Sometimes, technology sucks! I can see you nodding your head in agreement. – We’re off to a good start with this article already, right?! Actually, technology really doesn’t suck. What does suck is that sometimes things break, don’t work according to how they’re advertised – this is true of anything, not just technology. Murphy’s law applies here.
The fine people at Data Robotics have an enormous task of making backup easy – all the while keeping their reputation intact. No easy feat when you’re dealing with people, their digital life and the age of social media.
Face it, your life’s memories sit on a hard drive. Memories tend to elicit emotions that run the gamut – imagine the emotion of losing those memories. I’m instantly mortified. I can see all my memories gone forever. Am I sad? Sure. Mortification turns to panic pretty quick. That pretty much defines the task Data Robotics has indirectly on top of their day job of keeping your data safe. Needless to say, when a person thinks their memories are gone forever, calm and rational are not the emotions at the top of the pecking order.
The situation I describe in the previous paragraph is the predicament I encountered a few weeks back. Fortunately, I utilize more than one method of backup. Doubly fortunate for me that my computing platform of choice (Mac) has a wonderful utility called ‘Time machine’ that does an admirable job. However, while time machine is fine for a quick recovery here and there, it’s not the solution for optimum safety and redundancy.
With backup, the key is redundancy. The drobo makes backup easy. You plug the drobo in to an electrical outlet, plug it into your computer and finally, pop the drives into your drobo. That’s all you do. It takes your data and spreads it over several drives, for redundancy. It also does this automagically. You don’t need intimate knowledge of RAID arrays, or anything technical. It does all the difficult, mundane and boring stuff for you. It makes an incredibly complex and difficult task as easy as turning something on and plugging something in.
Ok, back to things going wrong. In very short order I had three drives go bad and it appeared my drobo was acting weird. I’m writing this article while I await the arrival of my replacement drobo. I wanted to take a few minutes to share a few lessons I learned about this experience:
I’ve been incredibly impressed with the support from the people of Data Robotics. You have real people trying to make a great product, improve the safety of our digital lives and do it with kindness and humility.
Is it Data Robotics fault that hard drives sometimes fail? No, it’s not. They’re taking a bad situation and attempting to make the experience of something that fails into an experience of “we’ve got your back”. How many companies can you say that about?
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