A client's office flood made me rethink my whole backup check process

I was on a regular service call at a small law firm in Tacoma about six months ago. Their main server room had a slow pipe leak in the ceiling that went unnoticed over a weekend. The floor was soaked, and while the server rack was fine, the backup drive sitting under the desk was not. They lost three days of billing data because the local backup was their only copy. In my experience, I used to just check if backups were running, but now I physically verify the backup device's location and environment. I ask about off-site or cloud options on every single quote. Has anyone else had a simple environmental issue wreck a client's data recovery plan?

2 comments

2 Comments

iris_dixon912mo ago

That's a solid upgrade to the check. Maybe even add a quick note about the backup's physical spot to the service ticket itself. Then the next tech can see it's been looked at.

julia_hayes2mo ago

My buddy's shop had a server go down hard last year. The old ticket just said "backup verified." The new guy spent half a day looking for the actual drive because nobody wrote down it was in the locked cabinet under the coffee maker. Total mess.