Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

Absolutely; sort of. If you own a Seagate or Maxtor hard drive.

What you get is a basic version of Acronis True Image Home with just the basic features.

But you CAN do a full image backup and restore. Not only that, it surprised the heck out of me to find out that you can mount an image as a drive letter, explore with Windows Explorer, and copy files from that image if you want to.

Acronis True Image Software and a USB hard drive is an awesome combination.

Here are the details and the links:

For Seagate Hard drives click here.

For Maxtor Hard drives click here.

When you decide you love the program so much you want the full version, please come back here to buy through a link on my website. Thanks.

I was at my Chiro today and he asked me about backing up data on his business computer. It’s not like I haven’t tried to talk him into Acronis True Image and a USB hard drive before; it’s just that he is, well, rather frugal. Ok, cheap.

The reason he brought up computer backup today, though, was because of friend of his is currently trying to recover from a computer disaster without benefit of a good backup of his data, programs, or anything else of value.

PLEASE, don’t wait for disaster to strike you before thinking seriously about computer backup. Grab a USB flash drive of some type then drag and drop some files to it - then take it home; or take it to the office if it’s your home data. Encrypt it first for security.

Just please take action now, while your data is still accessible. It’s a lot more fun to recover data from a quality backup than from a toasted hard drive.

You can find more info on computer backup here.

For many laptop users, USB 2.0 or Firewire offer fast enough speeds for external storage. For others, though, 400mbps just isn’t fast enough.

My work with the MBox and ProTools is one example. ProTools recommends recording music to a non system hard drive - tough to do on a laptop unless you’re talking external. Yet tech support specifically states that USB is NOT fast enough.

Welcome eSATA. I love eSATA external hard drive enclosures, the one from Vantec I’ve written about in the past. But how do you connect eSATA to your laptop?

Easy, now anyway. SIIG makes an expresscard adapter that sells for less than $70. The card slides right in to a slim ExpressCard/34 slot and features two eSATA ports stacked on top of each other. The controller housed inside supports a standard second-gen feature set, including 3 Gbps transfer speeds, Native Command Queuing, hot plugging, and support for drives that exceed 137GB.

If you want the latest and the fastest, go eSATA. You can pick up the adapter here -
SIIG eSATA II 2-Port ExpressCard - 2 x 7-pin Serial ATA/300 External SATA - ExpressCard/34

Data backup on my mind again.

Here I am at a yard sale, typing on my laptop, connected to a wireless router (wirelessly) which is connected to the internet with Motorola Canopy wireless gear and an antenna on the roof of my truck. (I’m a director at the local telco and I’m trying to promote our wireless internet service.)

Things are a touch slow right now, so I thought I’d comment on the movie “Duplex” we watched last night.

Ben Stiller is working on his laptop trying to complete his book with the deadline looming. Naturally, something happens to the laptop just after he finishes the novel. He’s been working on this project for months and has not even one backup.

Wait, you’re saying, it’s just a movie. People in real life don’t do stuff that stupid. Well, you’d be wrong my friend. I’ve mentioned before the bright, ambitious college student whose hard drive crashed with her semester thesis on it - nary a backup to be found.

Thumb drives are just too cheap, too convenient, not to have multiple copies of important data.

For better data backup, check out Acronis True Image. Does a great job of picking up just important stuff if that’s all you want; does an even better job at imaging the entire drive to an external hard drive - also incredibly cheap.

You wouldn’t think secure USB memory sticks would remind me of a song, but then you wouldn’t think that if you knew me either. EVERYTHING reminds me of a song. (If only I could remember more important things..)

If I were writing to Elvis fans, I might have used the expression “Don’t Be Fooled”. But since I’m not sure of the age of my audience, some of you may not even know who “the king” was. In addition, the internet seems to love the word scam - so that’s what I used.

Bruce Schneier’s Crypto-Gram had an interesting note about a secure USB memory drive called Secustick. Secustick promised not only unbeatable security for your data, but also that too many incorrect password attempts would automatically wipe out the data. In fact, the company claimed a lot of things, including adoption by the French Intelligence Service.

Unfortunately, Bruce points out that all claims were bogus. Tweakers.net not only broke its security, but found that the data was NOT encrypted at all, nor was there any “erase feature”. Troubling to say the least.

So what does that mean? It means that more than ever you have to learn what vendors you can trust and to what extent. It means sometimes paying for a product instead of going for what is either cheap or free.

And while you certainly can encrypt data yourself on any USB flash drive, memory stick, call it what you will tiny memory device; some people prefer convenience and avoid hassle and learning curves at all costs.

If you choose to encrypt it yourself, Bruce uses PGPDisk. Steve Gibson of GRC, a HIGHLY respected tech guy, has promoted the free TrueCrypt software. What I would like to know is if either is impervious to government cracking (in reasonable periods of time - NO encryption will stand if given enough time [over which time computing power increases and makes the cracking easier]).

If you are one who enjoys convenience and will pay a few dollars for it, Kingston - a well respected memory company - offers their DataTraveler Secure series in various sizes. Kingston uses the venerable AES 256 encryption.

Kingston 1GB DataTraveler Secure with 256bit AES Hardware-Based Encryption USB2.0 Flash Drive - 1 GB - USB - Portable

I just uploaded a video to YouTube:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj7iMAgji0I]

In it I am cloning a hard drive using Acronis True Image Workstation. The hard drive is from a USB hard drive enclosure; which is why I like building my own - I can upgrade when I need to for a minimum amount of cash.

As one who is critical of our high cost government schools, I get tired of hearing how those sharp kids are learning so much technology in their school.

Oh yes, they can rip (or rip off) music to their mp3 player, upload and download at youtube and waste most of their day (and their parents money) text messaging each other.

You’re hoping I have a point; well, I do. Yesterday I got another one of those emails.

“Kid lost important school project, can you help?” To make matters worse, this was a group of kids. How did they lose it? Hard drive crash with no backup.

And some people wonder why I’m always harping on computer backup. I would really truly feel sorry for these kids if backing up on a USB flash drive were not so cheap and easy.

I was just telling another client yesterday about all of the USB flash drives I have in my drawer that I got for free (after rebate) from Buy.com. All you have to do is plug it into your PC then drag and drop some important files over to it. Want to make really sure? Then change USB flash drives and do it again. Two backups in under two minutes; probably under one minute.

Never mind a complete image backup with Acronis True Image to a USB hard drive.

Will I help these people? Sure, I always do if I can. But I won’t do what I used to do. Years ago I would have some teary eyed student standing in front of me whose world was on the brink of collapse and tell them I would help. I would then take the project home, spend most of the evening (or weekend) saving their bacon and charge not more than $50, if anything at all.

Some of you are smart enough to see how stupid that is, but I have always been a sucker for a young person in need who I know I can help. And I don’t want to charge them in such a way as to be taking advantage of them. But enough of my family suffering in their place.

The internet has too much free information (like here on my blog and over at my website www.FreeComputerConsultant.com), too many cheap USB flash drives and my life is just too short to continue doing that kind of stuff.

And since the Federal, State and Local governments are doing such a great job of siphoning money from my wallet to build an education system that they are so proud of; maybe these kids should take the failed hard drive to school and turn it in. Perhaps salvaging the data should be a learning experience for the whole class? Perhaps losing the data could be a learning experience for the whole class. (Actually, this sounds like a good idea.)

Might as well add that despite all of the hoopla about these students being great with computers, my clients are not impressed either. The graduates they hire might be able to type well enough, but many can’t figure out how to turn the PC on. Or how to backup their work.

Enough rant, I’ve got to go earn some money to pay my upcoming property taxes, of which 56% go to my local government school system; while the road in front of my house deteriorates to a horse trail.

Suffice it to say that I will continue to post new and exciting ways to backup your data.

When you send an email and start to type in the email address of the recipient(s), programs like Outlook will pop down a suggestion box of addressees who you have emailed in the past. These are called Nicknames (sometimes AutoNameCheck).

The first question people ask is, “I just got a new computer, where are all of those old addresses?”. Knowing Microsoft, you don’t expect them to be easy to find, do you?

Look in:

C:\Documents and Settings\%ProfileName%\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

for a file called “Outlook.NK2″. If your Outlook profile is named something else, replace “Outlook” with that name. The NK2 extension is the giveaway.

Simply close Outlook and copy that file from the old PC to the New or copy it to a backup device for backup safekeeping.

The second question I get is, “I have names that pop up that are bad addresses or I never use them. How do I get rid of them?”. For some reason, that isn’t obvious to most people. When the window pops up, arrow down to the one you want to delete and press the delete key on your keyboard. That easy.

Outlook Nicknames are like favorites. Make sure to back them up with your normal backup procedure (you do have one, yes?) and be sure to carry them over to your new PC.

Reason #7 to backup your computer. Ok, I made up the #7 thing, but don’t the guys on TV commercials make it up too?

When you take your laptop or desktop PC in to be repaired, make sure you have a good backup of it. Preferably an entire drive image with a product like Acronis True Image.

And this same advice goes when you or someone you have trusted your computer to might reach for a system recovery disk or boot to system recovery mode.

Your entire hard drive will be reformatted and all data and Windows customizations will be lost! Let me repeat that: you will lose everything. All data, all programs you have installed, all songs you have downloaded. Everything.

Unless you have a backup.

Now, with the system recovery, this is indisputable. It’s gone. You need to restore data and reinstall additional programs you have added when it’s all done. If you have no backup…

When you take the laptop or PC into the repair shop, or they come to you, you might fare better. But don’t bet your data on it!

Case in point: Client bought a new HP/Compaq laptop for his son. Pretty nice unit, actually. Got a good price at boogie buy. The latch broke. Couldn’t get the laptop cover open. This particular PC came with XP Home and I upgraded it to XP Pro for him, among other enhancements. Took it in for repair. Thank you very little they not only fixed the latch, but also reformatted the hard drive. What? Procedure, I am told. In their defense, that way they know the PC will work properly when it gets home; without having to clean off viruses and malware which might cause the customer to blame them.

What if your computer isn’t operating, and that’s why you need to get it repaired? (Or the latch is broken.) You can’t backup then can you?

Ah, grasshopper, that’s why you make backup a habit before you shut the machine down.

Remember this tip: whenever you shut your computer off, or even reboot it, there is a chance it will not come back up properly.

So backup first!

See here for more on computer backup.

Note: This applies to servers that are domain controllers, but if you get this error on a workstation, try the fix anyway.

I have written about the value of a system state backup, but what do you do when it fails with some arcane error message?

From what I found, this error comes from a bug in Server 2003 SP1. If you are trying JUST a system state backup, try including 1 small file from each drive on the system. Usually occurs if you have taken the prudent step of placing the NTFS log files on a different drive than the database.