The last few weeks have included one of my and maybe any small business owners worst nightmares. I rebooted my desktop computer in the middle of June and was not able to open my bookkeeping files. No worries I simply rebooted again only with the same result. A little panicked since it was the beginning of my busy season and the office desktop is the central brain that connects everything e-mail, calendar, bookkeeping basically all of my business functions. I started to try and figure out the problem but quickly realized that it was more than I understood and would consume more of my time than I had.
On the upside I had worked with a business coach last winter (Thank you Pricilla at Blazing Trails Coaching) and made a real effort to make much of my background process automatic and online (Acuity and Square). My calendar and much of my client info is part of that system making the next few weeks not a crisis. My desktop machine backs up online on a regular schedule to Carbonite so worst case all of the files are available. E-mail still worked on phone, tablet and laptop really only my local files of client e-mail was not available to me. Finally, I had worked with Angel Computing in Belfast and know that Alex there could do whatever was needed to get me back up and running.
I emailed about my problem and arranged to drop of the machine later that same day. Next day the bad news. A replacement hard drive that I had installed last spring had failed and it turned out had also corrupted the good one. The hard drive was replaced and my files restored from the backup but it was an anxious couple of weeks. The hardest part was waiting and not being a pain in the neck while the work was being done without me in the way.
At the end of the day I am back up and running and so far have found nothing missing. The only really problem on my end was working through a couple of weeks of bookkeeping and records updates not a small effort but nothing compared what it could have been. I feel truly fortunate to have the help of everyone involved because each of you made it possible for me continue with only a bit of inconvenience.
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