We have all experienced this: The longer you own a computer, the smaller the hard drive seems be. This can be a problem not only for the home user, but a huge problem for business clients and their servers.
Just a few years ago, 100 gigabytes of hard drive space was more than anyone thought they would ever need. Today, laptop computers come with more than 500gb of storage, and terabyte laptop drives aren’t far away.
As applications like Microsoft’s PowerPoint become more powerful, the size of the files being saved grow larger and larger. If you are creating these files on your PC and saving the files locally to your hard drive you can quickly run out of space.
The ease and affordability of “thumb” or “flash” drives allows most users to save these files to removalable media and keep the local drive free to perform the other tasks required. Servers on the other hand are a different story.
Most servers are used for file storage. The data created by all the users on the network is stored on the server. This allows multiple users access to spreadsheets, Word documents or PowerPoint presentations.
They can open the file, make their changes, and save the file back to a common storage space on the server. Most, if not all, of these files are important and more than likely will be used over and over again.
I have found that most of my clients can not move these files to a removable storage device, as they need access to the file almost on a daily basis.
That means the file needs to be on the server and accessible to all users, all the time. Each of these files requires space on the hard drive. If you’re using shadow copies to keep older files in case something becomes corrupt (or someone deletes something accidentally in the application), before you know it, your server is running out of room.
Most of the servers I deal with have separate areas of the hard drive called “partitions” that have the operating system (“OS” )separate from the data storage area. This allows technicians to come in, once the data area or OS partitions start to get full and install a new drive.
We have the ability at Tech Experts to take a server that may have originally had a 100GB hard drive and install a drive with a capacity that will allow you to store information for months to come.
Notice how I said “months to come.” It never fails to amaze me how fast server storage can fill up with data. I have written in previous articles how important it is to back this data up, but it is just as important to make sure you have enough room on your server for both file storage as well as the OS.
Microsoft releases updates to all operating systems continually to keep your systems secure and operating at the best possible speed. Having the room required to install these updates is vital to the health of your network and the productivity of your business.
When it becomes necessary to upgrade your server’s storage with more capacity, we can perform this task with minimal amount of downtime and with an eye toward the future to insure your investment in the server will be well worth it.