Technology Blog

It turns out this hard drive had been used in one of their "always on" media servers, and had nearly 7 years of powered on time where this drive had been used!  Some hard drives you buy are fully tested to handle that, and are designed to handle 1,000,000 hours in terms of Mean Time Between Failure (MTTF), but this one was not.  This was simply a good brand name performance desktop hard drive, which is fine, but it was at the end of it's life as you can see from the tools used in these pictures below: 

Now that we've confirmed a few details about that drive health, it's time to figure out what to do next.  First, we ensure we get as much data off that hard drive as possible, then we replace that hard drive and never use it again. 

In this case, we were lucky and our educated customer was doing things the right way:

1) He was running basic health checkup tools (that we installed) which alerted him to the hard drive problem at a early point in time.  These tools run monthly and alerted him at the first sign of issues, instead of after a complete failure.  In this case, we were able to pull all data off that hard drive with only a small bit of hassle.  There were some hard drive sectors that needed repaired first. 

After that small repair, and full data copy, we were able to buy and install a new pro NAS hard drive for his server and specific needs.  This new hard drive has a much longer 1,000,000 hour MTBF, or nearly 100 years.  Now I've never seen a drive need to run that long, but this gives the customer and us peace of mind.  

2) Even if we weren't able to recover the data, this customer had a good data backup strategy in place.  Now, it wasn't mission critical data, so in his case he runs a weekly and a monthly backup.  He had been lax on the weekly backup, but the monthly external drive he backed up to was a good copy.  Fortunately, we don't have to go back a month in time, but he would have been ok if we had to, since lots of his files on this drive don't change frequently.  

At 208 Pro Tech we help our customers ensure they work smart, and become educated, so that the computers and technology in your life work for you in a way that improves your operations.  Allowing you to focus on your like and your business efficiency means that we get happy successful customers. 

​Give us a call at 208-960-0027 if we can help with your data backup or system checkup needs.  

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​Our technicians can quickly diagnose if you will benefit from a SSD. We will review system hardware performance graphs and share that info with you.

If if you want a SSD upgrade, we make it simple for you. We will completely re-image your existing hard drive onto a new solid-state drive, making the transition to the new drive a non event since everything is just as it was (only faster!)

​We install them in computers as old as 7 years, in order to give them a couple extra years of life. And, the good news is the SSD is still transferable to any new computer where you still see the investment benefit.

To learn more about SSD’s, read the article below.  It does a good job quickly explaining the various differences between a traditional hard drive and a new solid-state drive: https://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch001396.htm

If we can help explain the benefits, or install a drive for you, just give us a call!

Shown at the right is an actual phone bill from one of our customers.  They saved over $400 annually by having us help replace this with a VOIP phone.  
 
If you’re like many of us who uses your cell phone as your primary number, but wants a land line for other reasons, then this could be for you.  Possible uses of a inexpensive VOIP phone line:

• Install a phone line at your cabin or residence.
• Use it as a fax number.
• Children can use it when they get home from school, so they don’t have to have a cell phone.

This land line can be installed for a minimal fee, and will use your internet connection instead of traditional phone service.   Here's how it works:

In addition to the cost savings, you may get extra features that you would have had to pay extra for previously, such as:

• Caller ID
• Free calls to US and Canada
• Call Internationally at a very low rate
• Voice mail sent to your email
• 3 way calling
• Call screening
• Call waiting
• Call recording

Other additional services can be included (and may require an extra installation or ongoing service fee):

• Keep your existing landline phone number
• Wireless phone adapter (if a wired network connection is not available)
• Install e911 services
• Receive calls to your home #, on your cell phone

 
Please note that while this service has been reliable in our years of usage, that you must research and personally accept any and all differences.  There are limitations from traditional phone services, such as:

• If you lose power then you won’t have a phone. (since you won’t have internet)
• 911 services could be different.  (however, we believe we have a solution to resolve this, and make it the same)

If you have questions about how VOIP works, the costs, or the cost savings, please give us a call and let us help you today.