Computer Care: Back it up or risk losing it forever

	By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com POSTED: April 14, 2012 1:00 a.m. Most computer users have systems with sufficient technology to accomplish the tasks they were purchased to perform. They have hard drives large enough to store all the data necessary, plenty of RAM and fast processors to allow the system to function quickly and all of the proper updates installed necessary for security. Yet one thing I have found is that many of them lack an important component: a comprehensive backup. Should disaster strike, whether in the form of an operating system crash, hard drive or motherboard failure or from a virus or malware infection, if you don’t have a proper backup all of your data, could be placed in jeopardy. If you have documents, photos, videos, music, tax forms or anything else that you can’t afford to lose, you should have your system backed up on a regular basis. It’s prudent to have one, if not more, copies of things you can’t afford to lose. Why gamble having just one copy of your baby’s first steps video, photos from Nana’s 80th birthday party or the new resume you just spent hours creating? Many alternatives exist. You either need a program, a website or someone to back up your system. Various utilities are available, some of them free. You’ll need access to an external hard drive, a network hard drive or a cloud-based storage account. As long as you save your backup to a place other than what is being backed up, you’ll be fine. In other words, if you’re backing up your C drive, don’t save it to that same drive. Put it on your D drive, if it’s a hard disk, on DVDs or to another external source. There are different types of backups. Imaging creates an exact clone of your hard drive, but can be large. There are full, incremental and differential backups, each saving different things. Some use more space than others and take longer to save and restore. Incremental and differential backups save only the data that has changed since your last backup, thus saving space and time. You’ve got to decide what you want to archive and how often you want to do it. If you have a system disk (a copy of your operating system I.E. Windows XP, Vista or 7), you won’t need to copy it. You could simply duplicate your programs and data (files), or maybe just your data, if you also have the program disks. Even if you do, it can be more convenient to create a complete system backup or clone every few months instead of worrying about having to reload the operating system, then the programs, and then replace your data. Windows 7 will ask you when you initially set it up if you want to create backup disk. It’s always a good idea to do it while you are reminded of it. Put it off and it may be too late. Look on the Start Menu under Maintenance. There is the need for an emergency startup disk as well as the series of backup disks. Each serves a purpose in a computing disaster. Some external drives come with comprehensive backup programs built into them. If yours does not, you may want a standalone utility, although you could drag and drop files without one. Available for download are tools such as Acronis True Image, Norton Ghost and others. For a review of these utilities and more, go here. As always, I also suggest you visit download.com and do a search for backup or clone utilities. You’ll get an idea of what users think of the programs and in most cases, an opportunity to test-drive them. There are some good free tools, but you’ll find more options in the paid versions. Alternatively, there are web sites as Mozy, Carbonite, SOS Online and others that provide the software and the storage space for you in the cloud. Most have free trials with some free space available. A good video primer on backups can be found online from YouTube. While there, look on the right margin for similar videos. If your system fails and you have no plan in place, I may be able to save your photos and tax forms as long as your hard drive hasn’t failed. But if you don’t have a way to reinstall Windows, you may find yourself suddenly looking for a new computer. When I get called to do a repair and discover, for whatever reason, that the computer has failed, my first question is, “Have you backed up your stuff?” Depending on the type of failure, without a backup, all too often the data is gone. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you tell me you have not created a backup, there isn’t much I can do but assist you in finding a new system. Redundancy is good when it comes to data. Failure is imminent; it’s not a matter of if, but when. Whatever else you do with your computer, back it up. Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page.

Defrag your hard drive

Computer Care: Keep your cheese clean by defragging often

	By Arthur Glazerglazer.tech@gmail.com POSTED: December 10, 2011 1:00 a.m. For the moment, let's say your hard drive is a block of Swiss cheese. If you could somehow relocate all of the holes to one corner of the block, then theoretically you'd be able store something where all the holes are, right? Yes, you could, and no, this is not the Cheese Corner. I am simply making a cheesy analogy about hard drives and defragmentation or defragging, as we geeks refer to it. Defragging places data (the cheese) on one part of the drive and free space (the holes) on another. It also keeps individual files in good shape, while deleting remnants left behind from downloads, installations and abrupt shutdowns. Naysayers believe that defragging is no longer necessary. I say it is. Even with the new generation of hard drives with their huge capacities, (Muenster drives?) defragging can still prove to be beneficial. Even a large drive will fill up eventually. By keeping contiguous free disc space, all the data resides on one part of the drive. When you install a program to a clean, optimized drive, all of its folders go to the same locale. Thus, when you click an icon to call up that application, it will open more quickly because the files are all together. In a badly fragmented hard drive, you could spend a minute or more watching the hourglass tumble, as the system looks for parts of your program that are scattered all over the drive. I'm not saying your defrag utility should run nightly. However, to keep your computer running more efficiently, I would suggest you run it at least every couple of weeks, adding additional scans if the system becomes sluggish. You can't over-defrag it and the scan can be paused or terminated at any time without incurring any damage to the file structure. All defrag utilities have buttons that will stop and pause the scan function, similar to that of your CD/DVD player. The only downside to defragmenting is that as with scanning for viruses or malware, system resource use is high. It can be difficult to check your email or do anything else while a scan is running, defrag included. There is a defragmentation utility incorporated into Windows, but there are better ones that you can get online, some at no cost. Many free utilities lack the bells and whistles that come with the paid versions. In this case, what you really need a scheduler so you can set it and forget it. Windows 7 does allow you to schedule a defrag session, albeit with limited choices. Technical support is also something you get only with the paid versions. As always, with the freebies, you're on your own. This shouldn't be an issue with a defrag program though; they are pretty straightforward and easy to use. The more elaborate programs provide more options and let you choose how the disc is defragmented, from placement of free space to choosing varying degrees of disc optimization. Some let you choose where to allocate more resources, to the utility for a faster scan, or the system to let you continue to work while it scans. Some may defrag the boot portion of the drive, making Windows load more quickly. Others will offer to defrag an external drive, not just the "C" or "D" drives, while a few will hone in on specific files of your choice, even the Windows Registry. If you have an all-in-one utility suite, scrutinize the menus. You may find a defrag program built into it. Smart Defrag from Iobit.com, Disk Defrag from auslogics.com and Defraggler from piriform.com are three of the top free defrag utilities available for download. UltraDefrag is an Open Source (free) alternative that will also defrag the registry and page file. Find it and much more good free Open Source programs at sourceforge.net. As always, also check download.com for more programs and see how their editors rate them and what users are saying about them. Any of the paid versions will allow you to try before you buy. You may decide that $24 is not too much to pay for a good utility. Keep in mind that your computer is an expensive piece of technology and you have valuable data on it. Sometimes it's worth getting a better mousetrap to keep it safe. All defrag utilities will suffice, free or otherwise. Some may do it quicker, others more thoroughly, but using any is better than using none. Should you decide to not buy or download one, there is always the Microsoft version. In all versions of Windows, find the native defrag utility in "All Programs," then go to "Accessories," then to "System Tools." Before you run any defrag scan, it's best to ensure your system is in good shape. Clean the drive of junk files first; there's no point in organizing garbage. Even if you have a terabyte drive with tons of free space, it's still a Gouda idea to run defrag every now and then. Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page.

Destroy data on old PC or it could come back to bite you

Computer Care: Destroy data on old PC or it could come back to bite you

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com
POSTED: March 19, 2011 9:27 a.m.

You have an old computer that you want to give away or throw out. Perhaps you found a gem of a PC at a yard sale. Either way, the issue to consider is the data on the hard drive.

If you were discarding a computer, your old data should be deleted prior to giving it away. If you were to be the receiver of one, the data should still be deleted. Either way, the existing data is sensitive and in need of erasure.

Even if the computer in question doesn't work and there is hard-drive failure, the data remains.

So what, you think? Think again.

It may not be government secrets, but you have address books, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, banking information (including credit card and account numbers), business e-mails, letters to your loved ones, family photos and perhaps a personal journal.

You wouldn't want any of that information to fall into the wrong hands.

What about a used PC you just came upon? What if there are viruses, malware, porn or those government secrets on it? You don't want any of that on your new-found computer.

So how do you clean your hard drive? There are various methods. First let me say that deleting files does not truly delete them.

A client of mine once mentioned that she cleaned up her system by deleting desktop icons, thinking she deleted the programs. She did not. All she got was a tidy desktop. The applications remained.

Even if she had deleted the associated files, they would still, in a sense be there. By deleting folders and files, you simply remove the reference to them, their names. It's telling the system that the space used by that old file may now be used by something else. Until it is overwritten, the old file remains. Someone like me, with the proper utility, could still find the files after you delete them.

You could format the hard drive or reinstall Windows, which also includes a reformat, but the old files are still there, beneath the new copy of your operating system.

In most cases, unless you really have something to hide, this should suffice.

If you really want a secure wipe of your system, you need a comprehensive utility to accomplish that task. There are of course, programs you could purchase, but there are also good free ones.

DBAN, Darik's Boot and Nuke, doesn't have the smoothest interface, but it gets the job done. It can be run from a CD or a USB flash drive and comprehensively wipes your drive clean.

There are various methods to wiping the hard drive, from one pass across the disk to many, each writing random zeros and ones across it, rendering the old data unreadable. A common wipe known as the DOD (Department of Defense) wipe, uses three passes. The more passes, the more secure it becomes.

Another free utility is Eraser. The difference from it and DBAN is that you can specifically pick which files you want to erase with this, instead of wiping the entire hard drive. You can delete files, but leave the operating system intact.

There is also the option of destroying the hard drive, as opposed to just deleting its files. Whatever you can safely do to stop the drive from spinning will render it unreadable. Drilling a few well-placed holes through the drive or banging some nails completely through it does the trick.

Contrary to popular belief, household magnets do nothing to disrupt the data on the drive. The magnets that are used in a drive (neodymium or rare earth type) are much stronger than anything you'll find in your tool box.

There is a process known as degaussing that uses those special magnets. It's an effective procedure, but an expensive alternative.

There are some ways that should not be used to destroy data on a hard drive. Nuking it the microwave, soaking it with acid or using it for target practice may work, but are extremely dangerous methods for obvious reasons.

Alternatively, before giving away your computer you can remove the hard drive. There are only four screws and a couple of cables. Then you can decide if you want to reuse the drive or delete the data.

I have been asked by clients if they need to remove the RAM (system memory) before giving away a computer. RAM is only temporary storage in a computer. Once the system is powered down, all that was stored in memory is lost. RAM need not be removed, unless you want to reuse it in another system.

A hard drive, on the other hand, is permanent storage. The data is written to disk. It will remain intact until overwritten or deleted.

Whether you're on the giving or receiving end of recycled equipment, it should be imperative that you remove existing data from the hard drive, one way or another.

If you don't, it may come back to bite you.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly on the Business page and on gainesvilletimes.com.

Storage in the Cloud

Computer Care: Cloud storage an easy way to back up your data

By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com

POSTED Feb. 20, 2010 1 a.m.

Hard drives fail. It's not a question of if, but rather when. I've had them last eight years; one failed in less than eight months. If you place value on your data, you should find a secondary storage device for it.

Everybody has photos, spreadsheets, documents and other forms of digital matter that they would prefer not to lose. I back up my images to DVDs, my programs to an external hard drives and ghost my operating systems. There are various ways to back things up using different types of media.

Programs exist that will help, from Acronis True Image to Norton Ghost. Even within the programs you have choices. Do you want to make copies of your documents or only your system files? Would you prefer to clone your entire hard drive?

After you make these decisions, you need to have a place to keep them. For obvious reasons, you don't want your backup on the same drive as the source.

There are optical discs such as CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray. Then there are secondary internal hard drives. Most desktops have sufficient room for at least one additional drive, sometimes more. These would show up under My Computer (or Computer) next to the "C" drive, as the "D" drive, moving your CD drive down one, to perhaps the "E" drive.

Next are the external devices, whether portable or not. These include the small keychain-sized thumb drives to the pocket flash drives and the desk drives.

The price of these devices has dropped incredibly in the past year or so. You can get a 500 GB drive for just over $100 now. That's a lot of pictures of the grandkids. Why stop there? Terabyte drives are now all the rage. That is 1,000 gigabytes.

The next wave of storage (and computing) though, is not in your pocket or on your desk. It's on the Internet and is called cloud storage (and cloud computing). This comes from the cloud image that represents the Internet on flow charts.

You may have seen ads for Internet-based products like Mozi or Carbonite in magazines or on TV. This is the new wave. Most offer a gigabyte or two of free storage space in their cloud. For additional fees you can get more storage.

I have a free Mozi account and for less than $5 they offer unlimited storage. Both Mozi and Carbonite offer pricing for home and business accounts.

There are some advantages to cloud storage. You don't have to purchase and maintain a physical device, so there is nothing to wear down, break or lose. It is generally less expensive; it grows with your needs; it is more efficient and more secure than the way you are storing your data now.

Just as with the Acronis or Norton products, the off-site storage arena offers scheduled uploads to their clouds. All data is also encrypted so nobody can see what you are storing.

What I like is the fact that you are not tethered to a box and a cable. Wherever you are, you have access, 24/7 to you data. All you need is a computer and your password.

In a case as this, I suggest a strong password. This is a prime example why you shouldn't use the same term for all of your accounts. If someone hacks your e-mail account, then now they can enter your storage area as well. Choose an eight-character, alpha-numeric password, not your dog's name.

But just as with any product or service, caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware. Research the cloud service that you are about to send your valuable information up to. I would stick with one of the better known, big guys. Should you go for say, Carl's Cloud, it may turn out to be Carl's Con and you‘ve lost everything.

You might inquire if they have redundant servers. Do they have more than one copy of your data, should disaster strike them?

Remember, hard drives fail. It's a fact of computing. Generally, they last anywhere from three to five years. Even new ones can stop working. Sure, you'll get a replacement, but your data will still be gone.

I extract data from crashed drives on a regular basis. Often, though, it's not possible. Some drives are too far gone to get anything out of them. I can tell by the look on clients' faces that they have no other copies of what is on the drive.

Backing up data is not difficult, time-consuming, nor does it have to be expensive. Simply choose a method and a device and as they say, just do it!

Next time you decide to back up your data, consider the cloud. The sky is the limit.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly. Arthur welcomes your computer questions and ideas for future columns.