How Screwed is the Dentist ? :)

[sarcazmo]

This friend of mine works for a dentist whose only office computer runs o/s Win 95. On this only machine are all the patient files, all the billing biles. They do not back up the files at night, and they haven't done so in a long time.

I keep telling my friend, "Gosh, you guys need to upgrade!"

So please tell me, so I can pass your comments along:

How screwed is this dentist should this machine crash? And what can he do now to prepare for a crash?

Thanks!

 

[edfair]

Very screwed if the hard drive fails. I've seen customers lose everything. It isn't pretty seeing a grown person crying, expecially when the $100,00 in receivables require conastant followup, and all the records are gone.

First immediate step should be something like a parallel port zip disk to get sruff onto another piece of media, if the files are small enouth to put them on one. Or on another hard drive as a duplicate.

Upgrade possibilities are going to be limited by hardware considerations and possibly the applications, but failing to have backup is "criminally incompetent" on the part of whomever is responsible for the computer and naieve on the part of the dentist. But if this is a good dentist, he/she can afford to lose everything.



Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[micker377]

I had a client lose a hard drive during tax time! Besides her losses (my fees to put in a new hard drive, the cost of a new hard drive, her time reconstructing records), there were also penalties of close to $5000.00 for IRS late penalties! One other small expense was for a tape backup that she used religiously after that. If you mention "IRS" to the dentist, it might help.

"Backup? I thought you made the backu....".

 

[pmonett]

Forget zip, a DVD-RW drive costs less than $100 nowadays, and the plastic discs cost next to nothing.
Ask your dentist friend if he could spend a month without his PCs. Impress on him that it would take him more than that to reconstruct his data from paper records - assuming that his paper records are in order.
Running a company without backups is like driving a truck loaded with unstable nitroglycerin. You never know when it blows, and when it does, it is invariably ugly.
Running a company with backups is more like driving a normal car. You might get a flat tire, but all it takes is an hour (day) or two to mount a new tire and you're on the road again.

Ask him what he prefers, nitroglycerin or flat tires ?

Pascal.

 

[rrsub]

Nothing wrong with the OS as long as it's a closed system but no backups are a NO NO.

At the very least, make a complete backup of the hard drive because 5 years is the maufacturers end of life.

 

[xit]

Just a thought, but if he is running Win95 he has neither the processor or memory to run a DVD-RW and may not even support a CD-RW. Finding a hard drive that would be acceptable to his machine may pose another problem. Whatever he decides to do, should be soon.

xit

 

[pmonett]

he has neither the processor or memory to run a DVD-RW"

It's an IDE extension, what's the issue with that ? I seem to remember having a PC under Win95 with a CD-ROM unit, although I could be mistaken (was a long time ago). Is Win95 so limited that it cannot use CD-burning IDE-standard optical drives ?
As for the CPU, today's drives all have a burn-proof technology of some sort or another. Shouldn't that be good enough ?
Is burning a CD/DVD all that demanding in terms of CPU and memory ?

Pascal.

 

[edfair]

I had burner software for CD on 95A and 32mb if I recall correctly. But software and hardware advance, so it might be an issue with current versions. Not sure what may be available for DVD stuff.



Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[sarcazmo]

Thank you so much! I forwarded everyone's replies to the dentist! He was surprised he'd found himself in this kind of pickle.

So he instructed his staff to perform a regular back-up. Personally, I'd get a new computer, but hey what do I know? I only make $350,000 a year less than him.

Thanks again!

 

[mattjurado]

Yeah, Edfair has it right, they should really have a consultant come in to copy that data somewhere, then they can do whatever they like.

For an old 95 box, I'm not going to open the case unless I absolutely have to. I would first try to establish a connection with another computer if there is a nic, if not, I'm busting out my old parallel zip or jazz drive. Either they learn to backup on the zip drive, or now then can install a new machine with a tape backup. I DO NOT recommend non-experienced users rely on CD/DVD for backup. I've seen too many people use cheap unreliable media, or simply not use the software properly.

If they are really illiterate, I'll create a batch file on their desktop, and it will copy the data directories from c: to the zip drive.

If they have the money, tape is always preferred.

Matt J.

Please always take the time to backup any and all data before performing any actions suggested for ANY problem, regardless of how minor a change it might seem. Also test the backup to make sure it is intact.