Storage

Data Backup versus System Backup

March 28, 2008 By terry Leave a Comment

If you’ve been using computers for any length of time, you’ve had the problem.

Maybe you haven’t had a hard drive fail, yet, but you’ve managed to delete or overwrite one of your data files with a changed version — and immediately said “Oh, NO!”

Most people have the problem and have no way to recover a copy of their older version. But you can, if you make a habit of backing up your data.

Karen’s Replicator ( www.karenware.com ) is a great program that I use for making backup copies of my data files. With Replicator, I can schedule backups of any modified files as often as I like. I can back up to a different directory on my hard drive, to a different hard drive (internal or external) or even to a directory on a shared drive across my home network.

By scheduling a daily backup of my data files, I know that…

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Filed Under: Admin Control, Backup, Data Security, Security Updates, Storage, Tips & Tricks, Vista, Windows Xp

Google Earth – A View from Space

September 2, 2007 By terry Leave a Comment

In the Using Google Maps article, we saw how we could find a location on the maps. Then, we saw that we could see a satellite view and even a hybrid view with the map superimposed over the satellite view. We could zoom, too.

Google has another neat satellite-view program. This one is Google Earth, which is free and is part of the free Google Pack software package.

There’s not much I can say about Google Earth. That’s because I don’t know where to start…

Let’s try some bullet points:

You start in space, looking at the Earth. You can turn the Earth with the pointers, or by dragging it, or by double-clicking on a spot.
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Filed Under: Free Software, Storage, Tips & Tricks

U3 Flash Drives

June 17, 2007 By terry Leave a Comment

I bought a new 1 GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro flash drive recently.

When I got to the store that had advertised the drive, they were nowhere to be found. When I asked about it, they had some “in the back.” If the store had actually had the items on the shelf, I probably wouldn’t have been surprised by the U3 Launcher that tried to install software when I inserted the flash drive into my computer.

I had just been reading back issues of Brian Livingston’s Windows Secrets newsletter — where he had the exact same problem.

The Cruzer Micro was actually formatted internally into two “drives”: one non-writeable “CDROM” drive (that’s the icon that Windows showed for it) and one writeable flash drive. In other words, SanDisk had grabbed a chunk of my flash drive’s memory, written auto-running software to it, and then made that portion of the drive non-writeable.

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Filed Under: Storage, Tips & Tricks

Speed of Virtual Memory versus RAM

June 13, 2007 By terry Leave a Comment

Subscriber Rolf wrote to ask about the speed differences between hard drive “virtual memory” and RAM memory chips:

Hello Mr. Stockdale,

Since you actively solicit questions in your newsletter I can therefore feel like I’m not imposing too much of your daily schedule to answer a question or two from those of us (like myself) who don’t have much computer savvy. As for me, well, I have more questions than you’d ever have time for; but for now I’ll settle for one question, and I thank you in advance for taking time for a reply. My question is this -

Kindly explain in as simple terms as you can why free or clear space on hard drives can’t act as readily or responsively in lieu of RAM. In other words … the so-called ‘virtual’ RAM. I’ve read in a few separate places that while a computer can use this virtual RAM, it doesn’t do it as efficiently as more available RAM chips, and that it is generally slower. Why can’t this virtual RAM process, then release data as quickly as normal RAM? Thank you. Rolf
+++++++++++> The Irish Viking <+++++++++++++++++++

In four words: mechanical versus electronic speeds.

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Filed Under: Hardware, Requirements, Resources, Storage, System Stability, Tips & Tricks

Getting an External Hard Drive

April 16, 2007 By terry Leave a Comment

You’ll find it really hard to find one as small as 30-40GB today.

The smallest regular external drivve that I’ve seen advertised in a long time is 160GB. These will use normal desktop-type hard drives and will have a power brick that plugs into the wall.

There are some really small GB sizes today — they have notebook drives in them and are about paperbook size — and are usually designed to plug into your PS2 ports or 1 or 2 USB ports to get their power.

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Filed Under: Backup, Data Security, Hardware, Storage, System Security, Tips & Tricks, Upgrading

Backing Up Your Hard Drive

March 14, 2007 By terry Leave a Comment

One of the easiest ways to back up your hard drive — whether you have one big C: drive or several partitions — is to use a program that does image backups.

For years, I used a program from PowerQuest called Drive Image. It saved me a lot of time, both in migrating from old hard drives to new hard drives and in recovering from massive problems. I remember that I could copy the backed-up image of a fresh Windows 95 installation, including WordPerfect, Netscape, network card drivers, video drivers and such, onto one CDROM. To restore the hard drive took less than 10 minutes — as opposed to the hours of Windows installation, looking for diskettes, installing programs, etc.

But, backing up my hard drive this way became much more of a bother as the drives became bigger and bigger.

U3 Flash Drives

March 6, 2007 By terry Leave a Comment

I bought a new 1 GB SanDisk Cruzer Micro flash drive recently.

I had just been reading back issues of Brian Livingston’s Windows Secrets newsletter — where he had the exact same problem.