Classic IT Support

17/04/2025

Classic IT Support, serving you for the past 28 years, is taking a week's break!

Classic IT Support is taking a week's break.https://www.classicit.netEnjoy your computing experience!

27/03/2025

For the past couple days we have been working on the server replacing and configuring a router. We apologise for any downtime inconvenience.

22/01/2025

Another day almost done, attempting the recovery of failing hard disk drive. Our advice: back up daily. Have a back up plan, and if you can, back up daily, locally or online. A file doesn't exist unless there are multiple copies.

14/11/2024

We have been providing IT support now for 27 years, and in that time have provided new computers, upgrades and repairs to thousands of homes and business in the Avon and Wheatbelt districts. Our customers have become our friends. And the enduring legacy of Classic IT Support we hope will last beyond our tenure.

We see the writing on the wall, however, that it might be time to progressively wind-down our IT operations. Of course, there’s no such thing as retirement, but as many of you are aware, our IT Technician has been bi-vocational and serving in ministry work for over 30 years. As he now also again serves on an international ministry board, his time working away overseas as well as interstate does somewhat undermine his local availability. Thus we are allowing a two-year period of wind-down, and in that time hope to be available as much as possible. Thank you for your understanding!

10/09/2024

Yesterday we replaced the cooling fans in our main Dell server which hosts various internet services including domains such as www.classicit.net and www.message7.org These fans have been working non-stop for 15 years.

02/08/2024

The risks of basing our entire working ecosystem "on the cloud" has inherent dangers which are widely known throughout the public domain. Of course, the sheer convenience of having all one's documents, photos, emails, metadata, passwords and authenticator codes backed up to a "safe" online storage place sounds idyllic - but is it? Every week we hear of data leaks, hacker exploits and the litigation that often follows. Last week millions of private, personal medical records were being offered online. Who takes responsibility for this kind of malevolent subversion?

The question is: how safe is your online data? We've seen the best of online security compromised at times, either by human error, back door entries, international hacker activity and novel software exploits.

Another consideration is what happens when there's a power outage, or an undersea cable cut? You may have a solar battery backup to keep operating, but what about your data? In times of war and espionage, the first casualty is essential infrastructure. Globalisation hasn't helped. Undersea cables cut by ship anchors or underwater subversive activity is now the norm.

With online services offering generous free cloud storage, such as One-Drive, Drop-Box and Google-Drive, it's easy to absolve any personal responsibility for the safety and accessibility of your data; many don't regularly backup to an external hard disk drive or local NAS (Network Attached Storage). Thus, an online solution seems ideal, with your PC or phone simply existing as a thin client.

Our recommendation, whether you work partially or entirely online, or totally locally, is to backup locally daily. This is easy to automate with regularly synchronising with a local NAS or networked PC. A spare external backup hard disk drive can be regularly swapped out and kept safe in an alternate location, keeping safe a recent Windows System Image or Macrium IMG backup. So, should you be hit with ransomware or experience some other unforeseen anomaly, you have a complete backup redundancy, and are not reliant on the "cloud." Local ecosystems with little reliance on cloud storage means that you have full control and access to your data.

Need further advice or help? Please don't hesitate to contact us. At the very least, backup every day.

03/06/2024

We've been running our IT Support office off-the-grid on solar for some time now, and this has been a remarkable success. In order to sustain and even increase power availability, especially during the night in winter when batteries can deplete more than the recommended level, we're getting ready to deploy another wind turbine. The engineering behind this is quite fascinating as it is challenging.

Perhaps in the future, we may even be able to run our entire public web server from this office; currently we're running a Raspberry Pi 4 server - which as you know doesn't consume much power at all compared to the large rackmount Dell servers we are currently using.

23/01/2024

Classic IT Support when you need it, onsite or remotely!

12/12/2023

Quality computers, upgrades and repairs. Remote support, onsite service or return to our IT workbench. https://www.classicit.net

Enjoy your computing experience!