Ask Paul: May 24 (Premium)

Happy Friday, and Happy Memorial Day if you're celebrating. It was a BIG week, of course, and like you, I have many questions. So let's kick it off. I have a lot more to write about the events of this past week, but this is a good way to get it started.
Data sync and resiliency
j5 asks:

Hey, Paul so we just went through that really bad storm here in the Houston area. We were fortunate in all that happened to us such as having our power flicker a few times and lots of tree debris in the front and back yard. We’ve been through some bad weather in the past, Hurricane Rita and Harvey, tropical storms, and the Texas Freeze. Through all of these, I’ve come up with a strategy to keep my tech and personal files from getting damaged.

We had a terrible storm here in the Lehigh Valley this week while we were in Seattle, and when we got home, the desktop PC in my home office wouldn't boot up. The power light came on for a moment, then just went out, and it wouldn't start correctly. I had to record First Ring Daily, so I figured I'd just use a laptop, but when I got back from putting in my contacts and cleaning up a bit, I noticed that the PC's power light was blinking, so I watched it for a minute. And it booted up. I thought I must have lost it from a power outage or whatever. But when this kind of thing happens, my mind always goes back to that time our yard got struck my lightning, and we lost several PCs and other devices to the power surge.

I’ve switched to laptops so I can just grab them and go. I now scan all my photos, files and take pictures of physical items, and back everything up into the cloud. I use iCloud and OneDrive.

Same, though I use Google Drive and OneDrive.

I do think cloud services combined with modern day smartphones are such an amazing technological situation to have during a disaster. I had a friend whose entire first floor was flooded during Harvey. All their paper files, family computer with all their photos and financial information were on it. But he had an iPhone and was putting some files into iCloud. Although they permanently lost some old photos and documentation. All their recent photos and documentation were in iCloud. All the places they called to have housework done in the past were in both of their Contacts apps. So it was a lifesaver having their iPhones combined with iCloud.

Right. This is the proper setup, and why I discuss using sync instead of traditional backup tools: Everything you need is synced to the cloud and ideally to several devices (PCs, in my case). So you can just pick up any of them and get to work.

I was curious, do you have a strategy to deal with these kinds of situations being that you need to be able to connect to the internet and write is critical to what you do? I just have to think about one location my home. But you have your place in Mexico and Pennsylvania. And I consider you a tech insider and someone with lots of experience with technology and the cloud. Maybe...