backup advice

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jeffmoss26

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I have one of 'those' customers..stuck in the dark ages.
Small law office, 5 PCs, all XP home or pro. Peer to peer network with one of the PC's acting as a server with a shared drive.
Their current 'backup' is to copy the shared 'F' drive to the C drive of one of the workstations.
They have a couple USB hard drives that they had been using to copy the 'F' drive to. The PC acting as a server is slowly dying, USB ports do not recognize anything being plugged in except the mouse.
Online backup is not an option because he does not have internet on any of these workstations (this way his staff will work)
Any thoughts? It is driving me nuts because he does not want to spend any money yet he expect it to keep working!
Feel free to move this to a different section if need be.
 
How much disk space? External drive on the workstation an option? Since you are backing up to the workstation anyway then you can run a job to copy it to the external drive if you get a good feel for how long the copy takes. That woudl be the cheapest solution.
 
Ask him how much he / she thinks his data is worth if lost? I guarantee you that since it's a law firm their data is worth $$$. I would purchase a quality Network Attached Storage device. With a NAS device with RAID, there is no single point of failure like USB drives. That point alone is critical to backup strategy.

I would recommend QNAP Turbo NAS TS-459 Pro. It's about a thousand bucks. Tell them to quit being a cheap butt.
 
The reason he uses the USB drives is so he can take them offsite, in case something were to happen at the office.
 
As I said, online will not work because he does not have internet on these workstations and does not want it.
 
I know you said the employees do not have internet access, but you didn't state if the so called "server" has internet or not. I cannot fathom a law firm that doesn't have updated LOB apps...every law firm client that I have has frequent updates of their LOB apps which require an internet connection. So I'm guessing that the server has internet. Yes/no? If yes, do online backup from the server? Have workstations remap their My Docs 'n stuff to folders on the "server". Although law firms usually have a monstrous data storage drive where all their cases/documents are indexed.

If the "server" of a law firm were dying like that..first thing I'd want to do, as soon as I took someone like this onboard as a client, is fix that server. Well..ideally replace it with a "real" server...but I realize you said he is resistant to spending that kind of money. Sooo...perhaps do some troubleshooting of the USB ports....BIOS flash, BIOS reset, remove unknown hidden devices in device mangler, lay down the latest motherboard driver .infs, etc. And/or, like mentioned above....get an IP network NAS box.
 
No, the server does not have internet either.
Their 'apps' consist of Word and a calendar program, that is about it...
Everything is just saved onto the shared drive of the server. I don't think they keep much in their individual My Docs.
 
Whelp...on the budget, external USB drives..which will require fixing the problem USB ports on the server.

More pricey, a NAS box to plug into the network. Have some backup software shove the job to it. Course you don't satisfy offsite copies...but...hey, for hardly a budget...just let him know options are limited.

Backing up the documents isn't an issue, as for the calendar program..depending upon which one it is, or if we even wants that backed up..may require some fiddling. Time Matters, Time Slips, or some other LexisNexis program? They often have their own built in backup utility, which saves a backup file to a location of your choice....so best to do a native backup of it first.
 
I feel your pain.... Tell them that if they won't spend any money, you can't help them.
 
Sorry to say this, but offsite data is a must.

Remind him that over 90% of businesses that suffer critial dataloss go out of business within 1 year.

If he cannot accept spending a minor amount of cash to prevent loosing his buisiness and his life, then he is not worth havng as a client.

Just my 2 cents
 
jeffmoss26 said:
They use something called Tickle Calendar...I've never even heard of it.
Click to expand...
..
I haven't seen a software named like that ..Google search was fairly useless too.

Tickle...or Tickler meetings, are common in law offices. They're basically a "to-do list" to ensure certain components of a trial are assigned and given dates to be done as a task, who's in charge of what, by what time, etc etc.

Since cases can take years....keeping track of what is due on a certain date way down the road in the future is important for a law firm.

The common law firm software brands....LexisNexis (PCLaw/TimeMatters), Needles, Verdict Sanctions
 
Maybe that is just their own term, but almost everything seems to be done in word...97. not kidding!
 
jeffmoss26 said:
Maybe that is just their own term, but almost everything seems to be done in word...97. not kidding!
Click to expand...

Ahh....with the evil "findfast.exe" that installed in the all users startup folder and bogged down network mapped drives with its indexing.
 
Maybe replace the mobo in the server? Probably the cheapest option really. If you get the same model then it should just be a matter of rebooting it once or twice to detect and install the new hardware. If the PCs are the same model you could just swap the drives out with one that works. Maybe pick up a used one on ebay to be a cold spare or parts bin.

As an aside, I hate cheap clients. You can be thrifty without being retarded. . . .
 
Just thought I would add my .02$

WHS looks like a pretty good fit here, with a daily offsite backup (aka drive that someone takes home with them)
 
k1pp3r said:
Sorry to say this, but offsite data is a must.

Remind him that over 90% of businesses that suffer critial dataloss go out of business within 1 year.

If he cannot accept spending a minor amount of cash to prevent loosing his buisiness and his life, then he is not worth havng as a client.

Just my 2 cents
Click to expand...

+1

I sell insurance to lawyers, and we have been seeing malpractice insurance claims come from network security and data related issues. You should remind him that he can be sued for malpractice if his fileservers go down.

What is more important for you, though, is that you disclose the dangers. If he did have a catastrophic data loss and lost a court case, he could possibly come back at you for damages.
 
Here's another nod for Windows Home Server (WHS). Not only can it be used to store the data, keep redundant copies on multiple hard drives, and easily copy that data to a USB drive for offsite backup (through a very simple wizard even).. It will also backup the clients too, and allow the clients to restore lost files or recover from HD failure.... With a free add-on, you can even have the client PC backups exported to the USB drive for extra redundancy & off-site storage.

If you figure the cost for a WHS is also in the "cheap PC" $500 range, it really seems like a win-win solution, and a heck of a lot better than a standard desktop acting as a file server.

Aside: Note that the next version of WHS is probably not going to be called WHS... Microsoft figured out that WHS was being used for exactly the situation you describe for small offices... Although they haven't announced an official name yet, all indications are that they're going to drop the "Home" part of the name to make the solution sound more attractive or "acceptable" to the SOHO market. (what SOHO want's to use a "Home" server, right?)
 
get win7 for the new machine, that backup built in is nice.

should have something taken offsite or placed into fireproof safe
 
Offsite online back up would be my main issue. It's a headache for them to deal with copying the files then taking the drive home with them every night. If the guy won't budge on the internet issue, then I'm not sure I would want him as my client if he's putting up that much of a fight.What other issues are you going to butt heads on?
 
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