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The LangaList
Standard Edition

2004-09-20

A Free Email Newsletter from Fred Langa
That Helps You Get More From Your Hardware, 
Software, and Time Online

Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!

1) Save an Hour (Or More) On XP Installs

Our recent discussions about XP's SP2 http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=46200911 show that Microsoft's huge patch is working fine for most users; and that with caution (make a full backup or image beforehand; read and follow all of Microsoft's pre-SP2 installation tips), even potentially troublesome installations can *usually* (but not always) be handled smoothly.

And never swiftly: The update process will take a chunk of your workday, even if you don't count the download time or if you install from the free SP2 CD; or the prep time; or the cleanup time. Twenty to forty minutes seems about the minimum for the basic install on faster PCs; older, slower systems can take well over an hour. the total process can be much, much longer.

Fortunately, you can achieve a huge timesavings on *future* installations and reinstallations of XP by integrating the new SP2 files with those of your original XP setup CD. Your new hybrid install CD will work exactly as the original one did, even to the point of using the same 25-character Product Key, but it will be completely up to date with all patches and updates, up to and including SP2. Any system you set up with the hybrid CD will be pre-patched to current levels, in one step. You'll be totally up to date from the start, rather than facing maybe an hour or more of additional downloads to bring the new installation or reinstallation to SP2 levels.

Creating a new hybrid installation CD is surprisingly easy--- a point and click exercise with only a few geeky parts. And it works very well. In fact, in most ways, this method of pre-patching an installation CD is basically the same process software vendors use to produce an updated version of their installation software; indeed, starting this Fall, Microsoft will offer for sale fully prepatched versions of XP on CD. But you don't have to wait: You can create your own totally legitimate prepatched copy of XP on CD today.

I've posted a fully-illustrated step-by-step guide to producing your own up-to-date installation CD at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=47212312 . Every critical step is accompanied by a screen shot so you'll know exactly what to expect. I've included live links to the (free) downloads you'll need to create the CD, and also included links to other sites that discuss the same process, so if my method doesn't work for you, for any reason, you can find another that will.

I've already used my updated installation CD here, and it was very cool to set up a new XP PC and see the process end, in one step, with a complete, up-to-date SP2 setup, with no additional downloads or patches needed. 

Check it out---all the information you need to make your own, full pre-patched XP installation CD is at
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=47212312 .

(P.S. Some readers have had trouble connecting to the InformationWeek site. The IWK site is free to browse, which is to say it's supported by advertisers. If you have heavy-duty ad-, script-, or popup-blocking enabled, the site may not be able to deliver ad banners to you, and will stall when it tries to draw pages for you. [It's a page-on-demand system, where each page is created on-the-fly as it's called for.] If you encounter connection trouble, try relaxing your ad-blocker for at least the duration of your visit to that one site.)

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2) RAID-Users Speak Up

Several readers wrote to disagree with my two part coverage of RAID technology, "RAID Issues" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-09-16.htm#1 ) and "Why I Don't Use RAID" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-09-16.htm#2 ).

Here's an example letter:

Hi Fred:  [You asked:] "May I see a show of hands of readers who need more than 800 GB of live storage on their desktop systems?" Consider that there is at least one hand raised!
 
While I really appreciate your advice on backing up PCs; my dilemma is that I've got 1.38 TeraBytes worth of hard drives.
I've copied my entire CD and vinyl collection into the PC, I'm starting on the collection of photos and slides I've taken over the years, and eventually I'll get to the 8MM, Super8 and VHS material. I've though about compression techniques, MP3 for example, but I don't want to sacrifice any of the quality of the material in favor of more capacity.
 
Needless to say; I've got a huge investment in time and labor and I would be quite upset if I were to lose any, or all, of it.

I won't bore you with the technical stuff other than to say I've got nine (9) hard drives, connected and spinning inside a single desktop running Win2K.
 
My motherboard has built in RAID capability, and using RAID 1 functionality is the only practical way I've found to perform backups on a system this size. My solution:

The 3 "small" drives (240 GB total), which are lightly used, are regularly backed up in a conventional manner, consistent with your recommendations.

I have 3 pairs of "large" drives (currently 1140 GB total). One of each pair is permanently mounted in the case; the other is mounted in a removable drive tray.

I also have 3 additional drives of comparable sizes, also in removable drive trays, but these three are packed in anti static bags inside a well padded box.

My methodology is fairly simple. I run a RAID 1 array where one of the "large" permanently mounted drives is mirrored with an equal size drive in a removable drive tray. When it's time to make a backup I simply perform a clean shutdown of the system then remove the drives in the removable trays which then become my offsite backup.  Next I install the drives which previously were my offsite backups, power up the PC and have the raid controller's Bios re-synchronize the newly installed drives with the existing drives. The resynchronization is a long, but essentially hands off process.
 
Aside from expense of all those hard drives, the fact that the PC is unusable while resynchronization is progressing, and the inability to have more levels of backups, it is a functional solution.

The one thing I would like would be the possibility of performing the resynchronization of the RAID array as a background task while the operating system was running, which is how the enterprise level disk arrays work.
 
BTW: I had thought of using tape as a backup media but the math didn't work out. For example, recently a 200 Gig tape (uncompressed capacity) cost about $65.00 and a 200 Gig hard drive about $79.95. The catch is that the drive for a 200 Gig tape was about $4000.00. Using smaller capacity tapes would be more cost efficient, but would require multiple mounts/dismounts and I didn't want to baby sit the computer for long periods of time to perform the backups. --- Cheers, Rusty

My guess is there are a handful of other LangaList readers in similar situations, Rusty; and still more whose professional needs (automation control, banking, etc) legitimately require RAID. My point wasn't "RAID is bad," or any such thing, but that (as I said in http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-09-16.htm#2 ) RAID's benefits don't amount to much "in normal daily operation with normal files." I respectfully submit that a Terabyte of data on a desktop system isn't exactly "normal." <g>

RAID has it's place, for sure. But, IMO, not as a part of routine desktop setups.

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3) Simple Organizational Tricks Save Time

Dear Fred, I hope you find appropriate to remind my fellow readers of your excellent newsletter of these obvious-enough-to-get-overlooked tricks that I have found most helpful.

Typical of but not necessarily limited to downloaded files is that they often have obscure shorthand names, e.g. the imaginary "the greatest spyware detector ever built version 3.2" may get named "gswdeb32.zip". This file would not be exactly easy to find after a week or two.

In XP with NTFS comments, and even keywords may be attached to any file by right-clicking properties / summary (select the "simple" option). These comments can also be displayed by default in explorer (right-click the display options, select more and choose comments) and are even searchable. I usually spell out hard to remember filenames to the comments field and often add keywords as well. Most compression programs have built in commenting too, but these comments may not be searchable.

Another worthwhile practice is to have the discipline always to save in predefined folders and create a new appropriately named subfolder for each downloaded or otherwise created item. Also, one can by right-clicking easily create an empty text file and use it's name as a reminder. Of course, short manuals, URL's etc. can be copy-pasted in that file.

Although a little control freakish, these practices require only a few extra mouse movements. They may save a lot of time and more importantly, nerve.

Best regards, Jyrki Launes

I agree, Jyrki. For example, I have a folder called "software" on an out-of the way partition (E:) which only needs occasional backups once or twice a year. Every piece of software I download and every patch goes there. For example, I have a Zonelabs subfolder where I store only the downloaded updates for ZoneAlarm; a Lexmark folder for printer driver updates, an nVidia folder for graphics updates, etc. Not only does this save having to re-download the same update multiple times, but it makes it very easy to locate any downloaded file at any time. It also allows you collect a library of older updates, making it easy to roll back to a prior version of some product, should you need to do so.

A little organization goes a long way to making PC use easier!

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4) NTFS Files Insecure?

Fred, I am a long time reader of your newsletter and a Plus subscriber.  I run several Windows systems, My 2 primary systems are - a Dell Optiplex GX270, P IV 3.0 gHZ, 512 running Windows XP Professional SP1 on an NTFS volume, and my laptop - a Dell Latitude C800 running Windows 2000 Professional on an NTFS volume..  After reading about Knoppix in your newsletter and hearing about it from some colleagues I downloaded the ISO and was quite impressed with the ability to run Linux directly from a CD. 
 
To my great shock, I was able to access ALL data on my NTFS hard drives on both systems, without entering any username or password.  It was read only access, ie - I was unable to delete or create files, but could open files.  I have always taken computer security very seriously - all systems are behind a hardware firewall, running the most up to date virus protection, all security patches, etc.  I find this to be a huge flaw in the Knoppix distribution, by including this functionality designed to circumvent NTFS security. 
 
Essentially, anyone with a Knoppix boot CD can access any protected data on any PC with a NTFS volume. ---Matt

I respectfully disagree. Matt. NTFS, by itself, is just a format and file system; it implies no special security, in and of itself. Any tool (and there are many besides Knoppix) that can read the NTFS format can see the data. This is no different from, say, using a FAT32 boot floppy to read files on a FAT16 hard drive; or using a PC utility to read Mac files, or vice versa.

But XP and Win2K, when run on NTFS, do offer OPTIONAL built-in encryption. If you enable it, then anyone reading the files from XP, Win2K, Linux, or any other NTFS-capable system will see only a meaningless jumble of code. So, if you're worried about this kind of physical snooping, just enable encryption (search the XP Help file for detailed instructions) and your data will be quite safe.

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5) Warning For Air Travelers With Pen Drives

Hi Fred - I have traveled over a lot of the USA and assorted countries with my laptop and other digital and electronic media, even 35 mm film with absolutely no problems whatsoever.
 
However, on a recent trip to DragonCon in Atlanta, I took my 128MB USB along with me and dropped it in my laptop case to run thru the Xray machine at Greater Cincinnati Airport. Much to my horror when I popped it in my Win 2K laptop in the hotel it saw nothing on the drive. After removing and popping it back in the USB port it even failed to recognize the drive at all!
 
When I got home, I tried the USB drive on my XP Pro machine, it also failed to recognize the device. Not only does the OS not see this drive, it no longer even lights up the little LED on the end of the drive.
 
While drives are cheap, the lost data might not be. Fortunately, I had made it a habit to backup the USB drive on CD so in my case no data was truly lost. But others may not realize the potential for disaster at the airports.
 
Keep up the good works and I am proud to be a Plus member. Thanks! Jerry

All the data's gone? Ouch! It was probably not the X-rays themselves that caused the problem but the powerful magnets used to create and control the X-rays. The drive is probably junk now, and unrecoverable.

A suggestion for future travel: At the start of the security screening, drop your pen-drive in the tray along with your keys and coins, thus bypassing the electronic screening devices that might cause trouble. Of course, if your pen drive looks like a pocketknife, you'll still have some explaining to do <g>; but at least your data will be safe.

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6) Is This Information Useful?

If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, maybe a friend would find it useful too! Just use the following link to recommend the LangaList---your friend may find a new source of useful information and you just may win one of three FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTIONS to the LangaList Plus! edition given each month. (If your name is drawn and you're already a Plus! subscriber, your current subscription will be extended by a full year.)

Check out the details at http://langa.com/recommend.htm . Thanks for recommending the LangaList--- and good luck!

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7) ClipOmatic

Hi Fred: Just a quick note to tell you about a great clipboard tool that I can't live without.  It's called Clipomatic, and is a small freeware utility developed by Mike Lin ( http://www.mlin.net/Clipomatic.shtml ).  It allows you to copy, cut and paste multiple items.  The problem with conventional cut-and-paste is that you can only paste the last item that you copied or cut.  Clipomatic will retain up to 64 items.
 
Clipomatic is similar to the Office clipboard in MS Office products, but works with all applications.  As well,  you can "program" it with up to 26 items that you use frequently (I have my name, e-mail address, phone number, other commonly-used text strings, and a few special characters such as an em dash programmed into Clipomatic).  It works from an icon in the taskbar as well as a hot-key (Ctrl-Alt-V is the default hot-key, which even I can remember!)
 
Cheers! ---Richard Drdul

Mile Lin does good work (see http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=%22mike+lin%22&sp-a=0008002a-sp00000000 ); this is probably another gem. 8-) Thanks, Richard!

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8) They Loaded The Code

Do you have a home page or website? (It doesn't matter what size.) Please click over to http://langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join the hundreds and hundreds of LangaList readers who have "Loaded the Code!" (If you've already "Loaded The Code" and are wondering if your site will appear here or on the Langa.Com web site, please see http://langa.com/link.txt  )

Speaking of which: Here's another eclectic sample of reader sites--- some professional, some very personal:

View A Randomly-Chosen Reader Site
http://langa.com/randomlink.htm

Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At
http://langa.com/readersites.htm

Streaming Jazz On the Web
http://www.smoothisland.com/

Model Airplane Kits and Plans
http://pageproducer.acninc.net/dielsengr/index.html

Van Schaick Photography
http://www.vanschaickphoto.com/

Jett Set
http://joanjett2000.topcities.com/

VOIP, Virtual Calling Card, Wireless, & More
http://www.SmartRates.Biz/

TheTravelingSalesman
http://www.thetravelingsalesman.net/v5457t/

Villa Hikaru (Jamaica)
http://villahikaru.com/links.html

Happy Birthday web sites
http://ismybirthday.com/Fdefault.asp

Word Toys (add in for MS Word)
http://www.wordtoys.com/

Interface Software and More
http://www.televendtrionics.com/pages/1/index.htm

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9) Update On An SP2 Problem

In "Save Yourself Some Grief!" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-09-13.htm#1 ) we saw a letter from reader Eran Rosenmann , who gave us all a heads-up on an issue with certain Pentium 4 models that could cause SP2 to fail. Here's an update:

Hi Fred, Last week I wrote you about the incompatibility of SP2 and certain Intel processors. Now there is a new MSKBA
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];885626

There is also a critical update for those with the processor who have not installed SP2 yet: http://tinyurl.com/5dqzm

---Eran Rosenmann

Thanks, Eran!

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10) Just For Grins

 DaHjaj 'oH QaQ jaj Daq Hegh!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3658310.stm

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11) Plus! Edition Highlights:

• PC Info Site From The UK
     (reader-recommended site for PC questions)
• Free Content Indexer For Your Desktop
     (find anything, fast!)
• Another Free Internet Telephony Option
     (call any other user, worldwide, free!)

Access to over 100,000 additional words in special features, extra content and private links, all on a private web site--- plus 30% more content in every issue, for just a dollar a month!

Plus! Edition info: http://langa.com/plus.htm 

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(Give a gift subscription to the LangaList Plus edition!
Click <a href= " http://langa.com/plus_gift.htm ">here</a>)

See you next issue, 2004-09-23!

Best,

Fred
( Editor@Langa.Com )

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