PC Repair Tech Discovers that Hard-Drives Hold More than Data

Considered working as a PC Repair Technician? This interview will take you through the ups and downs you can expect in the position, what it takes to land the job, what you can expect to earn and more.

I have been a computer repair technician for about two years. I work in a small, locally owned shop.

It’s all about getting a computer back in working order. Sometimes it just needs some cleanup and maintenance, but some other times hardware replacements are needed. We also do upgrades and updates in case somebody needs a more powerful system but does not want to spend the money on a brand new PC.

If there are any common stereotypes about this line of work, I think it would be that we operate as car mechanics and overcharge for needless parts. In reality, technology advances very quickly and has very little backwards compatibility.

When a customer comes in wanting a new processor on a computer 3 or more years old, chances are that current chip-sets will not be compatible with his older mother board. This means changing the motherboard, and with it a host of other things. We try to be as up front about this as possible precisely because we know that, as repairmen, we have to deal with certain stereotypes and preconceived notions.

I think I would rate my job as a solid 9 out of 10. I think very, very few people are 100% satisfied with their work arrangements, but as far as employment goes, I am very comfortable with this one. If there was anything I would change about it would be to have an intranet network to play some games with coworkers during the odd downtime – or maybe a gaming console.

This job does move my heart sometimes. It is a very rewarding feeling when somebody comes in with a broken computer, worried about losing all the data and work they have stored inside of it, only to have this data recovered and backed up a couple days later.

It is amazing how much of our lives go inside computers nowadays, and when you can give those parts back to a customer, you can literally see the color return to their faces – specially when they had important work stored in their hard drives.

I have grown up with and around computers. I remember my old Atari and Intelevision consoles. I remember opening them up, fiddling with the components inside; even repairing some controller wiring at a young 7 years of age. With my first home computers, I again fiddled with them, installed my huge 32kb memory upgrades and installed my massive 1mb hard drive. Then Windows came around and, as they say, the rest is history.

Even with an industry that manages to out-date itself every couple of years, understanding, repairing and fixing computers feels second-nature to me.

I got started in this line of work through a friend of mine who owned a small repair shop. I would usually go there to shop for parts and talk about computers. Eventually, he offered me a job when one of his techs quit and I promptly took it.

With a merry chuckle, I would say that if I could change anything it is that I would like to have started my own repair business already. And perhaps I still will.

One of the things I have learned the hard way on the job is, that the information people keep in their hard drives is monumentally important. There was once this man who had a bunch of business-related files, receipts and documents stored in his computer, along with the finished draft for his doctorate thesis.

He had been out camping with his laptop to proofread and work on his thesis some more. Everything was going great until their SUV got stuck in a shallow river. When he and his friends were getting out of the car to push it, his laptop bag got snagged to his jacket. That made the laptop drop hard into the water, and sadly, he had never made a backup of a lot of his information.

He brought the computer to us for repair, and while the casing was a little beaten up from falling on the rocks, the real damage was the water inside all of the components. We did our best to dry and repair the hard drive, but in the end, we only managed to recover a small fraction of all the data he had. I cannot even begin to describe to you how upset he was, and I felt horrible for not being able to do more.

The single most important thing I have learned out of school is that you always have to stay up to date in your field of work, whatever it may be. It goes without saying when it comes to computers, of course, but everyone should always have new things to learn that will improve the quality of their work in some way.

There have been quite a few strange and funny things customers have brought in, but probably the winner would be a gentleman who brought in a toy computer for toddlers and asked if we could install Windows Vista on it.

I go to work everyday because I do enjoy working with computers a lot and every system that comes in is a puzzle to be solved. I think that is what gives me the proud, feelin’ good kind of vibe. To know I had a problem in front of me and I solved it.

When a customer comes in with a heavily infected computer and wants us to only remove the viruses and nothing else. Sometimes, internet users do not realize how many infections they can pick up from certain sites, and it results in a computer that can only boot up after 30 minutes of whirring and struggling to pass all its start-up files through a wall of viruses and spy-ware trying to overtake the system memory.

These cases take hours upon hours to resolve, and plenty of research on each detected virus to make sure all traces of it are removed. Whenever a customer has backups of all their important data, we suggest wiping the whole system clean and reinstalling the operating system. Last time we had one of these severe cases, a team of three techs spent about a week working on it.

I wouldn’t say my job is all that stressful. Sometimes there can be a lot of pressure when there is a backlog of computers that need fixing or upgrading, and by the same token, computers have a knack for throwing you curve balls whenever you are trying to work on them. But, all things considered, I would not say it’s any more stressful than most jobs, and save the occasional stint of overtime to get a job finished, there is a very nice life-work balance.

I make about $14 USD an hour with occasional bonuses when we do particularly well, which is not as much as others make in the same field, but it’s not bad for a small, local shop.

I recieve adequate vacation time, I take about 3 or 4 weeks a year. I would like a week or two more, but it’s not too bad.

Getting hired in this field requires computer skills, and plenty of them. A computer science or related degree would certainly help, but in the end, it is hands-on experience on PC repair what makes a good tech.

I would tell a friend considering this line of work to make sure to stay up to date with whatever new chips, operating systems and hardware is coming out. This is an industry that moves extremely fast, and it’s very important to keep up with it.

In the future I’d like to see the business I work for either grow or I could imagine myself owning a repair shop of my own. I know it’s easier said than done in this economy, but not impossible with a bit of elbow grease.

This is a true career story as told to ComputerJobs.net which among others includes a Database Administrator and a Systems Engineer.