All of which I did, on a budget. I researched companies with good reputations and purchased what I needed to set everything up. I ended up buying my routers and switches from a Taiwanese company with offices in California for a really good price back in 2021. Then I spent untold amounts of man hours getting everything set up initially. Afterwards, I continued to tweak my network systems over the following years to give me what I wanted finally.

Everything's been humming along great until this year. My primary active directory server (the most important one) decided to throw me a backup error recently, which applies to my C: drive, which has the server operating system on it. In order to try and fix it using some Microsoft tools,. I will have to shut down that server for several hours at a time.

Before doing that, I had to have a backup server to provide some basic network services first.

It just so happens that I have an older, heavy duty desktop PC that I had in my shop, that I had recently taken offline due to it's age and older hardware inside. I thought to myself, "Why can't I repurpose this older computer into a backup Windows server so I can try and repair the main hard drive on my primary domain server?"

I purchased a M.2 SSD hard drive from a local mom & pop computer repair store, installed it, then I also installed another standard 6 tb hard disk drive I had pulled out of another old piece of equipment a couple of years ago. The bad part, was that I had forgotten why I pulled that hard drive and stuck it in a box. It has some bad sectors on it, which started popping drive errors on my server this morning.

It's not looking good for that hard drive. I'm running a utility repair program on it to see if I can repair the bad sectors and continue to use it. We'll see. That process is going to take several hours before I'll know for sure.

When I said IT on a budget, I'm talking about PC parts. Mostly memory devices. Hard drives to be more specific. I talked a little about this before, and I priced out a new 6 tb hard disk drive for my server on Amazon today, and they have jumped about a hundred dollars in price from when I bought any a couple of years ago.

My M.2 SSD card hard drive had also jumped up about a hundred dollars from the last time I bought one. I tried to buy an inexpensive SSD from Amazon before buying local but the company had a lot of trouble delivering it. An American company no less!

I ended up buying a Samsung from my local repair shop. As for the larger 6 tb, I'm looking at a Western Digital for about $340 from Amazon. I hope I don't have to buy one though. I won't know until early this evening because this disk repair utility will take several hours to finish.

The one saving grace is that I am very skilled at doing all of these repairs myself. After installing the hard drives in that old, not so old, computer, I installed a Windows server operating system on it and let it sit for a few days so Microsoft could update it a little bit. Then, last Saturday, I installed a domain controller on it and related network services and let it run again.

That part of my network is working just fine now, if I can get past these disk errors. One of the first things you learn in IT school, is backup everything. Which was why I stood up that second server. I needed a backup domain controller and file services in case my primary server went down for repairs.

Which, as I mentioned, is happening. I ran a Dell disk scanning program all afternoon yesterday, Sunday, with my primary server offline to see if I could find the disk errors in case I needed to replace that hard drive. Thankfully, I got a clean bill of health. So, I put the server back online and I'm working out a different, more secure, backup system for my servers today. I'm hoping I won't see anymore disk cluster errors now. I can't run my Windows disk repair utility on a server C: drive unless I shut down the server and leave it off for several hours until the utility finishes. I'm trying to avoid that, if I can.

One good thing about Dell, I have an extended service contract with them for my primary server that I bought from them. So, if my C: drive is failing, they will replace it under my repair warranty. Not so much for my backup server. Any repairs to that one are on me, even though it's also a Dell computer.

This is what it's like these days for small businesses who operate on a slim margin to keep everything running smoothly. The days of an accountant keeping physical books for a business these days are long gone. Every business has to use some kind of a computer to maintain their accounting, customer records and any other business activities to keep the governments happy. When I ran my own repair business years ago, I had to keep a desktop PC going in order to maintain it all.

Back then, I used a business software suite from Quicken that allowed me to keep all of my business records together in one application. I'm always all about keeping things as simple as possible. The learning curve was steep to set all that up, but once I had everything up and running, all I had to do was keep the computer running and manage the updates.

I'm not doing anything like that now. I don't need to keep tabs on any inventory, or worry about salaries or anything like that. I don't bill customers anymore, so I use something else to keep up with my finances. But, I still need working computers and servers to keep all of those records and files for someone else, such as one of my sons, to have access to in the future.

I know what you're thinking. There are a lot less expensive methods for my sons to have access to my files and medical records, but I also wanted a secure network system to keep the government and other bad actors out of my business.

Being the semi-retired IT network engineer that I am with a lot of time on my hands, this solves most of my issues. I have something to tinker with, that keeps me busy, and I sleep a little better knowing I can secure my systems from cursory attacks or intrusions.

The downside is the expense. Especially now that Trump has started a tariff war with China. We're all feeling the financial pinch from Trump's trade wars these days, across all sectors of our lives. From food to gas for our vehicles, whether it's just a car to get around with, to trucks and farm tractors, every sector of life is being hit hard because of this stupid old fool.

In a tech run world, this has never been so important. For all of us who are tasked with repairing and maintaining the IT hardware required to run office computers and local servers, to the technicians who are tasked with keeping all of the servers in the huge data centres operational, the expense of doing that has jumped through the ceiling because China is calling the shots now.

They effectively control the raw minerals needed to manufacture all of these memory chips, from the little NVME hard drives to the large capacity hard disk drives used in the blade servers in all of those data centres around the world.

For little operations like mine, that hits hard. The cost of doing business climbs higher and higher the longer he's in charge of the U.S. economy. It's no wonder that the number of small businesses in the U.S. going under has jumped very high in the last year and a half. The cost of doing business is too much to bear for a lot of mom and pop small shops.

It's not just the computer stuff, but everything. If they have to replenish inventory, the shipping costs have jumped hard. Then they have to raise their prices to keep up to make any profit, which costs them customers who can no longer afford them.

I ran into this when I ran my own small appliance repair business. I lived and worked in a severely depressed county, and a lot of my customers lived on the edge all the time. I tried to keep things as fair as I could and still show the IRS that I was making a profit, but it was very hard. I never really made a profit in the ten years I owned that company. When I sold it, I lost money.

Right now, I technically run a one man retail book store from my website. For that, I have to keep digital records for several governments. The United States, on both a federal and state level, and the EU and Ireland for any VAT I may collect for sales in the EU.

For all of that. I need server storage and security. Which is why I run a secure network on a shoestring budget. Imagine the extra cost that a small business has to incur when they have to hire someone like me to repair their computers and servers? I'm fortunate that I can do all of that myself, but that's a rare exception in today's world.

How many of you reading this could swap out hard drives in servers and computers, and install operating systems and configure them? Not too many I suspect. Not that I'm for hire anymore. I used to do this kind of work for IT staffing companies and the state of Virginia once upon a time, but at 70 years young, I'm content to take care of my own extensive systems. No more travelling for me.

No more anxious moments wondering if the client is going to be ready for you, or the new IT equipment is on site waiting to be installed. No more angry clients who take out their frustrations  on the tech who's just there to do his job at the date and time arranged way above our pay grades.

Anyone who's ever been in the service business knows exactly what I'm talking about. I don't miss those days at all. Now, I'm the only customer I have to satisfy. Which is getting harder to do in the midst of this tariff war we have with the world at large.

Do I think things will ever get better once Trump is neutered or gone altogether? Not for a long while I think.. Trump has done too much irreparable damage to our economy and reputation with the rest of  the world by now, and it's getting worse by the week. Meanwhile, all we can do is muddle along with what we can afford and make do with what we can, until things do sort themselves out again someday.

I'm watching my disk repair utility closely today in the hopes that I can save this hard drive and not have to buy a new one just yet. Wish me luck.