So…..you get to work Monday morning and you turn on your system and instead of it firing right up like always, you get a flashing cursor with the ominous message: “Operating system not found…”…great start to the week, right?  So, now you call your IT support, and they determine that the hard drive is OK, but the operating system needs to be reinstalled. Our first question will be where are the recovery disks?  The typical answers we hear from new customers are usually one of the following:

1. I don’t know.
2. I never got any.
3. Don’t you have recovery disks?

Let’s face it…laptops and PC’s sometimes crash. It is part and parcel of everyday computing reality. Being prepared for that will save us time and will save you money. When Centrend purchases machines for our customers, we always make sure to include recovery disks, along with driver disks. If you order an MS Office suite, you will get disks or a key. If you get a key, you can download the software from Microsoft and then install the key.

At Centrend, unless we have some special pre-arrangement, we will never hold on to your media or license keys. Those are yours and you are responsible to protect both the media and your license keys. That’s why it is so important that we determine a place at your facility in which to keep them. A good place is often near your server (if you have one), but really it can be anywhere that is secure and easy to find should your technical consultant need them.

There are some vendors that do not ship media with their systems at all.  Instead, the user must create a set of recovery media from the machine itself but this will need to be done beforehand; ideally even before the system is put into productive use. Centrend takes care of this for our customers automatically. You can sometimes order the media as well, but you will have to wait until they ship it in order to start the process of rebuilding. Equipment you purchase off the shelf from a “big box store” almost NEVER includes the required recovery media, so be extra careful when making these purchase decisions.

All this holds true for your other software as well. Any software or license keys or special information that you deem important that will affect the business should be kept in this same area as the recovery disks. Going back to the MS Office reference, a lot of companies are going to a straight download model…offering no media at all. Centrend can work with you here and keep copies of your software keys in our CRM software so that they are always available when needed.

Because of the nature of computer hardware, it is usually not a matter of if it will crash; it’s a matter of when. Ultimately, you are responsible for your recovery disks and software.

By working with us and putting a sound plan together to keep your recovery disks and software in a safe and smart place, we can get you back up and running a lot faster.

- Hank



***

Hank Lockwood

Technical Consultant
Centrend, Inc.

508-347-9550 x145

Centrend, Inc. is a Massachusetts-based Information Technology firm strongly focused on advanced business planning and agility, providing key strategies and support for today’s important technology choices.