What I did this weekend or Why is this typical?
Client calls in a panic - the server has crashed, upon
reboot the hard drive just clicks. I had just installed
a tape backup system last month. 'I hope the tape backup
has been working', he mentions. Me too. So I grab a new
drive and head over to his place. Sure enough the hard
drive is toast. I install the new drive, partition and
format it - ready to go. OK - 'Where is the OS disk?',
I ask innocently. 'What?' he says. We need the OS
install disk, I saw it here in the past, where is it now?
'I don't know.', he says. He calls a friend, 'I can have
one here in 30 minutes', he claims. OK - I won't ask.
Sure enough, 30 minutes later I have a burnt CD with the
(I'm sure a legal copy) of the OS. Drop it in the CD -
it's not bootable. No problem - I have some boot disks
here somewhere - no, I gave them to my son to use for
floppies at school. No problem, I go to my favorite
Boot Disk web site and download some images. Now to
just copy them onto floppies; the floppy drive on this
computer doesn't like my disks. That's OK, there is
another computer in the back. I likes some of my disks,
but not four of them - I'm out of floppies! I dig
through the glove box of my truck and find a stray buried
deep under a pile of Taco Bell Fire Sauce. It works,
now I boot the machine and install the 'legal' copy of
the OS. Now to install the Tape Backup Software so I can
restore a few folders and we are back! The copy of the
backup software I have doesn't work on this version of OS.
Oh yeah, I had to download it directly from the vendor's
website when I set this up - and the only copy is on the
dead hard drive and the backup tapes. No problem - I can
go to the vendor's site and download it again. But it's
down! WTF? OK - a mirror site. After an hour of searching
I give up. I can't find a compatible copy of the backup
software. OK. I pull out the tape drive - I'm going to
install it on a 98 machine, install a copy of the backup
software for 98 (which I have) and restore the version I
need (and maybe the data too!). But the only other machines
available are those stupid mini towers and they don't have
a place to hook up the tape drive. No problem - I bring
the drive and tapes to my shop, pop it in a machine there.
I restore the whole tape to an old hard drive, go back to
the client, add the hard drive to the server and install
the tape software and restore the backup files. But what's
this? QuickBooks works fine but their business software
does not - just a bunch of 'need to reindex' errors. OK,
we have to go back to an older tape. Same problem. An
older tape. Same problem. OMG - all the tapes have the
same problem! They have a bad habit of leaving a computer
on in the back with their program running - and the tape
software can't backup the main data files when the program
is running. I told them over and over - 'It's OK to leave
the machine on, but you must exit the program or it will
not back up at night'. OK - the owner has a laptop that
he makes a read only copy of the program (a DOS program)
so he can use it at home. Bring me the laptop - the data
on it is three weeks old, but it's better than nothing.
They called me a 6PM Friday night, and by 1PM Saturday
they were printing payroll checks (good thing too, one
girl there said she was going to do a Tanya Harding on me
if see didn't get paid, and this was no small girl, if you
know what I mean).
Mission accomplished - I owe it all to good disaster planning.
(yeah right).
--
kpg A+ MCP MCNGP 0x22
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