Everybody in Baton Rouge has a storm routine. Water, batteries, gas in the truck, something to cover the windows. What almost nobody has is a plan for the computers — and those computers are usually holding the photos, the tax records, the customer database, and the QuickBooks file that the whole business runs on.
We are heading into the busiest stretch of the season, so this is the right time to think about it. And after 30 years of doing this work here, I can tell you the calls I get after a storm are rarely about wind. They're about power — surges, outages, generator problems — and about water. Those are the two things that kill computers in Louisiana, and both of them are things you can prepare for in an afternoon.
Start With the Only Thing That Really Matters
Equipment is replaceable. Annoying and expensive, but replaceable. Your data usually isn't. If you only do one thing after reading this, make it this one: get a current backup that is not sitting in the same building as your computer.
That last part is what people miss. Plenty of folks have a backup drive, and it's plugged into the desk right next to the tower. That's a great backup for a failed hard drive. It is completely useless if three feet of water comes through the office, because both copies drown together. Flooding doesn't care that you had a backup strategy.
The Rule Worth Remembering
The standard advice is three copies of your data, on two different kinds of storage, with one of them offsite. You don't need to overthink it. In practice, for most homes and small offices, that looks like the working copy on your computer, a backup on an external drive, and a cloud backup somewhere well outside the storm's path.
The offsite copy is the one that saves you in a hurricane, and it's the one most people skip because it costs a few dollars a month. For a business, that few dollars a month is the cheapest insurance you will ever buy.
A Sync Folder Is Not the Same as a Backup
This one causes arguments, so let me be precise. OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive are genuinely useful for storms, because your files exist somewhere that isn't Louisiana. That's real protection against flood and fire.
But sync is not backup. If a file gets deleted, corrupted, or encrypted by ransomware on your machine, the service faithfully syncs that damage everywhere else. A real backup keeps historical versions you can go back to. Use the sync service for the geography, and use a real backup for the history. They solve different problems.
Test It Before You Need It
A backup you have never restored from is a hope, not a plan. Once — just once — go pull a file out of your backup and open it. I have watched business owners discover during the worst week of their year that their backup had quietly stopped running eight months earlier. Ten minutes of testing now beats that discovery later.
Power Is What Actually Kills Your Equipment
Most storm damage I see isn't dramatic. The house never floods and nothing blows through the roof. The power flickers off and on a few times, or the utility restores service with a surge, and a week later the computer won't boot. That's the common story.
A Power Strip Is Not a Surge Protector
These look identical and cost about the same, and one of them does nothing to protect you. If the packaging doesn't say "surge protection" with a joule rating on it, it's just an extension cord with extra outlets. Check what you actually have plugged in behind your desk — I'd guess about half the ones I find in homes are plain power strips.
Something else nobody mentions: surge protectors wear out. They absorb energy until they've absorbed all they can, and then they keep working as a power strip while protecting nothing. If yours has been through a few seasons or took a big hit during a storm, replace it. They're cheap. A ruined computer isn't.
What a Surge Protector Won't Do
No surge protector on the market will save your equipment from a direct or nearby lightning strike. That kind of energy goes wherever it wants, including through the ethernet cable and the coax line if those aren't protected too.
The only thing that reliably works against a strike is physical separation. Unplug it. That's not old-fashioned advice, it's just the one method that can't fail.
A UPS Is for Shutting Down, Not Staying Up
A battery backup — a UPS — is worth having for any business machine and any home computer holding something you care about. But people misunderstand what it's for. A typical unit gives you somewhere around ten to twenty minutes, not an evening of work.
That window is the point. It lets a computer shut down properly instead of dropping dead mid-write, which is exactly when file systems get corrupted and drives get damaged. It also smooths out the brownouts and flickers that come before an outage, and those are harder on electronics than a clean power loss.
Careful With Generator Power
After the storm, when the generator comes out, resist the urge to plug the computer straight into it. Portable generators — especially older ones that aren't inverter models — put out power that wanders around in ways sensitive electronics don't like. It's fine for a fan or a fridge. It can slowly cook a computer's power supply.
If you have to run equipment off a generator, put a UPS or a voltage regulator in between. It cleans up what the generator is putting out.
The Day or Two Before
When something is actually headed our way, here's the short list. None of it takes long.
Run a Backup, Then Unplug Everything
Back up first while you still have power and internet. Then shut everything down properly and unplug it from the wall — power, ethernet, and cable. Don't just flip the surge protector switch. Pull it out of the outlet.
Before you start disconnecting, take a picture of the back of your computer and your network gear with your phone. When you're putting it all back together by flashlight three days later, you will be glad you did.
Get Equipment Off the Floor
Towers sit on the floor. That's where water shows up first. Move the computer, the modem, the router, and especially your backup drives up onto a desk or a high shelf. If you're in an area that has taken water before, go higher than you think you need to.
Charge Everything, Including the Boring Stuff
Laptops, phones, tablets, power banks, and the flashlight you forgot was rechargeable. If you have a UPS, its battery charges while the power is on — so leave it plugged in until you actually leave.
If You're Evacuating, Take the Drive
You can't take the desktop. You can absolutely take the external backup drive, and it fits in a bag next to the important papers. If you're running a business, the backup drive belongs in the same pile as the insurance documents.
The One Nobody Thinks About: Getting Locked Out
This one catches people, and it has nothing to do with hardware.
Most of your important accounts — email, bank, payroll, the business systems — are protected by two-factor authentication that sends a code to your phone or uses an app on it. Now picture the phone getting soaked, broken, or left behind in an evacuation. Suddenly you can't get into your own email, and the recovery process wants to send a code to the phone you no longer have.
Every service that offers two-factor also offers backup codes. Generate them, print them, and put them with your important documents. It takes fifteen minutes and it's the difference between inconvenient and genuinely stuck at the worst possible time.
While you're at it, write down a short list of what your business actually needs to operate — which systems, which logins, who to call at your bank and your insurance company. If you can work from anywhere with a laptop and a phone, you can keep going from wherever you end up.
Document What You Own
Walk through with your phone and take pictures of your equipment, including serial numbers and model stickers. Keep receipts where you can get to them from somewhere that isn't your house.
Insurance claims go dramatically better when you can show what you had instead of describing it from memory. For a business, this matters even more, because you're documenting equipment you may need to replace quickly to keep operating.
After the Storm — Please Read This Part
This is where I see recoverable situations turn into permanent ones, and it's almost always because someone was in a hurry to know if their stuff still worked.
Don't Power On Anything That Got Wet
If a computer or a drive has been in water — or even sat in a hot, humid, powerless house for days — do not plug it in to check. Water plus electricity is what causes the permanent damage. A drive that is merely wet is very often recoverable. A drive that was wet and then powered on frequently isn't, because spinning wet platters can destroy the surface the data is written on.
Don't try to dry it out yourself either. No rice, no hair dryer, no oven. Those either don't work or actively make it worse. Leave the drive as it is, put it in a sealed bag so it doesn't dry out with contaminants baked onto the platters, and get it to someone who does data recovery as soon as you can. Sooner is genuinely better here — corrosion starts immediately.
Let Equipment Come Back to Temperature
If a computer sat in a house with no air conditioning for a week and you bring it into a cold room, condensation forms inside it. Give it several hours to equalize before you power it on.
Watch for the Slow Failures
Equipment that took a surge doesn't always die immediately. Sometimes it just gets flaky — random restarts, a drive that's suddenly loud, a machine that won't wake up right. If a computer starts behaving differently after a storm, back it up right then and get it looked at. That behavior often means a power supply or a drive is on its way out.
None of This Takes Long
Reading it all at once makes it sound like a project. It isn't. A real surge protector, a backup that lives somewhere else, printed backup codes, and a habit of unplugging when something's coming — that covers the large majority of what I get called about after a storm.
The people who come through fine aren't the ones with the most expensive equipment. They're the ones whose data was somewhere else when the water came in.
Not sure your backup is actually working, or want someone to look at how your office is set up before the next one comes? Give FlexTech a call. We come to you, we'll tell you straight what's solid and what isn't, and if you've already got a drive that took on water, don't plug it in — call us first.