Load shedding doesn't just kill your lights — it can corrupt files, damage hardware, and wipe unsaved work. Here's how to make sure your data survives every stage.
Load shedding is a reality of doing business in South Africa. You've adapted. You've got UPS units, maybe a generator. But have you thought through what happens to your data when the power cuts mid-save?
The Risks Nobody Talks About
File corruption. When power cuts during a write operation — your computer saving a file, your server committing a transaction — that file can be corrupted. Sometimes partially. Sometimes completely. You don't always know immediately.
Hardware failure. Repeated power fluctuations and unclean shutdowns accelerate hard drive wear. A drive that would have lasted 5 years might fail in 3 if it's been through 300 load shedding events.
Unsaved work. The obvious one. Two hours of work lost because the power cut before the last autosave.
What a Proper Backup Strategy Looks Like
The gold standard is the 3-2-1 rule:
- 3 copies of your data
- 2 different storage types (e.g. local drive + cloud)
- 1 offsite copy (the cloud counts)
The cloud component is what protects you from physical disasters — not just load shedding, but fire, theft, flood. If your office burns down, your cloud backup is untouched.
What to Use for Cloud Backup
For most Johannesburg SMEs, we recommend one of the following depending on your setup:
Microsoft 365 with OneDrive — If you're a Microsoft shop, OneDrive syncs constantly. As long as you save to OneDrive rather than your desktop, every file version is automatically backed up and recoverable.
Google Drive / Workspace — Same principle. Save to Drive, not to local storage. Your files survive anything that happens to the machine.
Dedicated backup software — For servers and databases, tools like Veeam or Acronis provide automated, scheduled backups with version history. These can run to local NAS storage and the cloud simultaneously.
The Load Shedding Checklist
- UPS on all critical machines (minimum 30-minute runtime)
- Autosave enabled on all Office and productivity apps (every 5 minutes)
- Files saved to cloud storage (OneDrive/Google Drive), not local desktop
- Automated cloud backup for server data
- Backup tested within the last 3 months
If you can tick all five, you're in good shape. If there are gaps, those are worth addressing before the next Stage 6 catches you mid-project.
One More Thing
A backup you've never tested is not a backup. It's a hope. Ask your IT provider when they last did a restore test. If they can't tell you, that's a red flag worth paying attention to.
