Auxillery Drive Fritzed Out-Kicking Myself

[Virgs Sew n Sew]

Needed to write a business letter and I had one of a similar nature so no problem I thought.  I'll just do a cut and paste on the old one.  Could not get the file to open.  It is supposed to reside on my "G" drive.  Much to my dismay, the "G" drive does not show up.  First I recycled my computer -- still no "G" drive.  Then I unplugged and replugged all the cables connecting the auxillery drive to my tower.  Still no "G" drive.  Then I trotted upstairs to look for the "G" drive on my laptop (we're all networked together).  I was really just trying to confirm what I was already pretty certain of -- my aux drive appears to have fritzed. 

Having exceeded my knowledge, I called upon Bob to work his magic.  All to no avail, my aux. drive is not being recognized by any computer on our network.  All my business stuff is saved to this drive, pictures of quilts from the state fairs, pics of our dogs/cats/Christmas's past/other stuff that I can't even think of.  Should not be a problem as Bob is supposed to back up to disk the first of every month.  Unfortunately, I've neglected to remind him for long enough that I would lose too much data to go to my last backup.

So, tomorrow, Bob will take my aux. drive into one of the computer sites and we will get the honor of paying them to retrieve all my business stuff on the drive.  Just about had taxes done, just a question of plugging numbers into forms.  Mostly I'm really ticked at myself for not nagging my procrastinating hubby into backing up my business directories.  First of March, my size 7 will be firmly planted into his backside--guaranteed ; )

Virginia

[MinUph]

Computerizing a business without a backup plan is like Russian Roulette. As you now know. Sorry to hear of the failure. It hurts.

[Virgs Sew n Sew]

Yah, I'm a dumbss for not riding Bob's butt about my back-up.  We should be able to get most everything recovered.  It will just cost a couple hundred bucks.  No choice about it since all my IT records for the last 4 years plus the start of this year are on there.  As long as I get everything through the end of last year I'll be happy.  Don't have that much for this year on the computer yet.

I've gone through and marked the 1st for the rest of the year in large capital records:  BOB-BACK-UP COMPUTER. 

Virginia

[JuneC]

I often think that I don't do enough to protect data.  When I was in IT, we backed up daily, weekly and monthly.  The tapes (yes, I'm that old) were cycled and we'd never lose more than a day's work.  The monthly backups were packed up and FedEx'd to Ruby Hills (the salt mines in Kansas? I think).  Every month we'd send them a new batch, and they'd send us back one of the older backups to reuse the tapes.  OK, that's a different business. 

But. If your house/business burned to the ground tomorrow, insurance would probably cover most of your property but what about the data?  With my luck, a year after that happened the IRS would want to audit my records from 2 years ago.  It would be a good practice for all of us to keep a backup copy somewhere off-property. 

June

[Virgs Sew n Sew]

You're absolutely correct about off-site storage June.  I worked for a furniture store in KS.  We had an upstairs sprinkler pipe burst at 3AM.  It created a lot of havoc by the time 9AM came along when the store was unlocked.  I ran backups every week but they were in a disk storage case right by my computer.  Both had very high pressure water constantly for 7 hours (it took an hour to get the city to figure out how to turn the water off externally -- too much water pressure to be able to get to the interior cut off -- what a mess).  All of the paper records were obliterated by the water.  Store owner was fortunate that once the computer had dried out, all of the data was intact.  From that point on, Dale stopped by my desk once a week to get the latest disk back-up which he took home.

Not only do I remember tapes, June, I took a FORTRAN class back in '74.  We punched in our code on decks of cards that resembled the old phone bills Ma Bell used to send out.  Nothing was more fun that dropping your deck and getting the "pleasure" out of putting it back in order.  Good times!

Virginia

[Virgs Sew n Sew]

Man, am I ever on top of the world!!!  We had tried a couple of things on my aux. storage last night, including powering everything down overnight and then powering up this morning.  Yesterday, the light on the aux drive was rolling and Bob said it should not roll.  When I powered up, there was no light at all. 

You have to understand that this is what Bob did for 30 years.  First on mainframes and the last 5 years, network/pc issues.  He was very good at his job.  So, he came down the stairs this morning and tried some other voodoo (I was doing other stuff so have no idea).  We have another of these drives upstairs that used to be used to store recorded shows on until they had been watched.  He took the power supply off that system and swapped it out on my aux. drive and like a miracle, my aux. drive is up and running with no loss of data.

As we speak, a complete back-up to disk is being done.  I think I will have his sister store them for us at her house.  Whew!  Missed a large bullet on that one!

Virginia

[ajlelectronics]

Can I suggest that you invest the money saved into a NAS (Network Addressable Server)? If you go for a 2 disc model like the RN102 Netgear, it will keep its own duplicate on the second drive. You can also tell it to do a regular backup from your data at regular intervals, without you having to remember anything.

Another NAS benefit is the ability to access it from anywhere in the world if you wish. It is also a very useful device for the storage of all your music etc, so that any device can access it.