How a Rocketfish USB Hard Drive Enclosure Saved My Neck

I am a consultant that spends more than 75% of my time on the road. I rely heavily on my laptop to complete these projects and backup my laptop before every business trip. I have never thought about bringing my backup with me until now.

I was at a client site for a week about 6 hours from my office. The second day into the trip my two year old laptop died. It just would not turned on and after going through a group of steps recommended on the manufacturers web site, I realized it was a lost cause. I did not want to loose a day plus eat the expense of traveling back and forth to and from the office so I picked up a Rocketfish 2.5" Hard Drive Enclosure.

I pulled the hard drive from my laptop and put it in the Rocketfish and used the USB cable to plug it into a PC. The Rocketfish is USB 2.0 compatible and draws power from USB, so no AC adapter is necessary. This makes for less wires to carry around. Windows XP and Vista both detect the drive without using any software, so I was able to work for the week.

I have since found out that the motherboard is fried in my laptop, so I have left the drive in the Rocketfish. I have the backup software that came with the Rocketfish on my new laptop and now I carry my backup with me. The Rocketfish drive comes with a padded carrying case that holds the drive and USB cable. You can also get a Rocketfish 3.5" Hard Drive Enclosure Kit for that old PC hard drive lying around. Amazon.com has a bunch of new Rocketfish Products but for some reason only has used Rocketfish enclosures, so if you want a new on you will have to do some searching.


See All 2.5" Hard Drives at Amazon.com

See All Internal Hard Drives at Amazon.com

Netgear SC101 Storage Central Makes Home and Small Office Storage Easy

Are you looking to share or backup files at home? Do you work in a small office and would like to easily share files with co-workers? Do you want to share files with out the cost and maintenance of adding a server to the network?

If you answered yes to one or more of these questions then you are looking for a NAS appliance. NAS stands for Network Attached Storage and with the drop in hard drive prices the price of these devices drops. Also, each generation has more features and is easier to use.

We have been using the Netgear SC101 Storage Central for over a year for sharing files in a small office environment. The SC101 will hold two standard ATA drives (also known as IDE drive). The SC101 comes with a fast Ethernet port and software that makes it very easy to setup. It even comes with backup software that allows for fast effortless backups. The SC101 does not come with drives, you have to provide them, but if you have some old PC's collecting dust you can pilfer the drives and will have the SC101 running in minutes.

The Windows Vista drivers are not available yet, and according to Netgear will not be available until later in the year. This is not a problem on a network with multiple PC's. We have the SC101 drives shared on one of our Windows XP PC's and can access the SC101 from any Vista PC.

You can pick up a new SC101 at Amazon.com for as little as $79.99 and there are usually refurbished and used also available. You can also pick up one or two 500Gb hard drives for under $150 each.

Re-Launching the Business Plan Help Blog

We are re-launching the Business Plan Help Blog as part of a project to create a better strategy and technology portal for small businesses. The blog will now include articles and information to aid small business with strategy and technology.

To give readers easy access the Business Plan Help Blog, in addition to reading the blog on this site, one can subscribe to the RSS Feed. Also, many of the topics covered in this blog will also be covered in our podcast – SMB Strategy Cast. The podcast is available on our site at www.bizplanhelp.com/podcast/, as well as on iTunes.

Some upcoming technology topics include storage, collaboration, and office productivity. For those interested in strategy, we will review some new entrepreneurial ideas presented by Timothy Ferriss in his book The 4-Hour Work Week.

CHECK YOUR BIZPLAN HELP WEBLOG URL

December 1, 2005 - If you are using an aggregator, RSS Feed, or link to the BizPlanHelp Weblog (blog) in any other way, make sure you check the URL. This is necessary because we have switched where we publish the feed so if you want the most recent news, make the change.

The URL for the Weblog (blog) is:
http://www.bizplanhelp.com/blog/blog.htm

FEED URL
The Atom Feed is:
http://www.bizplanhelp.com/blog/atom.xml
Or, The XML Feed is:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/BPHelp

Eagle Strategy Group LLC Launches Active Mentoring Program

Manhattan, NY, November 22, 2005 – Eagle Strategy Group LLC today announced that it will begin offering an Active Mentoring Program (AMP) to small and medium businesses. The driving principal behind AMP is to train internal employees to identify needs, assess conditions, create solutions, implement solutions, and monitor results, while an experienced consultant serves in a mentoring role.

AMP is a flexible approach that can be utilized at any level or within any department in your organization. An Eagle Strategy Group Consultant works as a “Mentor” within your organization. Through group workshops and interviews, the Mentor helps employees identify needs or areas for improvement. The Mentor then facilitates the assessment and creation of a solution by training employees to utilize modern business principals, tools, and technology. Finally, the Mentor helps the employees implement the solution and monitor the results.

Steve Mooar of Eagle Strategy Group LLC commented that “There are a lot of small and medium business out there that would like to initiate projects that bring new business principles to their organizations, but do not have the resources internally or the resources to bring in external people to complete these projects.” He went on to say that “AMP gives these businesses a cost effective way to complete these projects by training internal employees and guiding them through the project.”

There is also an Active Mentoring Program (AMP) for Startups, where Eagle Strategy Group works with entrepreneurs on new ventures. Through AMP for Startups, a mentor guides the entrepreneur through the business plan and business launch process.

About Eagle Strategy Group LLC
Eagle Strategy Group provides Strategy Consulting Services to small and medium sized businesses. Eagle specializes in developing strategic solutions in Operations, Information Technology (IT), Startup, and Merger and Acquisitions (M&A), as well as provides interim management support. For more information on AMP, AMP for Startups and other consulting services go to www.eaglestrategygroup.com and contact:

Steve Mooar
info@eaglestrategygroup.com
Phone: 917.475.4691
Fax: 917.591.5239