A personal conundrum

[CompConfig]

A long time client is a large dental office. The office manager is the 80 plus year old mother of the head dentist. I also take care of all of their personal computers at their homes.

The office manager's home is over 3 floors. Her home office is on the lower level. They keep that computer on 24/7 because they access it from the main office.

Here is the issue: they refuse to put the air conditioner on and during our last heat wave the hard drive, cpu and the backup drive overheated and failed. This resulted in the loss of a lot of data. Off site backup is not an option because the internet connection is only over a slow wifi connection. This is the second time this has happened. The first time I was able to save their data. Yes, they have been warned about this several times. more than once I refused to service the computer there because it was just too hot to work there.

Anyone else dealing with issues like this? Anyone have an out of the box solution?

 

[Kitten Kong]

I'm not up to date with hippa. But do dental offices have to abide by it?

If so, is one of the criteria, that backups are completed?

Maybe instead of a offsite backup a daily backup to a set of external drives is needed.

Is there no chance of them having a fully wired internet connection?

 

[gikstar]

You mean to say that the house that they live in gets so hot that the hard drive and cpu goes bad? How do they go back into the home if it's that hot? Or have I read this wrong? Anyway,

The only thing that comes to mind is:
1) pull the side off the computer case and put a large desk fan aimed at the cpu,
2) switch out their hard drive to an SSD
3) switch out the external drive to a Samsung Portable T1 SSD drive (1Tb size)

Another option: http://www.cappuccinopc.com/Latte_2...all_Mini_Server_with_32GB_64GB_RAM_Memory.asp
It can take plenty of ram, the processor is equivalent to a Core2quad Q9550 and the i3-2120 cpus (PassMark Software CPU Benchmark)

Claims:
Operating Temperature: 0 to 40°C (32 to 104 degrees F)
Storage Temperature: -20 to 85°C

This should handle their problem, along with the Samsung SSDs (internal and external).... just checked on the temperature for the external T1, from Samsung's website:

Use the product in appropriate temperatures between 5 - 35 ° C and in appropriate humidity between 10 - 80%

 

[nlinecomputers]

Proper backups should be on multiple external hard drives, so there no excuses for data loss because of hardware failures. I would fire them as a client for violations of HIPAA regulations. How can you run a dental surgery without air conditioning? I certainly wouldn't want to be sweaty and have dental work done.

 

[glennd]

I presume the heat issue is with the home office rather than the dental surgery. Personally I'd be thinking twice about having them as a customer if they don't like your advice. I like @gikstar 's idea of opening the case and putting a desk fan on it. I also agree with @nlinecomputers 's idea of multiple redundant backups on external drives.

I can sympathise with not wanting to a/c the whole house for one room. They should look into a small a/c for that one room and use it on just the critical days. Set the thermostat to something like, say, 80-90 degrees F and then it will start to kick in when the computer is at risk.

Think about running ethernet to that room or improving the wifi signal.

 

[CompConfig]

I guess I was not clear, I'm sorry. The dental office is fine and has the best equipment and backups and their server is in a climate controlled room. I am talking about the dentists mother who runs the office and does some payroll and other light stuff from her home computer. It is this one computer at her home on a floor in which they do not live that I am referring to. There was a week here in NY that the temps outside were over 90 for four days straight with high humidity. One day reached the high 90s. She was in the hospital for three days. The housekeeper said she heard strange noises one day and whistling the next but did nothing.

There is a room ac in the room, LOL they just won't use it. My grandmother was the same way. She was never warm, but she didn't not own a computer. I wanted to hard wire the room but the house is old and they do not want to.

 

[Kitten Kong]

I wanted to hard wire the room but the house is old and they do not want to.

Is POE out of the question then?

 

[sapphirescales]

Install a better CPU cooler or perhaps liquid cooling and replace the HDD with an SSD.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

What about a nas device with a raid setup of some type like raid 5 or mirrored setup at the house. At least if a drive dropped out it should be able to soldier on a little while as long as they periodically check it so you can replace any failed drives etc.

 

[allstarit]

no out of the box solution but do you know what she actually does on this home PC? Is it work related? Would a laptop or Windows 8.1 tablet be better suited.

Depending what she does on this PC if it was my client i would be quoting them for a better internet connection or wireless and switch them over to a more portable device like a laptop or Microsoft Surface. Then she can take it to the office or use at home.

If its work related stuff she does on the computer i would also look at a remote server or RDP to her office PC, Only once you improve the home internet. Then all you need to do is set her up with remote access to her office PC which is getting proper backups via office network.

 

[OaksLabs]

Well, if you want to politely free yourself of your problem, quote them a crazy overpowered solution to their issue (with a price tag to match).

1. Suggest a rackmount desktop with liquid cooling as mentioned above.
2. Suggest a server rack.
3. Suggest a rackmount AC unit (http://www.amazon.com/TRIPP-Rackmou...650&sr=8-1&keywords=rackmount+air+conditioner)
4. Suggest a NAS unit for the rack, RAID5, enterprise drives.
5. Don't forget to suggest a UPS to protect the equipment.
6. Also, don't forget a good switch, you'll need one of those...

This will do the trick. After a new PC with good cooling, a dedicated AC unit for it, a RAID backup solution, and a quality network, all their problems will be solved. If they don't like the price, you have successfully gotten rid of a problem customer. Tell them anything else is a bandaid fix and you will have to charge them accordingly to keep fixing a "rotten foundation," and that it will cost them more in the long run.

 

[CompConfig]

Thanks but this is normally a great account with wonderful people. The mother is just getting older and does not like to spend money for herself. Not even in this case. The office itself buys only the best equipment. She is just from a generation where they did not spend because no one had money. Running the AC in a room no one is in for the sake of a machine is a concept she can't fathom.

I have read through your suggestions and thank you all for your help. I think I can get them to go with a water cooled system with extra fans. I will also go with an SSD. Also for the sake of keeping this good client happy I will send a tech over to her house once a month to manually swap out the external backup drive do data loss in the future will be minimal.

 

[fencepost]

Water cooling is only going to help the CPU, not the rest of the system. Of particular note, SSD data retention drops with higher temperatures though the context where I saw the stats was relating to storage not active.

Tell her that she has 3 choices, in increasing order of expense:

• Move the system to a climate-controlled space (cheap);
  
• Make the space it's in climate-controlled by actually using the AC that's already there (?);
  
• Pay for replacement equipment, your time to install it, your time to (attempt to) migrate their data or do data recovery, etc.

Or maybe move the system involved to the server room at the office and set her up with a throwaway PC and TeamViewer or the like. If you're using ScreenConnect or SimpleHelp you can also charge the practice part of the cost of another license and set up a dedicated remote login to the system for her using that solution.

 

[gikstar]

Lets just replace her system with a laptop with a docking station and an SSD drive and when it's hot move it into a different room

 

[CompConfig]

All hours points and I have suggested ask of them except remote access as her wifi is not reliable. The problem is that she is in her 80's and it is amazing she does what she does with the computer not to mention she takes the train and bus into the city everyday to go to the office. She is set in her ways and will not move the computer or use a laptop. LoL. My headache and for this client who has been with me for 20 years and I consider friends I will go the extra mile. He'll when I am in the office and can I even drive her home. Well, this is a service business