Gambling With Your Data

Problem: A user reported that his critical application was down because his machine wouldn't come up. "It says something about 'primary hard disk 0 failure', and just stops".

Solution: If it's really your critical application, and the only copy of the data is on that machine, what you need to do is find a current newspaper, open it to the classified ads and start that long hard search for a new career; outside of IT.
Seriously, it's 2004. If you can't find a way to protect your critical data you don't belong in this business. First of all, truly critical data should NEVER be stored (as the only copy) on a workstation. If you don't have a properly backed up server on which to store it, make copies on anything you can find. Today you have lots of choices:

• CDs
• DVDs
• Zip drives
• Floppies
• PDAs
• USB Flash drives
• Paper, if nothing else

You can even turn on File and Print Sharing and store data on another workstation (This is not ideal, but at least you'll have another copy!).

At any rate, a workstation should be viewed as a "throw-away", a tool that can be trashed on a moment's notice, without having to worry about the data. When the hard drive goes South, and it eventually will, you'll want to be able to drop in a new hard drive, rebuild it and move on.

As they might say at MasterCard, workstations are cheap; critical data? ........ priceless.