HP - the good and the bad...

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:14:12 Post Subject: HP - the good and the bad...

My wife's office had some horrid old computers they still used for every day, important stuff... Pentium 133s with 14" monitors!! And their file server wasn't much better, a P-II 333!

Two years ago they upgraded 2 of them to Dells with 2.4 GHz Celerons, and 17" monitors. Except for a PSU that died, they are still running strong.

This fall they upgraded the other 3 computers, but Dell's lead time when they ordered was 6 weeks or something, so they went to HP.

Decent computers, 2.8GHz Celeron D based... Everything installed fine, but after only a month or two the one filling in as their file server has already developed a bad hard drive! And its a Seagate of all things!

So, they call HP, let them know, and they immediately ship out a new 'drive' that arrives the next day with a complete set of recovery CDs.

I get there (well here, I was about to do this tonight) and open the first box... 11 CDs, OK. Open the second box... And all it has it a DVD burner... no HDD! Its a really nice dual layer 16X burner with LightScribe, but umm, it doesn't really solve the problem! Bang Head

So, I guess its back to trying again on Monday.

Luckily I talked them into a backup hard drive when I set the file server up... All the files are nice and safe on the other (Seagate) drive, just in case the main one totally dies soon!

I spend way too much time at this office...

Rant Over!

FOX · Posted: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:44:42 Post Subject:

GHEYYYYYY!!! store bought = teh gheyness ....thats y i build then i cant blame anyone else for a stupid error like that... i hate that stuff... seagate should be better than that though... ive been using them in all the systems ive built and never any problems at all....

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 22:32:55 Post Subject:

I am trying to get away from helping them though, so store bought is supposed to = the win for me!

The old computers needed so much help, that I hoped it was all over... Laughing

BeerCheeze · Posted: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 00:39:13 Post Subject:

[rant] Make them buy a real server, and not a desktop. [/end rant]

knight0334 · Posted: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 09:33:13 Post Subject:

save your self some time- have the office buy 2 HDDs and a raid control (if mobo not equip'd with) with petty cash.

RAID 1, multiple partitions. write a batch file to XCOPY database to other partitions after work hours.. ...thus making compounded redundancy.

my server at work is a Duron 800 OC'd to 1066, w/(2) 80gb HDDs in raid 1 with (4) partitions. The 1st part XCOPY's to second, 2nd to 3rd. The 4th is a twice weekly XCOPY to fall back on if an error is found with the daily backup. also, once a week a DVD+RW is auto burnt as a backup

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 11:09:53 Post Subject:

For what they do, this server is even overkill. There are just 4 employees who save their spreadsheets and word/wordperfect files to the server. No heavy load, no large files, no need for anything special. Come on, they were satisfied with a P-II 333 MHz with an ATA-66 HDD for 5-6 years!

Copying the data from the old server to the new only required 3 GB of space, and that was about 6 years worth!

The current setup works well, data is saved to the main hard drive (provided by HP)... and on a daily basis it is all backed up to the second hard drive (provided by me) which they can not see on the network. Then, once a week, those 5 daily backups are zipped up and FTPed elsewhere. All automatic, no need for me (or anyone) to get involved.

The problem isn't the server setup, its that a Seagate drive failed 2 months in! Although the signs have been there since about the second week.

BeerCheeze · Posted: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 12:29:40 Post Subject:

For $1615.00 you can get a dell server, with 2 73GB SCSI drives, 1GB RAM, a tape backup with 5 tapes, and a 3 yr warranty.

Here's the question to ask everyone... is $1615 worth more or less than the value of the business?

Just my .02 as a long time IT guy... I have worked with many small businesses in the past and I have seen what happens when they don't run real servers. Granted I'm pretty sure you're offiste FTP backup will keep their doors open (I've seen businesses fail when they don't have a good back up and their server HDD dies), but I still honestly can't stress enough how important it is to run a real server as a server for a business. And the hole argument of "well they only had X before for X years and it was fine" doesn't hold water. Just because someone doesn't wear a seat belt for 20 yrs and never gets in a accident doesn't mean the one time they do get in that accident and aren't wearing a seat belt doesn't mean they won't die.

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 13:23:37 Post Subject:

I'm not in charge of anyone's budget (including my own), but do know that the server you just quoted cost more than the three new HP computers, spare 80GB drive, and the HP 5590 scanner they just got combined.

Spire · Posted: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 13:53:20 Post Subject:

Hey cheeze,

Without writing a book, hardware wise, what makes a server better able to perform server duties than a desktop machine?

knight0334 · Posted: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 14:14:52 Post Subject:

Two key features: Reliability and Stability

Any hardware can be used so long as it has a good stable track record. Operating system setup with all the bloat and junk software removed helps. Configuring the OS to operate any server software needed for database/hosting is critical.

Our server at work has an Iwill KT133A chipset, it ran Win98SE for a couple years til I installed XP Pro. Since 2002 when I install XP Pro, that machine has ran 24/7 with only a handful of reboots.