What precautions have all you web hosts taken in the eventuality that one or more of your servers goes down/hard drive failure?

Do you automatically email all users on that server, stating the problem, give ETA when the server is due back etc.

Do you have a strict list of things you check through to see why the server went down ?

Do you have your important data backed up on a second hard drive?

Those are just a few basic examples, please state what you have done.

I'm just wondering what kind of precautions and counter measures I should take in order to keep my customers pleased.

I make incremental backups of everything on the server on another server so that if i've a HD failure i can easily switch everything on another server.

Isnt that expensive?

Yea, it is probobly the best way to do things. We would hate to be responsible for someone to loose their materials. We just wouldn't let that happen, it would be bad service and good service has a cost.

No it really isn't that expensive. Gnax runs a nice ftp backup service that's reasonably cost effective. Just factor it into your business plan and price accordingly.