How to keep your data safe

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Summary

A friend called because his hard drive stack wasn’t showing up, and it turned out the software was too old for his newer operating system. I always tell people to change drives every three to four years and always have two drives, one for work and one for backup. Stacks and NAS are great but they’re mini computers that need updates, so the two drive option is the most future proof. If you have old drives, go check them now before you end up crying to me and paying a fortune.

Raw

I talk about backups and the security of your data a lot. And the reason I do that is because something has just happened with one of my clients. So I think it’s the best time to talk about it again.

A couple of days ago, I got a call from actually a friend of mine. He was a client, but he’s now a friend. And he has a hard drive stack that, wasn’t showing up on his desktop. We found out, after doing some diagnosis, we found out that the operating system was too new and the stack was too old and they don’t make software for that stack anymore.

It’s a great hard drive stack. It’s a Pegasus from Apple. Apple usually sells this stuff. Now, those devices are great. But the problem is because of that software issue, you need to keep upgrading.

So I usually say to people, you need to change your hard drives every three years. Now, it becomes costly. But again, data nowadays, we have so much data that we need hard drives. And it’s just another expense that we have to spend, basically.

Now, I change my hard drives every three to four years. You can probably keep them longer than that depending on how often you use them and so on but I also tell people to always buy two hard drives one for the data that you’re working with and another hard drive to back that data up.

Now another way to do this is buy a NAS network storage so and that’s actually I mean I have one of those now they’re great for techies because it’s yet another computer that you have to deal with with updating and so on. They’re great. They’re fantastic. Stacks are great and fantastic. But if you don’t understand that you have to upgrade these things because of this software, you’re going to come unstuck later on down the line.

So the best option, I would say, is the two drive option. That’s the best option because it’s future proof. There’s no special computer, whatever. There’s no software that you have to, to upgrade. It’s just a freaking hard drive, right?

But stacks and NAS, they are effectively mini computers. The Synology NAS basically, which is the one I have, does a whole bunch of things and they’re awesome and actually they’re great for small businesses because you don’t generally have to worry about it once it’s set up, but you still have to keep an eye on it, right?

The stack, less so because it’s not a computer. It’s not necessarily a computer. There’s no real operating system that you can log in and check stuff generally. But the drivers you need for your computer, that company may not make it anymore, which was what happened in this instance.

So you have to be careful of what drives you buy for your Mac, for your Apple, for your PC even, right? So make sure that you know what’s the best storage system for what you’re doing and using. And if you have old hard drives, please, please go and check them out.

I mean, I have hard drives from 2002, maybe even before that. And I’ve kept an old computer specifically for that, but I’m actually starting to transfer stuff over. But it takes a long time. So whenever something new comes out, whenever they upgrade the software, always update it. And if they say, we no longer make this software, as long as the drive stack or whatever is working, get another hard drive system and copy over.

Because then otherwise you’ll be stuck, and then you’ll be crying to me like my friend did. But we managed to get it back, but it’s a real pain. It costs a lot of money because it takes forever. Trust me, you really don’t want to do that.

I’d actually rather not do my job in a sense that I don’t want to deal with those problems because I hope people don’t have those problems. Really, I’m glad to help, but it’s a shame to pay someone a lot of money to fix those things where you could effectively do it yourself.

Anyway, hopefully you enjoyed it. There’s a button below to subscribe. And if you want to have a chat, if you want to hire me, you can do. We can have a chat. There’s a link below as well. Have a great day, and I’ll see you the next one. Bye.