On the Reddit SysAdmin group, I recently read a horror story. A car dealership had been using a 14-year-old desktop for its one and only business server. On it, the company was running two business’ customer-relation management (CRM) programs and their inventory management systems. They also—brace yourself—didn’t have an automatic backup system.
The consultant told them that “they should automate backups to a separate system, or use a RAID1 at least. Something!”
Their response? “Nope, too expensive, we can’t afford a new desktop, and we can’t afford new drives.”
A year later, almost to the day, the call came. The drive had failed. Their $20-million business had lost the last six months of data, the client database, client forms, banking documents—everything. “The only reason they even have anything is because I convinced the owner to at least let me come in and do a manual backup six months ago.”