Susan’s 27-inch iMac died. Our Synology network-attached storage (NAS) server died. The Tameri hosting service experienced a major “glitch” that blocked FTP access. Susan’s iPhone stopped syncing with iCloud. The podcasting service I was using unceremoniously stopped working.
Technology fails, and our daily lives get put on pause.
Sunday, we drove over to the Apple store and bought a new Mac Studio. It’s a great piece of hardware, but we sure didn’t want to be spending $2000 on a new computer.
When Susan’s offline, that disrupts everything we do. She manages the household budget, Girl Scouts, school communication, medical appointments, and everything else. She is the CEO of the household.
It took two days to get Susan’s iPhone, iCloud, and Mac Studio all on the same page. Synchronizing data seems to be a lot like kicking a vending machine to get the chips that don’t quite fall after you pay for them.
Whatever killed the aging iMac might have downed the Synology DS1515+ as well. The motherboard failed. Lousy timing since the Synology is home to our Time Machine backups.
Hoping the drives within the Synology NAS aren’t dead, we’ve ordered a new DS1522+ and I will try to migrate the 24 terabytes of storage to the new system. “Anxious” doesn’t quite describe how I feel about this. And there goes another $700, plus tax and shipping.
Yes, yes, yes, we use a UPS. The uninterruptible power supply is massive and only a few years old. But, we’ve had a lot of electrical storms and power dips. Things do happen. We also have two extra Time Machine drives, one for each computer. Our current data are safe.
What I’m worried about are the years and years of data archived on the NAS. In particular, we had photos on those drives.
We need to buy two more external drives. I’m going to buy new drives for our photos and other documents. Of course, that’s assuming I can get the drives back online. Once the RAID is online, we’ll buy new NAS-certified hard drives and replace the aging disks.
Keeping hardware for years and years might not be the best idea. Susan’s computer was seven years old. The NAS was from 2016 and had been running 24/7 for all those years. The RAID hard drives are the same age, with the same wear.
Susan’s photos, genealogy records, and more were on the Synology NAS. All the homeschooling materials were on the NAS. All my audio and video projects were there. Our ebooks. Our media library.
Not being able to access our blogs and primary website? I’m already anxious enough.
I spent two hours working with our ISP to get the server back to normal. Thankfully, everything is working again. (If it wasn’t working, there would be no blog post.)
When the podcasting service failed to work, I switched over to Zoom the next day. I don’t like Zoom, but it works well enough. I really liked the old service… when it worked! Unfortunately, my podcast guests also struggled to use the other system. Zoom dominates video conferencing and integrates with more tools. (I plan to write a post just on the podcasting issues I’ve experienced this year.)
Our lives rely on technology. Paper was more reliable, though not as convenient.
I would love to mark Labor Day with all our technology back in order and online.