis that was pretty compelling—especially given my circumstances. Acronis just released their new hard drive monitoring software, Acronis Drive Monitor, which detects and reports on indicators of disk health. This can deliver advance warning that a hard drive is going to fail—enough time to back up any critical data and seek repairs. And the good news? It’s a free download: http://www.acronis.com/adm.

• Share