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Why My Hard Drive “Disaster” Was Good News

April 16, 2007

Last week I told you about my hard drive crash in “Always Back Up Your Hard Drive.”

It was a problem with the hard drive itself…and it had to be replaced. Nothing was saved off of it. The sad part is this HP laptop is only 3 months old. When Julie called HP customer service, it was a miserable experience. They kept her on hold for close to an hour. Once she finally got someone she couldn’t understand them because their accent was so strong.

What was most noticeable was they told us it would take them 7 business days to send a recovery disk and new hard drive. SEVEN days! She of course through a fit on them, but they said there was anything they could do about it.

What’s interesting is the next day we received the Fedex notice that they did ship it one day mail. Yet, you don’t really put that mark in their favor because we just wonder if they did that because she got so angry with them…not because they care about customer service.

Their “customer service” is very noticeable to me because it’s such a stark contrast to when I had a problem with my Dell laptop in the past. They were fast at answering, did everything to make us happy, gave us extra gifts, and created an experience we remembered. It’s my own mistake for buying from another company after that…and Dell will be getting all future laptop orders.

Yet this article is about why my “disaster” was good news…

Besides making me much more careful about backing things up (only a few files weren’t backed up or on another computer here), it also is making my business more profitable. I had been dragging my feet about outsourcing a few things that I needed to hand off including including incoming email from a couple of domains.

The problem made me take action and hand this off.

You only own a business when it operates without you.
If you have to be there, you just own a job.

I’m definitely not perfect (just ask my wife). So I needed to “coach” myself this week in handing off projects and other work to assistants to do. It’s so easy to fall into the trap of “doing” instead of delegating. This week became another wake up call to notice where I hadn’t been honest with myself about building a business that works without me in those areas.

So even though it was a major nuisance, the hard drive disaster was profitable.

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Written by Terry · Filed Under All 

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Comments

3 Responses to “Why My Hard Drive “Disaster” Was Good News”

  1. Miles Baker on April 17th, 2007 10:10 am

    Hey Terry,

    Sorry to hear about your troubles. I have been there myself many a times. You should check out an online backup service, they are VERY affordable. The one I use is http://www.mozy.com

    Coincidentally I exchanged my HP laptop for a new one just last week. It was a DV6000 and had a lot of issues, blue screen crashes, etc. Fortunately I had purchased a 3-year warranty from Best Buy and they let me exchange it for an even better one, I still went with HP, but the new laptop is working great.

    I too called their support which is outsourced from India and they did a good job, but I have Dell computers also and I agree, Dell is much better at their support, but HP wasn’t too bad with me. Guess it depends on when you call as to what your hold time will be.

  2. Terry on April 18th, 2007 8:55 am

    Hi Miles,

    Thank you for your comment.

    Everyone has suggested quite a few backup solutions in the two posts on this subject…Someone could come through here and easily pick the right solution for them.

    It wasn’t that I didn’t back-up files…it’s simply that it I had forgotten for a little while. And I definitely agree the online backup solutions are the best.

  3. Franck Silvestre on April 20th, 2007 3:12 am

    I am training a friend in Internet marketing, and he knows a bit about laptop.

    I have an acer (first and last), and he had one as well. He just warned me about some problems with hp dv.

    He also told me that Dell had a good customer support, and my next laptop will probably be a Dell as well.

    Be aware that almost every laptop will have a problem sooner or later. It’s a chance if you have a laptop without any issue at all.

    Those laptop companies sell those products to you while they know they are incomplete.

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