Would you drive that thing in public?
Most people don’t wait until the car is dead on the side of the road to replace it, they start looking for something new because they know the mileage and what that means to all the parts of the car. They take the car to the mechanic and have routine maintenance and necessary repairs performed along the way to get the most out of their vehicle, but few of us are currently driving the car we had ten years ago. Generally speaking, we don’t plan a road-trip in a car that we think might not make the distance either, because it would be terrible to be stuck in the desert when it finally breathed its last. Performing a vehicle check is actually part of testing for your driver’s license in the first place—we know that cars break and keeping up with the maintenance on the car is part of our responsibility as drivers.
We can actually see the mileage displayed on the dashboard of our car and we can feel every vibration and hear every ping because we sit in the car while using it. We can see it, touch it, hear it, smell the gas or the smoke, and maybe even suffer the acrid taste left by the aroma. We are literally immersed in the technology.
But you don’t drive your hard drive. It’s one of the magical, invisible things that makes your life work, and you haven’t thought about it yet today. You can’t see it, except as an icon on your desktop. You certainly can’t touch, smell or taste it. And you are always on a road trip, asking your digital storage to flawlessly take you from one side of a project to the other, without so much as a glance at the proverbial dashboard. The “pings” we hear from the computer that signal something may be wrong are often misinterpreted or disregarded, and it isn’t until you are dead on the side of the road that you may start to re-think your plan. By then, how much time, money, and irreplaceable creative content is lost?
IN SIMPLE TERMS…
If you haven’t had a digital storage check-up in more than three months, you’re overdue for an oil change. Your digital storage is the vehicle that every employee and project relies on to get the work done. A car holds 5 people comfortably, and a van might hold 15. Your digital storage vehicle holds everything—quarterly maintenance is a minimum.
You wouldn’t risk the lives of your passengers on a cross-country road-trip in an old, ill-maintained vehicle. Don’t risk the livelihood of your entire company on the assumption that your digital storage technology is up to date.