The disk drive in your computer will fail
and just when you need it most
If you've never had a computer hard disk fail, you will. Disk drives are mechanical devices and mechanical devices break. Period. No matter how well made the disk drive is, it will eventually die. Fortunately, disk drives are better than they used to be and even the cheaply made drives may outlive the computer. But there's no guarantee.
A disk drive can fail the first time you use it. Or after 10 hours, 10 days, 10 weeks, 10 months, or 10 years. There is no guarantee. All you can do is make sure that you have a complete, current, validated, protected backup and hope for the best. Even with a complete backup, getting all your programs and files back is an annoyance. But it's better than the alternative.
Even if your disk drive dies and you don't have a backup, there's a good chance that you haven't really lost all of your tax records, music, photographs, recipes, letters, homework, e-mail addresses, movies, and household lists. No, if you still have the physical drive -- even if it seems broken beyond repair -- there's a chance that you will be able to pay a company like DriveSavers to recover the data for you.
Although DriveSavers is a very cool company, I hope you never need to use it. Simply keeping a complete, current, verified backup in a safe location will keep you from ever needing to use DriveSavers. But human nature being what it is, the company is quite busy recovering data from disk drives that were in computers people were too busy or too naive to back up.
DriveSavers vice president Scott Moyer put it succinctly when I spoke with him as we stood in front of a computer that had been destroyed by an arson fire ...
Real Audio: Scott Moyer 3:19 q-a solution to this problem.
I'm not going to assign a cat rating to DriveSavers, but I can tell you that I know people who have called on the company to recover critical data that was in jeopardy because a disk drive had failed. The company costs a lot to hire and the prudent computer user will never allow a situation to exist that would require depending on a data recovery service.
But if this happens to you, you'll want to visit the DriveSavers website.
Shift into backup and save your data
I recently had to send my notebook computer in to Toshiba for service. The problem was with the keyboard but the instructions that come with the shipping box are clear: You are responsible for the programs and data on the computer. Make sure you have a backup before you send the computer in. This kind of warning covers Toshiba in the event the disk drive is damaged in transit or during repair and in the event that the company finds a disk problem and replaces the disk.
Most repair services don't clone the old disk onto a new disk; they just put in a new drive and return a machine that's set up the way it was when you bought it.
In addition to finding and fixing the keyboard problem, Toshiba also found a problem with the motherboard and replaced it. They could just as easily have found a problem with the disk drive. For that reason, I made sure that I had a complete and current backup before sending them the computer.
I used NTI Backup Now Deluxe 3.0 because it works beautifully with CD and DVD drives. My notebook has a DVD burner on it, so my backup spans 3 DVDs. I was able to run the backup essentially unattended, except for a couple of disc switches, while I was working on something else.
As with most backup programs these days, NTI Backup Now Deluxe offers a wizard. I didn't use the wizard because I prefer "manual transmission" for backup programs. I like to examine and approve every setting. Having said that, I should point out that I didn't change any of the program's defaults and those settings are the ones the wizard would have provided.
Backup Now is a good choice if you want to schedule backups to occur in the middle of the night (if your backup media is large enough that it doesn't require swapping during the process.) An, by the way, never keep the backup in the same building as the computer. A fire or other disaster will destroy the computer and the backup -- no backup, no data.
Backup Now can backs up data to a local hard drive or removable-media device, such as a CD burner, DVD burner, Zip drive, or external hard drive. It also provides for "drive spanning" so, if you have two burners, the program automatically continues to the second burner after the media in the first drive is full.
You can download the program or (for a few dollars more) obtain a version on CD. There's little value to having the CD because there's no manual. There's no manual because there's no need for a manual. If you can operate your computer, you can operate Backup Now Deluxe.
To see a larger version of any of the following images, click the small image.
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STEP 1
You start by selecting the files that you want to back up. In most cases, this will be the entire drive. |
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STEP 2
Next you specify where the backup will be written (disk drive, CD or DVD, or some other media) and what you want to call it. |
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STEP 3
Here you decide whether to make a full backup or to back up just the files that have changed since the previous backup and whether you want to reset the archive bit. You'll also be offered other options such as verifying the backup to make sure that it's readable. |
The full version of the program also comes will a "drive imaging" application that should allow the user to create a complete disk image that makes restoration even easier. I wasn't able to get this to work properly, but that may have been the result of a defective DVD or possibly even the motherboard problem that Toshiba found when they serviced the computer.
Technology corner rating for BACKUP NOW DELUXE (3.0) |
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NINE CATS: Complete, accurate, easy to use. There's not much more to ask for from a backup program. And for $50 (file backup only) or $60 (full download version) or $70 (full version in a box) you won't find a better value. |
| How the Technology Corner rating system works. |
For more information, see the NTI website.
Nerdly News
Beware the bad phish
Early this week I received a copy of one of the nastiest phish e-mails I've seen to date. It was a request that claimed to be from PayPal, but it asked for the kind of information PayPal never asks for. It was clearly an attempt at identity theft, but the creep who prepared it not only stole words and graphics directly from PayPal's website, but also provided a lot of links to PayPal.
In fact, there was only one link on the site that wasn't to PayPal -- the one that asked for all of the essential information. Subscribers to the Technology Corner e-mail bulletin (details are here) received a warning on Tuesday with a link to this file that displays the hoax message.
Spammers' last hurrah? Maybe!
If you have an e-mail account, you're probably receiving as much spam as ever, maybe more, despite the Can-Spam act. Most Internet users say spam is getting worse. More ominously, about 1/3 of Internet users are using e-mail less because of spam. The creeps who flood our mailboxes with junk are on the verge of ruining a useful communications medium.
But, but ...
The Can-Spam law by itself won't do much. But lawsuits by some of the big guns in the business might help. And I'm convinced that initiatives such as Microsoft's "caller ID for e-mail" will begin to make a difference. Spam has finally become so annoying that people are demanding a change. The change will happen or e-mail will die as a useful tool. It's that simple.
Let us know what you think about this program! Write to:
Bill Blinn --
(wtvn@blinn.com still works)
Joe Bradley -- |
