Hollywood is too lazy to figure out how to use new technologies to make money from their intellectual property.  Instead of creating new business models that leverage all the new ways to distribute, share, and enjoy their content, Hollywood is bribing lawmakers to implement careless and inferior legislation in a dangerous attempt to protect their content.

Typical of recent legislation, the Protect IP Act, says one thing and does something completely different.  It does very little to protect Intellectual Property, but does much to provide new ways for Corporate Lawyers to threaten anyone they feel may be threatening their business model. Criminals who pirate content, will still find ways around the system.  Corporations who sense competition from up and coming technologies and services, are able sue the competition under SOPA/PIPA.

Watch as our lawmakers ignore the facts and continue to cow-tow to Hollywood money.

Visit Stop The Wall for more information.

We had 3 systems fail last month.  3 Servers crashed and were left as an unbootable pile of computer parts.  In all three cases we were able to restore the systems with no data loss.

The funny thing, all three systems had a RAID system in place.  Did this help?  Not really.

Why?  Well, RAID is great if you have a hardware failure in which one of the physical disk drives fail.  Then your alerted and you replace the drive and all is well.

What happens if Windows get’s corrupted due to an update?  Or someone deletes a file, or a database?  RAID is just a fancy word for duplicating your data.  If someone deletes a file, it’s gone from all the drives in the RAID system.  If windows burps and gets corrupted, it’s corrupted on all the drives in the RAID system.  RAID is not backup.  RAID is just a layer of protection in case a hard disk fails.

Hard disk failure is just *one* of a myriad of ways in which a system could loose data.  RAID is not a substitute for a backup.  A backup system allows you to travel back in time and recover data that was lost/corrupt.  A backup system is a series of snapshots of your data.   A RAID system is a single snapshot of your data that is continuously destroyed and recreated every time the data changes.

RAID is not a backup.

Here is an article that discusses the latest threat to Mac systems.  The number of reports of malware on Macs has increased 3-4 times in the past few weeks.  If you or someone you know has a Mac, be sure they review this article.  If they still have questions after reviewing the article, have them contact us for more information.

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/05/19/macdefender-malware-protection-and-removal-guide/

They say there are only two types of hard drives, those that have failed and those that are about to fail.   While that is a pessimistic view of modern hardware, when it comes to critical data, a little pessimism is a good thing.  Everyone knows they need to backup their data.  Why is that we get PCs on our bench every week that don’t have backups?

Perhaps a discussion of the options available will help motivate people to take the relatively easy steps to data protection.

Take two backups and call me in the morning.

There are basically 2 types of backups systems one can choose. File based backups and Image based backups.  File based backups are just that, a collection of the important data files on your computer.  Image based backups are a complete backup of your entire system.  Image backups contain all your data *and* your applications.  Your settings, your license keys, your hidden files, protected Windows files, the works.  Image backups are a clone of your data.  File based backups are just the important bits of your system, your pictures, music and documents without any of the programs you need to manage them.  With a File based backup, when you go to restore your data after a hard drive crash, you will need copies of all your applications, license keys, documentation, patches, configuration settings, etc. etc etc. 

Why would you choose File Based backups if they don’t back everything up?

Well, for the same reason you may want to watch a movie vs. reading a book.  Time.  Really though, it’s  a space issue.  File based backups focus on the critical parts of your system, the data, and ignore the applications.  On average,  File Based backups are much smaller than an Image backup of the same system.  File based backups are faster to complete as well.  So, for quick, small backups, File Based backups are often used.  File based backups are also used when you want to copy your data off site.  Because of their smaller size and speed, File based backups are perfect for off site backup services.  Services including Carbonite, Mozy, and Dr. Backup all use a form of File based backup.  In each case, you will need to reinstall Windows and all of your applications if you have a  hard drive crash.

Meet your identical twin, the Image Backup.

Image backups are a carbon copy clone of your drive.  Everything on your system is backed up.  Everything.  They are slower to run, take up more space and when you hard drive crashes, they are what you want to save a ton of time when it comes to recovery.  With an image backup of your system you can replace the failed drive, run the recovery software and often be back up and running in under an hour–less time that it would take to locate all your software if you were recover a File based backup.  The advantage of  an Image backup is it backs up everything.  The downside of an Image backup is it backs up everything.  That use to be the running joke regarding image backups.  The reality is, space is cheap now, so there really isn’t an excuse not to have an Image backup of critical systems.

Why can’t we all just get along?

When all is said and done, you really should have both a File based system (off site) and an Image based backup (on site).  If someone breaks in and steals your PC, they will probably steal your Image backup as well.  With a File based backup, you still have your data off site and can at least get back to where you were, albeit slowly.  If your hard drive crashes, recovery is quick and painless via your local Image backup.   The thing is, you don’t know how/why your going to need to recover your data, so you need to plan for the 2 big things that happen; Hard Drive Crashes and PC Theft.

So, you have no excuse.  Yes, the glass is half-full, so take the remaining fluid and use it to energize yourself.  Implement a backup system, be it File Based, Image based, or some combination of the two.  Here are products we use to protect our customers valuable data.

File based (offsite) backup solutions:

Image based (onsite) backup solutions:

AT&T is slashing the price on the iPhone 3GS on Friday, Jan. 7.  The new pricing is AT&T’s attempt at making a ‘land grab’ of customers prior to the expected availability of the iPhone on Verizon.

The new price is a 50% drop from the previous $99 for the 8G model.  The drop is independant of any pricing from Apple, which indicates the sale-price may be exclusive to AT&T.

AT&T slashes iPhone 3GS to $49

 Yesterday we did our annual Hard Drive destruction where we take all the dead hard drives for the year and physically destroy them. 

Holey Hard Drive, Batman!

This destruction was done at Interconnection.org in Seattle.  We destroyed 27 desktop PC and notebook drives.  Each drive had a hole punched completely through the drive ensuring nobody will be able to recover any leftover data.  Each drive is crushed in about 5 seconds.  The interesting thing was that we were so used to handling hard drives gently that it was hard to just toss them into the bin after destruction.

These drives came from systems that had either died or were about to die.  Most people had backups of their data (see our HOST and BEST plans for more details), but some didn’t and those were the painful ones.  Once a drive is dead, it’s very expensive to recover the data.  

The moral of the story is to be sure you back up your data, because eventually, all hard drives will fail and end up in a bin like this:

All Hard Drives end up here, make sure you back up your data.

Ok…to recap, in our first two parts of the tune up process we had you patch your windows to the latest patch level.  We then discussed how to tune the apps that start when your computer starts.  The more you can reduce the apps that launch automatically, the faster your system will start.

The next area we are going to focus on is your web browser.  Most people use Internet Explorer (though that is changing) to browse the internet.  Even if your not using IE as your browser, IE may be used behind the scenes when you use your favorite software.  To help speed up IE, we have found the easiest way to tweak it is to reset it to the factory defaults.

Resetting IE to factory defaults will remove any of those toolbars that usually slow your system down more than any supposed time saving they claim to provide.  These toolbars are notorious for slowing down your system and causing a variety of issues with browser stability or performance.

Before we reset things, we should also be sure we have the latest IE version (IE8 for now).  Click here to get the latest version of IE.  Once you have IE8 installed, then we need to reset it to factory default.  Simply click the following(Tools->Internet Options).  That will launch a window:

     Click ‘Advanced”

Then click ‘Reset’.  This will reset the browser settings.  The next time IE launches it will ask you a few questions regarding how you want to work with IE.  After that, IE should be running as quickly as possible.  Try to avoid installing any toolbars as it will only slow the browser down over time.