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LangaList 2005-03-07 Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!
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1) Tested *Your* Backups Lately?I suspected that the item on a "Weird 'Restore' Error" in the last issue ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-03-03.htm#2 ) might bring some interesting mail... and it did. <g>
Testing your backups is a good idea, Tom; the best time to discover a problem is before you're in full-blown crisis mode. 8-) There are several ways to test, including the "gold standard" method you suggest: A complete trial restore to a new or alternate disk. But there may be a simpler way. For example, my favorite imaging tool, Terabyte Unlimited's "BootIt" ( http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html ) normally produces a monolithic .IMG file that contains a compressed, bit-for-bit clone of your hard drive. But Terabyte also offers a free "TBIView" tool ( http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/utilities.html ) that lets you browse inside an IMG file and extract only whatever files or folders you want, without restoring the entire image. If you run TBIview and randomly select just three files--- one each from the front, middle and end of the image--- you can reasonably assess the health of the entire image: If all three files can be found and accessed without trouble, odds are the entire image is OK. Most other backup/imaging tools offer similar functions: Just do selective reads of several files in different places within a backup/image; if they all can be found and accessed, your backup/image is most likely fine. Note that you don't have to actually restore anything for this test; although you can if you wish, by restoring to an "alternate/custom location" (or whatever your tool calls it) so you don't overwrite anything important on your drive. I'm not sure if Dantz Retrospect has this kind of file-by-file restore facility. I tried looking, but the Dantz site has some dead links and missing pages; and the data sheets are very sketchy on the restore process. If it does not offer that kind of file-by-file option in addition to whole-restores, it might be worth looking at a different imaging tool. BTW: If I've gone too fast in covering this, we had more detail in this article from last year: "How To Verify If Backups Are OK" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-10-14.htm#2 ) Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 2) What About Win98? USB?Like the item above, this note also was prompted by "Weird 'Restore' Error" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-03-03.htm#2 ):
Note that tools that work from DOS floppies or CDs may not be able to work seamlessly with a USB-based drive (this is probably what you ran into). You may need to find a DOS-level driver for the USB device (eg http://www.google.com/search?q=dos+driver+usb ). Or, more simply, use the imaging tool to create the image file on a different partition on your main (non-USB) hard drive. Then, once Windows is running again, copy the file from the hard drive to the USB device; a two-step process that avoids problems with DOS-level USB support. That was the method I used during the many years when Win98 was my primary OS, although it wasn't specifically for a USB issue. Back then, I had only CDs (no DVD burners were yet available): I pared down my main C: partition so it contained only the operating system and my most-essential files and folders; and I installed nonessential stuff in other partitions. Doing this, I could almost always get a Win98 C: to fit in a 2GB partition with room to spare. I'd then use a disk imaging tool (then, Drive Image 5; alas no longer available) and simply image the entire 2GB partition every day. It only took a couple minutes, and the whole thing fit onto a single 700MB CD (because the image is stored in compressed form). When I needed a file from the backup, I could restore just the target file via the Windows front end for DI5; and when I needed to restore the whole image (eg to roll the entire system back to a known-good point) I could do that too. Reliable, bulletproof, inexpensive... it worked fine. Of course, with a DVD burner, paring things down to a small size isn't as critical as it once was: a 4.7GB DVD could probably hold an 8GB partition image, compressed. But either way, the trick is to get your main partition, with your OS and all essential data, down to a size that fits your backup media. That way, daily backups take only one blank disk and a few minutes to complete. I don't know about "BackupMyPC," so I can't comment on it specifically. If you want an alternative, DI5 is no more, although you might be able to buy an old copy on Ebay or some such. You also could use BootitNG ( http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootitng.html ) to similar effect, although you'd have to run it manually. (It'd still only take a few minutes.) If you wanted to go a slightly less certain (but still usually OK) route, you could use an image-from-inside-Windows tool, like "Image For Windows" ( http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/imagew.html ) or one of the Acronis tools ( http://www.acronis.com/ ). More detail, including info on how to safely and nondestructively resize in-use partitions: http://langa.com/backups/backups.htm Click to email this item to a
friend 3) Free Tools, As Good As Any
Indeed, it's pretty good stuff, Tracy. There also are additional free add-ins and utilities here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9series/encoder/utilities.aspx XP's built-in "Movie Maker" is another nice tool that uses much of the same core technology. ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/updates/moviemaker2.mspx ) It's as slick as many commercial movie-making tools, but offers much higher compression rates. In fact, all the Windows Media audio and video compression rates can be much, *much* higher than their MPx counterparts. this lets you either pack more AudioVisual content into a given space, or end up with smaller standalone files that are easier to store and share. Related example: I recently bought my wife a little iPod-type player. I say "iPod-type" because it's not an iPod: I instead choose a player that also supports WMA (Windows Media Audio) because a WMA audio track is only about half the size of the same track in MP3 format. That means my wife can load literally twice as many songs into her player as she could if the songs were in MP3 format. (Yes, she also can load MP3s, if she wants too; the player handles both formats.) There's no special software needed, either: The free Windows Media Player will "rip" a CD into WMA format in just seconds per track. It's utterly simple. The audio quality of WMA is functionally the same as MP3; I can hear no difference when the music's played through the earbud headphones that come with those portable players. So, there's no real downside to WMA: No audible difference, easy to use, and twice the number of songs in a given storage space. True, WMA is a proprietary format--- but I seriously doubt it's going away anytime soon, as it's compatible with the majority of the world's PCs. <g> Apple gets all the press for audio and video, and their mechanical designs and marketing are very slick, but the Windows media software has some real advantages. Plus, it's either built into XP, or can be added for free. <g> Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList S.E. Free! ) --- Reader Saves $150! --------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 4) Cheap Shot?
Actually, I agree with you, Michael. When I was back in the world of corporate publishing, and tracking the minutia of PC companies, Microsoft was spending more on user testing than any other software company--- bar none. I have no reason to believe that that's changed. Small example: A decade ago, Microsoft found that users were intimidated by long streams of startup messages from the PC as different components woke up and came on line; and so Microsoft hid them behind a startup graphic. (You really only need to see the startup messages when something's going wrong.) For many years, the Windows startup screen was derided by the Linux community as a sign of Windows' wimpishness. Most distros of Linux continued to proudly flash a text message from every tiny subsystem or software component as they woke up or shut down. ("Probing SCSI..." "Found CPU..." "Init: entering runlevel 5"... etc.) But now--- surprise!--- more and more Linuxes are hiding this complexity from the end user; finally recognizing that most of the time, for most of the users, those messages are just so much screen clutter. In short: Microsoft was right. Microsoft also was right about the location and function of the Start button; in fact, it's been copied on almost all the non-Windows graphical interfaces, too, including most Linux GUIs. But you have to admit that Start is not the same as Stop. <g> Chen's explanation--- that the Start button is like a car's ignition switch--- makes some sense, except that in cars it's not called the "Start" switch. "Start" is only one of the labels on the ignition switch; "Off" is another. The problem's not the button. It's just the word "Start" that's a little strange; and thus my very small jibe. <g> Click to email this item to a
friend 5) Drowning In Duplicate "Favorites"
If the names of the shortcuts are the same, then there's a very easy fix: Create a new folder somewhere convenient and copy the contents of the different "favorites" folders into the single, new folder. (The Favorites folders are usually found in C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Favorites ) Once all the shortcuts are copied to the new folder, open that folder, then click View/Details on the menu. Next, click on the "name" heading to sort the shortcut files alphabetically. You then can read down the list, and duplicate names should jump out at you fairly readily. Just delete all but one of each set of duplicates, and move down the list until all duplicate names are removed. You can then pick one of the favorites to be the new "master" folder, clean it out (eg move or delete the existing contents), copy the de-duped shortcuts into that folder, and you're done. Of course, if the duplicate shortcuts to the same
locations don't have the same name, it gets harder. Then, you might benefit from
a favorites management tool, like these: Click to email this item to a
friend 6) New Month, New ChancesIt's a new month, and right now your chances are the best
they'll ever be! Click to email this item to a
friend 7) New "URL Discombobulator"Karen Kenworthy's at it again. This time, she's improved
her "URL Discombobulator" to reveal the true destination of even some
fiendishly obscured URLs. The new (free!) download and an exceedingly clear
explanation of "url obfuscation" (a trick spammers and phishers use to mislead
you about the sites a link may take you to) is available here: Click to email this item to a
friend 8) More Reader Sites!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
) Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting
At Hand Crafted Jigs And Spins Compact Publications Turtle Bay condo rental LeftOver Recipes Ben's "PC Plus Services" are live! Galee Web & Computer Design Chainclubs serene dreams Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 9) Anti-Spyware Tools = Tennis Doubles?
Not exactly, because--- unlike humans--- software makes no assumptions about what other software will do: Each tool will look for whatever nasties it's designed to seek out, and that's that. No software will say "oh, there's other anti-malware software on this machine, so I won't go after that file..." In fact, the opposite can be true: Running too many of the same kinds of anti-malware tools can end up with them fighting over which has priority in accessing and testing suspect files. To use your analogy, this is like two tennis players both charging for the ball, and crashing into each other! So, the trick with anti-malware tools is multiple layers of defense, as long as the layers are different: EG one firewall, one antivirus tool, one real-time anti-malware tool, etc. For example, see the list in this item: http://langa.com/newsletters/2005/2005-01-20.htm#2 With a set of tools like that, they'll each do their own focused job (paying no attention to each other) and will thus miss very few shots--- er, malwares. Click to email this item to a
friend 10) Just For Grins
(Pssst. Just in case anyone missed it, this is a joke, OK? <g>) Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 11) Plus! Edition Highlights:
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