I keep forgetting about memory

When I bought my first IBM-compatible computer (a Zenith) it came with 256KB of RAM. Being the big spender that I am (yeah, right!) and wanting maximum performance from the 4.77MHz processor (Yeah! Right!), I spent $100 or more extra to upgrade the memory to an astonishing 320KB of RAM. Recently I bought a couple of 1GB Compact Flash cards for my digital camera. They cost less than $40. Last week, I bought a 2GB USB flash drive at Office Max. The list price was $70, but it was on sale for $38 and I had a coupon good for $10 off any purchase of $20 or more, so the 2GB drive cost $28 plus tax. The entire purchase was less than $30.

The first USB flash drive I had was from a company in Israel. 16MB for about $50 – about $3.13 per megabyte. At $30 for 2GB, the price per megabyte is $0.015 – one and one half cents. That's about 6 tenths of a percent of the cost of the original.

So much memory can be placed in so small a package. This 2GB flash drive is about the same width as the original, but it's only half as long and about half as thick. It could be narrower, too, if not for the USB connector.

The same thing is true of hard drives. It's not at all difficult to find a 200GB hard drive from a good manufacturer (Seagate, for example). Tiger Direct this week has both a 320GB SATA drive and 2 250GB Seagate drives (one ATA and one SATA) for $80. NewEgg has similar deals. Micro Center shows a 160GB Seagate SATA drive for $60.

This is wonderful news for somebody like me. I have 100GB or so of digital audio files and a like amount of space (or more) full of digital camera images. Wonderful. And scary.

Disks do still fail

The reliability is phenomenal these days. Mean time between failure (MTBF) exceed 1,000,000 hours! That's something like 114 years and patently absurd, but it's what some manufacturers are citing. Only a fool would depend on that, though. Or even a quarter of that. The numbers are theoretical. A hard drive can fail immediately or in an hour. Most will provide good service for 4 or 5 years. Some will continue to operate for a decade or more.

Anything over 4 years is gravy, though. Two of the computers I owned continue to provide service for the people who purchased them from me when I upgraded. One of those computers is more than 10 years old and the disk hasn't failed. In part that's because I specified quality components when I built the computer, but a lot of it is sheer luck.

With drives growing so large, having a full backup is harder than ever. I outgrew tapes several years ago and have depended on external hard drives, but there are disadvantages. The most significant problem is the fact that I run backups only once per week. On Monday, I bring the external drives home from the office, run the backup, and return them to the office on Tuesday. Although I copy critical working files to USB flash drives during the week, I still have significant exposure.

And that leads me to ...

Easy on-line backup at an attractive price

Backup is essential. If you don't backup your files, you'll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. (Apologies to Humphrey Bogart.) The trouble with backup is that you have to do it. You need to schedule the process. You need to provide the system with the proper media. You need to store the media safely far from the computer. So all too often backup doesn't get done. People mean to do it, but they don't. The ideal backup system would work invisibly and automatically. It would put your files in a safe place. And it wouldn't cost a lot.

Easy, invisible, and automatic are aren't difficult to do. Inexpensive has been the sticking point. You'll find lots of on-line backup services that make the process easy, invisible, and automatic. But to backup 40GB of data, you'd pay Iomega more than $300 per month! Even the lower-priced services (iBackup and xDrive) are $600 per year.

So what's the deal with this "Carbonite" service and the price of $5 no matter how many files you backup or how large the backup is? Can this be for real?

Oh ... and I have more like 100GB of data that I want to backup (and that doesn't include pictures from digital cameras and audio files). So that would be nearly $700 per month from Iomega? About $100 per month from iBackup and xDrive? And $10 per month from Carbonite?

Sorry, but no. It would be $5 per month from Carbonite. The company says it offers "unlimited" backup for $5 per month. On its face, that's an absurd offer. I know disk space is cheap, but 100GB of storage still costs at least $50, so it would take Carbonite a year to recover just the cost of the hardware. I presume there are people who work for the company and hope to be paid. The company will also have to pay for Internet access.

	After installing the application that connects to Carbonite's website, you'll be taken to a page that will ask you to provide minimal contact information and the answers to three security questions.
	You have a 15-day free trial during which you can decide whether the application will work for you.
	The first backup takes a long, long time. As you can see, my initial backup is more than 90GB. You might think that wouldn't take long at cable modem speeds, but cable modems are asynchronous devices. Instead of running at 2Gb/s, 4Gb/s, or 8Gb/s, the uplink speed runs at little more than modem speed. November 23, 2006

How does it work?

The process is easy enough, but it won't back up external drives of any sort or network drives. All of my audio files and photographs are on external USB devices. I can't back them up. The audio files are all on my overgrown Ipod (an old Ibook with a large external drive) at the office. All of the digital camera pictures are backed up to an external drive that lives at the office. If I decide to use Carbonite instead of my own backup drives, I'll have to find a way to get the digital images backed up.

Carbonite doesn't work for Macs yet (it's coming next year), so daughter Kaydee can't back up her machine. Her backups already go to another external hard drive that's at the office, but we'll all be happy to automate the process in 2007.

	Five days later, my total backup had dropped to "just" 35GB from 90GB. That's because I noticed that I had scheduled some clip-art resources to be backed up as well as some video files that I no longer needed. November 28, 2006
	After a week, I was closing in on 60%. November 30, 2006
	At 9 days, the process was nearly 75% complete. The remaining 94 files are 26% of my 35GB backup! This is because Carbonite backs up smaller files first. December 2, 2006
	The application has a log file that users may examine to check the progress. The lines marked with a red bullet describe error conditions (locked files, communications errors, and such. This is the standard view.
	In this view of the log, I am limiting the display just to error conditions.
	And here is the detail view that shows everything Carbonite has done.
	The first backup is done! December 7, 2006 – 14 days to complete the initial backup. From this point forward, backups will take only a few minutes per day and will go largely unnoticed.

One potential problem

Several years ago, a worm has a payload designed to destroy files. The "I Love You" worm, which is still active, overwrites files with these extensions: vbs, vbe, js, jse, css, wsh, sct, hta, jpg, jpeg, wav, txt, gif, doc, htm, html, xls, ini, bat, com, avi, qt, mpg, mpeg, cpp, c, h, swd, psd, wri, mp3, and mp2.

If your computer were to become infected with such a worm, an automatic backup service such as Carbonite would notice that the file had changed and would start backing them up. The files on your computer and the files in the backup would both be damaged. I view this as a threat, but it's one that's easily mitigated.

The first thing any user should do if a worm seems to be present on your computer is shut down the network connection. The faster you act, the less damage there will be. Once you eradicate the worm, you can get back on the network and restore those files that were damaged on your machine but not yet picked up by Carbonite.

Backup really is important

A co-worker recently discovered that her computer's Maxtor hard drive wouldn't boot. The computer failed during the weekend, so she was greeted on Monday morning by an on-screen message that said a file was corrupt. It was more than that. I booted the computer from the Windows CD and opened the Recovery Console.

When I navigated to the root directory, I found a lot of important files that reported a length of 0 bytes. No matter how good a programmer is, it's difficult to cram anything useful into 0 bytes. Clearly, there was a problem.

We replaced the hard drive and re-installed Windows, but she wanted the Outlook archive file that had been on the local drive instead of on the network drive. In other words, it hadn't been backed up. Fortunately, we found that the drive's main problem was the boot sector, so it could be mounted as a second drive. The Outlook pst file and other files that were on the hard drive were recoverable.

Luck!

Carbonite's test: Restoring files

A week after the full backup completed, I rarely see any activity from Carbonite. It shows 100% completion most of the time. When I add or change files, the marker that appears beside the file in the Windows Explorer turns yellow briefly and then turns green, indicating that it's been backed up.

But what if I need one of those files?

There's a new item in the Windows Explorer. "Carbonite Secure Backup" shows by directory and file every one of the 101,849 files that I've backed up. To restore one, all I have to do is navigate to it, right-click it, and choose "restore" to restore the file to its original location or "restore to" to restore the file to another location. I did that with a few files and some small directories. Because the download speed is nominally 4Mbps, files are restored almost instantly.

Now I'm paying less than $5 per month for a secure backup. When Carbonite makes it possible to backup external USB drives next year, I'll pay another $5 per month to safeguard my drive M ("Multimedia"), which is where all my digital camera images are stored. And when they come up with an application that works with Apple's OS X, I'll kick in another $5 per month to back up Kaydee's computer.

Carbonite's business model is an interesting one: Charge a price that's low enough to cover a bit more than your expenses for a service that everyone knows they need but don't want to spend a lot of money for. I wish them success. Not only because they have my data, but because the CEO seems genuinely to be interested in helping people avoid the pain of lost data.

I spoke with David Friend, the Carbonite CEO, who started by describing a survey the company did recently of 500 PC users. Nearly 70% said that they had lost data in the last 2 years. The full interview is on the podcast (see link at the top of the page.)

Carbonite requires a high-speed, always-on Internet connection.

Overall: The easiest backup I've ever used.

Install the application, start it up, and it backs up the files on your computer. You can make it more complicated if you want, but you don't have to. This is the backup for anyone who doesn't know the difference between "full", "incremental", and "differential" – and maybe for everyone who does know the difference. The price is astonishingly low, too. For more information, visit the Carbonite website.

When is enough enough?

I know that a lot of people who know Technology Corner from WTVN Radio are conservatives and that some of those folks look with suspicion on my liberal attitudes, but I encourage you to think back a decade or two. Remember when WTVN was The Friendly Giant? In those days, the station was part of the Taft Broadcasting System ("Public Trust and Service"). Nobody would ever accuse Taft or the Taft Broadcasting Company of being liberal.

The station was acquired by Jacor, Great American, and finally Clear Channel. With each step, local control eroded. Taft put public trust first. Clear Channel puts profits first.

That's why WTVN provides news for Lima, Toledo, and other cities. Does anyone at Clear Channel believe that someone in a studio in Columbus can provide honest, reliable news programming for Toledo? I have been to Toledo twice in my life, but I was expected to provide news for the Toledo market even though I didn't have any insight into the city's politics or even the streets. This is NOT public trust or service.

Bah!

Maybe you've noticed that news broadcasts are less about news and more about entertainment. That's because Clear Channel lives and dies by ratings. The first radio station I worked for while I was in high school had a news department that was run by a conservative, Bob Andre. Some years later, this gentleman hired me to be news director for the station where he was the general manager. We didn't see eye to eye politically, but we agreed that news was news, not entertainment, and that local news was the key to attracting a local audience.

Bob Andre retired in the 1980s and he died a couple of years ago.

Bigger isn't better. Local ownership is the key to local coverage. The Federal Communications Commission is considering a rule that would allow big media to become even larger. If you feel that this is not in your best interest, now would be a good time to contact the FCC.

Nerdly News

Hard disk pioneer Al Shugart has died

Honest. Profane. Those are 2 of the words used to describe Al Shugart, the father of the PC hard drive. Shugart died this week at 76. Shugart was a co-founder of Seagate and was a member of the board at SanDisk. It was Shugart who worked with IBM to put a 10MB hard drive in the IBM XT. That was a lot of disk space in those days.

Shugart started working for IBM in 1951. In 1955 he moved to Silicon Valley to work in IBM's research and development lab in San Jose. He was instrumental in developing the first hard drive, a 1MB device that weighed a ton. In 1973, he founded Shugart & Associates in 1973 with Conner Peripherals. The company gave him the boot, but he worked again with Conner and the result was Seagate, which bought Conner Peripherals in 1995.

Shugart got the boot from Seagate in 1998. Shugart, according to the San Jose Mercury News, refused to wear a tie despite his business successes. He had open-heart surgery 6 weeks ago, but continued to be connected until he died. The Mercury News quoted daughter Teri Shugart: "He loved work. Even just after his heart surgery, the time I most saw him come alive was when he picked up the business section of the paper."

We'll miss him. Shugart is survived by his wife, Rita, a daughter and a son (both in their 50s), four grandchildren, and (as the Mercury News notes) several dogs.

The Microsoft Security deluge

As soon as Microsoft patches one problem, another pops up. If you use Word 2000, Word 2002, Word 2003, Word Viewer 2003, Word 2004 for Mac, Word 2004 v.X for Mac, or Microsoft Works (2004, 2005, and 2006), you're in trouble. This week's security update eliminated some threats, but not this one. This one is new.

Microsoft recommends that users should not open Word or other Office documents that are attached to e-mail messages you did not expect in your inbox, particularly if they are from people you do not know. Well, d'oh! If a disheveled bum walked up to you on the street and offered you the last half of a partially-eaten sandwich, would you take it? Anyone who would open an Office document from someone they don't know does not have my permission to whine when the attachment turns their hard drive to mush.

This week's Microsoft security updates:

• MS06-072—Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer: Script handling errors can lead to remote code execution in Internet Explorer 6. Mishandling of TIF folders could lead to information disclosure.
• MS06-073—Vulnerability in Visual Studio 2005 Could Allow Remote Code Execution: A vulnerability in the WMI Object Broker ActiveX control (WmiScriptUtils.dll) in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 could lead to execution of attack code.
• MS06-074—Vulnerability in SNMP Could Allow Remote Code Execution: A remote code execution vulnerability exists in SNMP Service that could allow an attacker who successfully exploited it to take complete control of the affected system. The SNMP Service is not installed by default, and proper firewall configuration could also block the attack.
• MS06-075—Vulnerability in Windows Could Allow Elevation of Privilege: An error in how Windows XP SP2 starts applications with improper file manifests could allow the user to elevate privilege and take control of the system. The user must have valid credentials to log on locally.
• MS06-076—Cumulative Security Update for Outlook Express: An attacker could execute code and potentially take control of the system by persuading a remote user to load a maliciously-crafted WAB (Windows Address Book) file to the user.
• MS06-077—Vulnerability in Remote Installation Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution: RIS (Remote Installation Service) enables a TFTP (Tiny File Transfer Protocol) service on the system which, on Windows 2000, could used to overwrite critical system files.
• MS06-078—Vulnerability in Windows Media Format Could Allow Remote Code Execution: In a surprise last-minute addition, Microsoft added a fix for two vulnerabilities that appear to be the ones reported in the ASX Vulnerabilities section of this article. Vulnerabilities in the handling of ASX and ASF files could lead to remote code execution.

Be careful out there.

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