Another HP Disaster Recovery

When your hard drive crashed, what did you do? For a small business, the experience can be crippling, which was where I was at over the past several days.

Despite the fact that I've been through this three times in the past four years, you would think I'd have a better back-up system in place. Yet, a really easy and reliable back-up solution that is sustainable still doesn't exist. There are always too many variables.

I used to have a love-hate feeling about HP, the former is largely a result of their cool design, weight, features and decent battery life. Now that I've gone through one too many HP disaster, it's now hard to remember anything I loved about them.

It's almost too painful to recap the entire last week's phone calls with HP Tech Support, since it was so draining and awful, I wouldn't even know where to begin. Perhaps I could write a play that recounted the dialogue between me (the victim) and them (customer service???) How about the "customer deep dark hole" -- you know, the maze that the mouse runs around in and when he is finally so exhausted, he crawls into a corner and dies. I felt that way over and over again.

Promises, promises, promises. But what about the delivery? It finally escalated to a local on-site group who sent a technician to my house. They never sent me a recovery CD, so we had to rebuild Windows from scratch. That essentially meant that HP-Man and I spent hours downloading drivers over a slow wireless connection.

After getting the green light on a 'new drive,' I then learn that a reburbished one had been ordered, not that it mattered, because they then 'couldn't find it.' Did I mention that I have a 10-font single spaced three page document listing the countless number of people who ran me in circles for hours complete with responses that were void of solutions.

For serious problems (ya know, when your drive is grinding and there's no turning back), DriveSavers in Marin (north of San Francisco) is exceptional, however the cost of exceptional may be more than double than other services in the area.

BestBuy and CompUSA have fairly decent recovery service centers and the former now has a group called GeekSquad who will send someone to your location to 'rebuild' with you.

There I stood at the top of the stairs - stressed, in angst, with tired eyes and a sad face, when Ashe walked in with a white shirt, a GeekSquad tie and a warm smile on his face. So relaxed, I thought. I wonder if he's gone through other psychological 'customer' training - you know, as a bartender, hair stylist or mechanic. They all qualify.

One of these days, I need to write an article -- a long article, about my numerous HP disasters, but I'll need time to rebuild my strength first.

Ashe at the keyboard 'repairing' my business life:

Last night at a client launch party, I talked with PC World's Harry McCracken about this experience and asked him to call me before their next laptop review. :-) I feel like I'm becoming an expert.