Free Computer Consultant ………. Daily Insights

I had a Pentium 4 2.4 processor floating around that would only eBay for about $25. So I decided to see how little I could spend to turn it into a decent computer.

I found the Asus P4V8X-MX motherboard was feature packed and very inexpensive. 1 GB of memory from Crucial.com was less than $75. The SATA hard drive I had laying around had XP installed on it from an Asus P5B or P5L installation, not sure which, but surprised the heck out of me when it booted into windows with just a few drivers missing.

Since more and more of the problems I solve are regarding Windows Vista, I decided to see how Vista would fare on this board.

So I downloaded and ran the Windows Upgrade Advisor. After doing its thing, the advisor reported that it had encountered an error (thanks for all of that detail, Microsoft); and perhaps I should re-download the latest version (did it change in 15 minutes?) and try again.

Forget it. Install Vista anyway.

I booted with the Windows Vista Ultimate DVD (Dell OEM copy) and chose to install to a new partition. Wisely, I had only allocated about half of the 120GB disk to the Windows XP Pro installation.

With Vista, there really aren’t too many questions to answer during the install so I came back later to see how it was doing. I had to press the power button since it had gone to sleep waiting for me (fitting, as I have fallen asleep so many times waiting for Windows) but essentially it was all done.

The Asus P4V8X-MX board did not come with Vista drivers and I didn’t download any. Yet everything worked; no yellow exclamations in device manager; NIC, sound, and an old Asus GeForce MX 400 AGP video card all worked perfectly. The P4V8X-MX has video on the board making it a great value, but I figured AGP video with its own RAM would perform better - and the card was just gathering dust anyway.

So I guess my advice when Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor reports an error is to just go ahead anyway.

With one BIG caveat!:

I had backed up the PC first, even though I didn’t care about the XP install, with Acronis True Image software to a USB hard drive.

When I was done I now had a dual boot, Windows XP Pro, Windows Vista Ultimate, computer. Runs great on both.

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.

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.

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.

Since I’m always harping about Acronis True Image and External USB Hard Drives, I thought it only fair to tell you which enclosure I like.

VANTEC NST-360SU-BK External Enclosure

This unit from Vantec I have used extensively. It is a full size (for 3.5 inch hard drives) and does require a power cord with inline transformer. You supply the SATA drive of your choice.

Here’s why I like it:

• Any standard SATA hard drive can be used (supports 1.5 and 3.0Gbps). If you outgrow it, just clone (if necessary) and swap out the drive. I have posted a video of how to do this.
• USB 2.0 interface or eSATA (external SATA).
• eSATA adapter included in the kit. This is a cable that attaches to the motherboard with a backplane converter brackt that installs where any expansion card would fit in the case.
• Easy to assemble

If this unit is to be transported much, I recommend a more resilient drive like the Seagate Barracuda ES models. They are designed for servers, with longer life expectancy and lower failure rates.

Here’s the 500GB model
Seagate Barracuda ES 500GB 3.5″ SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive

They also have 250 & 750GB sizes.