[TVARC] Computers and radios and lightning! Oh My!

[Ray Fallen]

Well…it’s that time of year…and Zeus is certainly working overtime throwing
out those lightning bolts.

A thousand years ago, when I was a young IBMer…one of the Old Hands told me:
“There are two groups of customers you’ll deal with.  One group has learned
the value of backing up their computer data.  The other group will learn
that the hard way…sometime in the future.”

Those were the Bad Old Days when people backed up to 8” floppy disks that
only slowly stored 500 KB per disk.

Nobody liked that job.

While you can’t lightning proof your computers and radios…there are some
steps I take to reduce the probability of damage and/or data loss from a
lightning strike.  You already know what they are….so I won’t waste too
much your time.

BUT…if there are even storms in the forecast, I’ve started disconnecting
ALL hardwired attachments to my two laptops…power, internet and any
peripherals.

I have a Paradan gadget that disconnects the outside antennas and shorts
them to ground when I’m not using the radio.  I also unplug the K3 and K4
power supplies.

You can also easily backup your entire hard drive to a USB device.  Western
Digital and Toshiba (among other vendors) are selling one TERABYTE solid
state drives for under a hundred bucks on Amazon.  I have a weekly schedule
to back up both of my laptops. I store the backup drives at the other end
of the house in a small fireproof (and hopefully lightning proof) box.

Hope this helps.

Fingers crossed!!

73,
Ray - ND8L
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