Back It Up!
on February 11th, 2009Everyone intends to back up their important data, but few people actually follow through on it. We see it all the time. We’ve seen a couple of examples this week alone.
One of our customers had a hard drive crash and had not backed up anything. Although we have a good record of data recovery on failed hard drives, sometimes the data is just not recoverable. That was the case here. He lost everything.
Another of our customers is a real estate agent. They share a group of computers. She had a bunch of important documents stored on one of these computers. Someone else in the office, apparantly with a grudge of some sort, deleted all of her data and emptied the recycle bin. We weren’t called in until a couple of days later to try and recover the data. We were able to recover some of it, but most of it was lost. Had we been called immediately, we could have recovered more. And, of course, she had no back up at all.
Whether you use a shared computer or your own computer, you should have some sort of backup of your important data.
There are many different types of backups and many different ways to back up. Our favorite type of backup is the image backup. This type of backup takes a complete snapshot of your computer. If your hard drive crashes, this picture can be put on a new hard drive and installed on your computer. Then the computer will boot up as if nothing bad ever happened. You don’t have to reinstall Windows or all of your programs. This type of backup needs to be saved to a second or external hard drive because it is big.
The other type of backup is a file backup. This type of backup backs up important files. If you have a hard drive crash, you have to install the new hard drive, reinstall Windows, and reinstall all of your programs, but your important data is safe.
There are many ways to create a file backup, both manual and automatic and many different types of media you can back up to. Everyone should be doing a file backup at the very least. Important data to back up includes e-mail, contacts, calendar, documents, spreadsheets, financial data (Quicken, Quickbooks, Peachtree, etc), photos, music, and much more. Any piece of information that you don’t want to lose.
How you back up and what media you back up to depends on what you are backing up, how big it is, how important it is, and how often it changes. It also depends on how regimented you are on backing up.
This is a very large subject and I can’t visit every possibility in this article, but I wanted to mention a few important things.
The ultimate backup strategy is to have an image backup to a secondary drive (internal or external) coupled with a remote backup (back up over the internet). This is complete protection and provides the quickest way to get your computer back online when the hard drive dies. It is a total system backup locally, but still protects you with remote backup in case both your computer and the local backup are destroyed, in a house fire, for example.
You can just do remote backups if the amount of data you are backing up isn’t huge.You can also back up to USB drives, also known as flash drives, jump drives, and thumb drives. The prices of these drives have come way down in the last couple of years. I bought a 2GB flash drive for $65 in 2006. Now you can buy a 4GB drive for $10. And you can get them as big as 64GB these days. Those, of course, cost more. Around $130.
The point is, a USB flash drive is cheap and can hold a lot of data. They are easy to use too. Much easier than burning to CD’s. And they hold a lot more data. a 4GB flash drive holds about five and a half times more data than a CD. And since they are so cheap, you can get several of them and back your data up to 2. Keep one at the house and one at the office. Or keep one in a saftey deposit box or at a friend or relative’s house. Just in case.
And did we mention you should back up your data?
Top 10 Technology Mistakes
on December 5th, 2008The following is a list of the top 10 technology mistakes that people make. If you are just a casual home user, some of these may be less important. But in a business, all of these are important.
1. Rely on Weak Tech Support
Relying on weak tech support from computer and software manufacturers is a big mistake. When you call them, you get someone in a foreign country that you have a hard time understanding. They are often times poorly trained.
Instead, develop a relationship with a local information technology company (like Computer Troubleshooters) that can resolve problems faster, minimize future problems, and more.
2. Old or Cheap Computers
The older a computer gets, the more likily it is to fail. Cheap computers are often made with low-quality parts and fail sooner and more frequently. If your computers are important to you, especially if you are running a business and downtime costs you money, then we recommend purchasing good quality computers and replacing them every 3-4 years.
3. Inadequate Power Protection
Every computer, monitor, printer, cable modem, router, and any other expensive or critical electrical device, should be plugged into a good surge protector. Most power strips offer poor protection against lightning. Make sure your surge protectors say they protect against lightning and they should come with a protection policy.
Every server or critical computer should be plugged into a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply). This protects against surges and lightning, but also protects your computer from power outtages. If the power goes out, you can run the computer for a little bit, but then it will automatically shut down the computer to prevent data loss.
Any computer, fax machine, or printer hooked up to a phone line should have a surge protector on that phone line as well.
By the way, all surge protectors and UPS’s should be replaced every 3-4 years as their circuits wear out over time.
4. Illegal Software
Many software companies, like Microsoft, are very aggressive about suing companies who steal their software. Many of today’s software report back to the software maker so they pretty much know who’s stealing from them.
Purchase software only from reputable vendors. Keep product keys, certificates, licenses, etc in a safe place. Why risk getting sued?
5. Inadequate Training
Statistics show that most employees use software in inefficient ways. They get the job done, but there are often better, quicker ways to do what they need to do.
Make sure you and your employees are well trained on how to use your software.
6. Weak Security
The biggest threat to your computer and your business is lack of security. Protecting your computers means keeping out the bad guys. Competitors and criminals could try to break into your computers. And the even bigger threat of viruses and spyware which we will talk about later in this list.
Use strong, secret passwords on every computer. Critical data should be password protected as well. Your network should also be protected by a firewall.
7. Insufficient Backups
The vast majority of home users have no backup. Many companies have no backups. Those who have backups often have insufficient or very old backups. Statistics show that if a business suffers a lose of critical data, there is a 90% chance that business will go out of business within 2 years.
Make sure you are backing up your critical data. There are many different types of backups and backup methods. We recommend local image backups on critical systems and remote file backups for critical data. With this system in place, even if a hurricane swept through the city and destroyed your home and business and every computer you had, you won’t loose your critical data.
8. Viruses
Viruses can slow your computers down, cause data loss, corrupt windows and render a computer unusable. They can cause network outtages, cause your internet service provider to turn off your internet access, and can turn your computers into zombies.
To avoid this, make sure you have a good, up-to-date anti-virus package. Scan computers daily. Avoid free security programs. Prohibit the use of file-sharing programs. Filter out harmful websites.
9. Spyware
These days, spyware is just as bad, if not worse, than viruses. The only difference is that spyware generally doesn’t harm your computer other than slowing it down. It can be dangerous, though, because it aims to steal information.
To help avoid spyware, make sure you have a good, up-to-date anti-spyware package. Scan computers daily. Avoid free security programs. Prohibit the use of file-sharing programs. Filter out harmful websites.
10. Spam
Most home users and every business should have some sort of spam protection. Spam not only slows down computers, e-mail servers, and wastes vauable network bandwidth, but a lot of malicious software (viruses, spyware, etc) are spread via spam.
If your buisness has it’s own e-mail server, install an anti-spam package there. If not, either take advantage of your e-mail providers anti-spam functionality, or install anti-spam software on all of your computers.
If you read your e-mail on the web, then you pretty much have to rely on your e-mail providers anti-spam (bulk mail) protection. If you use an e-mail client like Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Windows Mail, or Windows Live Mail, you should know that Outlook, Thunderbird, Windows Mail (Vista only), and Windows Live Mail have junk mail features built-in. Outlook Express doesn’t have any junk mail features.
While we are on the subject of e-mail clients, if you are using Outlook Express or Windows Mail, we recommend you download and install either Windows Live Mail or Thunderbird and use one of these instead. They are both free. They are more stable, have fewer problems, and have junk mail features.
You can get Windows Live Mail by going to http://get.live.com/wlmail/overview and you can get Thunderbird by going to http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/.
New Windows Home Server is Cool!
on March 30th, 2008You most likely haven’t heard about it, but Microsoft recently released a new version of Windows called, "Microsoft Windows Home Server". Your first thought is probably, "I don’t need a server at home." While you may not *NEED* a server at home, it’s possible you could really benefit from one if you have more than one computer at your house. Read on to find out what it can do for you.
Windows Home Server (WHS) can serve as a single storage place for all of your files and your media. All of your photos, music, etc all stored in one place so you can access them from any computer. You can even access them from your XBOX, your phone, and other devices. A BIG benefit to WHS is that it can be set up to automatically backup all of your computers. This isn’t a file backup, it’s an image backup which means if you had a hard drive failure, for example, all you would need to do is install a replacement hard drive, pop-in and boot off the recovery CD that comes with WHS, and after a while, your PC will be just the way it was the last time the bacup was taken!
If you have a large collection of music on your WHS, you can stream that music to any computer in the house. But what I like to do is stream the music to our XBOX 360 which is in the living room. You can enjoy the music on your WHS in any room in the house that has a compatible device. Also, if you have a large collection of digital photos on your computer, you can benefit there as well. Just like your music, you can load the pictures onto WHS and access them from any compatible device.
Here’s what we did the other day. First, I started some music playing on the XBOX. Then, I told it to show us a slideshow of all of the pictures we took from the year 2001. We sat there in front of the big screen TV listening to great background music and watching our pictures displaying nice and big for all to easily see. Way better than looking at the pictures on your small computer screen. Way better than looking at pictures printed on photo paper.
Another great advantage to WHS is that each person in the house can store their files on their own personal storage area on the server. That way, no matter which computer they sit down to use, all of their files are there and available to them.
WHS is one of the best products Microsoft has come out with in a long time!
Interested in setting a WHS up? Here’s what you need. First you need a computer. It doesn’t have to be a new computer. I used a 5 year old computer and it works great. It just needs to have a very large hard drive and a good bit of system memory. Then you need WHS. You install WHS on the server. Then you install the connector on each PC. Then you set up a user on the server for each person in the house. Configuring WHS couldn’t be easier.
For more information on WHS see http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/default.mspx
If you want to set up a WHS, we here at Computer Troubleshooters can help. We can build a server for you, or we can just take an old computer and install WHS on it for you. We can set it all up for you and show you how to use it.
Backup Package
on October 11th, 2007Most people know they should back up their systems, but few people do it.
There are many different ways you can back up. Most backup software backs up files. So if you have a hard drive failure, you have to re-install Windows, re-install all of your programs, manually set everything back the way you had it, and then restore the files from your backup.
With our backup package, we back your entire system up in a way so that if your system crashes, we can restore it exactly how it was as of the last backup. You don’t’ have to reinstall windows. You don’t have to reinstall all of your programs. It just puts it back the way it was.
Our recommended backup strategy not only makes recovering from failures quick and easy, it fully automatic. You don’t have to do a thing!
Our strategy includes a local backup of your entire computer and a remote backup of critical files. You can provide your own external hard drive for the local backup, or we can sell you one. We recommend a minimum size of 500GB. If you provide your own external hard drive, then the rest of the package can be installed remotely. We also include a one month free trial of our remote backup so you can see how you like it.
If you provide your own external hard drive and the installation can be done remotely, then the cost of the backup software and labor to install this package is only $90+tax.
Remote backup protects your critical files in case your computer and the backup are destroyed (fire, flood, storm, etc.) or stolen.
It’s not a question of if your hard drive will fail. It’s a question of when it will fail. We see many hard drive failures each month. Don’t get caught off guard. Don’t be one of these people who thinks it won’t happen to you. At some point, it will.