Five Uses for Old Technology: the fifth one will make hackers hate you
Five Uses for Old Technology:
the fifth one will make hackers hate you.
What we're going to do here today is show you five, count 'em, five ways to transform some useless junk into useful junk. Obviously, these projects depend entirely on the calibre of the tech you have sitting around, but no matter what you've got sitting around gathering dust we're going to transform some old tech that used be a source of frustration into tech that will make your life better.
Because, if you're like many Americans, you've probably got some old technology sitting around in the office that you keep telling yourself you'll sell, donate, or throw away. You've probably got an old printer, couple of old computers, old monitors, maybe one of those apple-corer-slicer-peeler things – all the things that make up what can only be thought of as the junk-drawer of office technology.
Anybody writing about how to use old tech will tell you this first one, but the advice is worth is weight in gold, actually, there's probably a better metaphor than that as words are generally weightless, um, this advice's value is inversely proportional to its weight. Boom.
Share Files and Printers over your Network
Let's start by using an old computer to share some files and printers over your network.
Sharing files and printers over a network is one of the least resource-intensive tasks a computer can perform, and, if your home or office doesn't already have a centralized place for important files or a way to share printers between computers, setting one up is a no-brainer that will make your life immeasurably better; and getting a rudimentary setup rolling is as easy as
1. Sharing a folder from the server by right clicking it, clicking "Properties"-"Sharing"-"Advanced Sharing"-"Share this Folder", naming the share, and setting the Permissions.
2. Installing the printer you want to share on the server, navigating to Devices and Printers, right clicking the printer, clicking "Printer Properties"-"Sharing"-"Share this Printer", and then clicking okay.
3. Connecting to the file share and printers on the client computers by opening a "My Computer" window navigating to the server by typing "\\(Server computer's name)", right clicking the printer and clicking "Connect" and following any dialogue boxes, and then right clicking the file share and clicking "Map Network Drive" and following any dialogue boxes.
Obviously, the particulars of your network need to be considered and you might need some technical support to get it rolling [it would be clutch if there was an article on finding IT support to link here], but the productivity you'll gain from having your files in centralized place will be huge. You'll also want to make sure that you've got all that super-important data backed up. And speaking of which, you could also use an old computer to…
Do you want to turn your junk into an effective backup strategy? Because this is how you turn your junk into an effective backup strategy. Or how you get ants. I can't quite recall.
So, if the computer or server where your important business files live happened to be irreparably damaged by a person fallen victim to spontaneous human combustion or, in a more plausible scenario, have its hard disk fail, would you be able to get those files back somehow? If the answer is no, then just like the great wordsmith Juvenile implored us, let's "back that thing up."
Let's assume you've gotten your shared files onto your shiny new file server that used to be a crusty old jalopy of a computer or that you already have a server set up. So, now we need to make sure that if something goes wrong, that you can recover those files.
The best policy for backup is something old, something new, something - nope. That's not right. You want to have backups that are 1. Hot, 2. Cold, 3. Off-Site:
1. A backup that's hot and readily accessible like a mirrored hard drive in the case, a USB hard drive attached to the device, or a share on a file server
2. A backup that's cold - which is to say that it's either on a magnetic tape, an optical disc, or a hard drive that's connected for the backup process and then disconnected afterward so it's not taking unnecessary wear
3. A backup that's off-site so that in the event that your building floods or is eaten by a horrifying sink-hole (try not to lose sleep over that one, or you know, the existential crisis of meaninglessness in light of the inevitable heat death of the universe) Where were we? Right. if your information is lost in some kind of disaster, that you still have the information necessary for business continuity.
So how do we achieve this:
1. Get your hot backup rolling right on your file server. All you'll need to do to get this rolling is to schedule a daily backup of your file share to your backup drive, use a utility like Real Time Sync or BTSync for automatic synchronization of changes if you don't need or want the ability to recover old versions of files, or (please don't do this. Kittens will cry if you do this. It's better than nothing I grant you that, but please do something better than this. I beg you) manually copy the files from your live environment to the backup drive at scheduled intervals.
2. If you're using an internal or USB hard drive for your hot backup, all you'll need to do to get a cold backup is to swap the drive out periodically. If you've got two drives sitting around, you could simply switch them out once a week, making what was your hot backup your cold backup and then your cold backup your hot backup.
If we were talking about cold-cuts, we'd be worried about listeria with all the temperature changes, but we're dealing in data so we needn't be concerned with food-bourne illnesses. Obviously, one would hope to not need the cold backup. Your cold backup has older, out-of-date information on it, but in the event that disaster strikes, you'll be glad you have it.
3. An offsite backup can be as simple as taking your cold backup out of the building or as complicated as having a hotsite. Considering that we're looking for ways to use old tech, harvesting a hard drive from an otherwise decommissioned computer and using it as the medium by which the offsite backup is sent off-site, might be our best bang for the zero bucks.
So now that we're sharing files and printers and backing up our critical information let's start having some fun:
Let's turn a piece of old hardware into a network monitoring station that will help you save money.
I'll admit that my definition of fun is weird, however, now that you've got servers and backups and a place to core/slice/peel your apples (I haven't forgotten about the apple-corer-slicer-peeler that you've got sitting in your pile of old tech. Why'd you put it there? It's so useful. You can peel and core AND slice your apples all at once). Okay. But now that you've got servers you probably want an easy way to keep track of them and maybe even keep track of all of your computers. (Seriously. Why was it in the garbage? Is someone in your office allergic to apples?)
Well look no farther than spiceworks.
Spiceworks is free computer inventory and monitoring software. Let's say we take that beautiful file server and install the spiceworks network monitor on it. Well from that point you're just a few clicks away from having a locally hosted web page that will tell you which of your servers are running, how effectively they're running, and whether or not to put a pony on the Ya- nope. Sorry about that. Wrong blog. Even if you aren't working with limited resources, you still might not have an active server monitoring solution, and committing an old piece of hardware to monitoring your new hardware will not only extend the life and usefulness of tech you've already spent money on, but if you get the right diagnostic information out of your monitoring, then you might even be able to *save* money down the line by identifying hardware problems before they become critical (read: wildly expensive).
Okay this next one will actually be more traditionally fun. I promise.
Maybe you don't need it year round, but with nothing more than an old computer, a webcam, an old printer, and some silly hats you can easily make yourself a high quality stress relief station. As everyone knows, it's really hard to be mad when you're wearing a clown nose. Moreover, everyone loves photo booths.
And, as promised, the one that will make hackers hate you
Make your Network more Secure
You know what's more annoying than almost anything? Malware. We're gonna turn an old computer into a malware prevention station to help stop you from getting annoying, expensive malware.
Malicious programs and files hanging out on unknown flash drives and optical media isn't just the stuff of movies. In a recent study, 48% of users were found, upon finding a strange flash drive, to plug it in and start opening files. This should terrify you. It's how they hacked into a prison on that episode of Mr. Robot. Instead of opening unknown removable media on computers that would impact your network if they were infected by malware or some other threat from removable media, one could easily open suspicious media on a computer that's been otherwise relegated to the trash heap and has been disconnected from the internet and your corporate network. Think of this computer like an olde-timey food taster, it's totally going to be murdered (read: infected) by something, but it will save the life of the king (read: a computer that matters).
Alright. That's five. Five ways to make your life better with nothing more than a little time, ingenuity, clown noses, and stuff you were going to get rid of anyway.
ben martin is a dad, geek, network admin at Reynolds & Rowella in Ridgefield, CT, and constant reader. He is also that guy who styles his name in the lower case. He writes at mostlyuseful.com. Find him on linkedin, twitter, tumblr, and yet mysteriously never in the same place as Gary Oldman.
