Monday at 8 am, I am ready to start a productive week, coffee in hand and todays to-do list. Suddenly a cryptic notice flashes from Dell monitoring. Dell says my hard drive MAY BE failing and suggests running a diagnostic, or ignore it if I want.
My reliable array M6700 seems fine and I am really busy. However, I do check that this is not an annoying scam from Nigeria, the IRS etc. It is not. That and discretion tells me to run the test.
The resulting code says my hard drive is DEAD.
Having led a sheltered business life for the last 30 years, I have never had my hard drive absolutely die.
Fast forward two days AND NIGHTS later. I now have an updated backup, a new hard drive, and a rebuilt backup array disk.
You may be thinking that the cobblers’ children almost had no shoes. My business forte is to help leaders find blind spots before they find you, if you listen. Does Gary walk the talk?
Contingency planning, enterprise risk management or old fashioned common sense suggest you have a plan and work that plan in your business and life. None of that kick the can down the road stuff. In either your or my own life, an unrecoverable hard drive with all our data, contacts and research can feel like a Million Dollar Blind Spot.
Somehow the Dell diagnostic gave me enough time to update a full external drive backup. What really saved my bacon though was a decision to buy the array redundant feature on my last laptop. That meant when my main hard drive died, everything was backed up on the array hard drive, including software programs and data. Interestingly I did not plan to pay for this feature on my next laptop, thinking I would rather have a hard drive twice as large next time. Now I am a believer in an array system.
How can you profit from my adventure?
1. Consider what contingency or risk is reasonable in your business or life?
2. Think about the last time you checked to see if your backup or safety steps actually still work.
3. Re-evaluate your contingency plan for WHEN, not if something occurs.
I was fortunate. With some introspection and thought, you can remain lucky in your life and business,
Some of you may like to ask about array hard drives, share a chuckle or discuss how these issues could impact you or your business. Call me at 678-319-4739 for a brief discussion of any of the above points.
