Mirrored drives come in two flavors: 

• two drives on one controller (Figure A); or
• two drives, each on their own controller (Figure B)

As the name implies, each time you write to one disk, the identical thing is written to the other disk.  If one drive goes bad, the theory is that the other drive has your data and you have no downtime, except to replace the failed drive at your convenience.

Sounds great. In theory.  The reality is that if one drive is fried with a power surge, they both are.  If the controller goes bad, you might have two drives that still have your data, but you are still down until the controller can be replaced.  If the controller goes bad in such a way that it ruins one drive, the chances of the other drive escaping damage are pretty slim. 

If you have each drive on its own controller, you are in a better situation; again, in theory.  However, you are still in a position of having all the hardware fried with the right power surge and in the same sad position as anyone else with fried hardware.

Frankly, we recommend you spend your money in other ways.   Online (cloud) backup and an external hard drive for backup are two excellent ways to spend that money and give you a much better chance at recovery in case of failure. 

Right now, Amazon offers free online storage of ALL your music (whether it was purchased at Amazon or elsewhere) if you purchase a storage plan.  The plans start at $20/year for 20GB.  Other cloud services include DropBox or SugarSync.  If you have a little more money to spend, services like Carbonite make a good choice and back up your drives automatically.  (Our professional services can help you configure your online backups beyond the “standard”, which may not be backing up all your data.)

You can buy a 32GB SanDisk Cruzer flash drive (thumb drive) for $24. (Price fluctuates. Great for backing up your daily work product.)

Whatever you select for your backup strategy, remember: pick at least two (preferably three.)

You can never be too thin, too rich, or have too many backups.

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Note: a mirrored drive is not to be confused with a RAID array.  A drive array is an arrangement where 3-5 drives are configured such that a portion of your data is written to each drive, and is most often found on file servers.

You can stay ahead of the curve by checking the message header before you open an e-mail.

Message headers is information that travels with an e-mail and is chock full of information about where an e-mail came from. It doesn’t take long to zero in on the key information.  The Reply To field (if you clicked reply) is often a dead giveaway.  Looking at the routing information is another.

Previous versions of Outlook had a really handy tool to help you look at the message headers by selecting a message, right-clicking, and selecting Options from the contextual dropdown menu.  In Outlook 2010, Message Options are still there, you just have to create a shortcut manually.

Here’s how:

1. Go to the File Menu
2. Select Options.  This brings up the Outlook Options dialog box.
3. Click on the Quick Access Toolbar (that’s where we will put the Message Options icon)
4. In the Choose Commands From dropdown, select Commands Not in the Ribbon
5. Scroll down to Message Options and select it
6. Press the Add button.  Message Options will now appear in the Customize Quick Access Toolbar side.
7. Click OK.

You will see the new Message Options icon in your Quick Access toolbar that appears at the top of Outlook.

Now you can select a message (but don’t open it!) and then click the Message Options icon to see the message headers.

Analysis of a span header will give you an idea of how to interpret the information.  If you are in the United States and see a domain name with a country extension like .cz (Czech Republic) or .ru (Russia), and the company does not have an office there, chances are very high that this is a nasty malware waiting to happen. 

If you have an Exchange Server-based network, ask us about installing a spam firewall.

1. Respect my time. Unbelievably, I’m not sitting at my computer breathlessly waiting to receive e-mails from you.
2. Do you really need to send the e-mail in the first place?  If you tell me about the content of the link or article during a conversation, don’t clog up my mailbox with a link to the story (unless I ask).
3. Know your audience.  If you know my general interests, don’t send me something that is completely off-the-wall in terms of my scope of interest as you know it (just because you find it interesting.)  
4. Are you sure I haven’t seen it?  Chances are high that what you are sending has been covered in article after article on the topic.
5. Why are you sending me this article or link? If you send an article or a link to an article, add a sentence or two stating what particular point you want me to focus on. My time is limited; tell me the angle or nugget of information I should be looking for, or I’m likely to skip reading completely.  (See #1, #2, #3 and #4 above). Note: sending from an iPhone or iPad does not exempt you from this point.
6. Frequency. The less frequently I hear from you via e-mail, the more I sit up and take note of what you send. Because then I know you value my time and what you have to say is on point and most especially, your e-mail is something I should take my time to read.  (obviously, working on a project or work matter does not necessarily apply here. But it might.)
7. One of the biggest complaints we hear from people is about their mailbox being clogged with jokes, quotes, and political items. Please, be the person that only sends the occasional gem, not the person who forwards every. single. item. It gets old. Real old.
8. Check before passing it on! Remember, not everything you read or receive is true or accurate.  Check before you forward.  My favorites are:  Truth or Fiction and Urban Legends from About.com. 
9. Sending to a large group? Annoyance #238 is when the e-mail has a half-page of recipients. If you want to send to a large group of people, put the e-mail address in the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) field, not the To: or CC: field. When the e-mail is received, the recipient sees only their name, not the list of people you sent it to.  And if you must forward an e-mail, please delete that half-page of previous recipients. 
10. When in doubt: don’t send.

You are not exempt, you are not the exception, and you don’t get a pass.  We hear from countless people about how their frequent flyers seem incapable of taking hints. It’s time. Take the hint.

Organizing your hard drive is just as important as organizing your cupboards.  By default, all downloads go into your Downloads folder. That would be like stuffing all your plates, spices, and canned goods into one cupboard.

Why is organization necessary? You want to keep your software and registration information in one place to make backup and subsequent reinstallation an easy task.  When you make a software purchase, sometimes the receipt has the serial number, but it is often sent in a separate e-mail.  Did you remember to print out both e-mails? Where did you put the hard copy?  What about that free Photoshop add-in? Even if it was free, do you remember where you got it so you can download it again?

Don’t panic, there is a way you can avoid looking for all those e-mails, or receipts and serial numbers you might have printed out when you made the purchase.

Step 1.  We recommend making a top level folder with a separate folder for each purchase or program.  You might call your download programs folder MyPrograms.  So, under MyPrograms you would have many folders, and the structure might look like this:

Step 2. When you download a program you will get the prompt to Run, Save, or Cancel the download. Always select Save (unless the instructions specify that you click Run):

When you click Save, Windows Explorer will open to the location of your last download. Redirect it to your MyPrograms folder, create a new Folder for your latest download, then click Save again:

Step 3. Using Notepad, copy and paste the information from your registration e-mail into a text file and save it to the same folder as the program, like so:

That’s it!

Now your downloaded program and registration information is in the same folder, speeding up the reinstallation process.  Even if some programs or add-ins are free, you still want them all in one place to make reinstallation easier.

Backup your MyPrograms folder regularly.

If you are preparing to wipe your system to do a fresh install, check your MyPrograms folder for all the programs and add-ins that you have downloaded, then go to the manufacturer site and download the latest versions* before you wipe your computer. Backup that folder, restore it to your freshly installed system, and reinstallation of your programs and utilities will be a breeze.

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*When preparing to wipe and reinstall your system, download the latest version for which you are licensed, or,  you may want to upgrade your license to get the latest version.

 How do you know what version you are licensed for? Check the Help->About section of your program for the version number.  If the leading digit of the latest version is a full number higher than yours, chances are you may need to purchase an upgrade. If the leading digit is the same, but the other numbers are higher, then chances are the upgrade is free. 

Example: You have version 4.876.1.0. The latest version is 5.211.1.0. The leading digit indicates you might need to buy an upgrade. If the latest version is 4.975.1.0, then the upgrade is probably free.  Some companies charge for a .5 revision, like 4.312 to 4.5. Always check with the manufacturer when in doubt.

We hear a lot of questions about “The Cloud,” let’s talk about it.

What is “the cloud?”  Simply put, it’s disk space. That disk space can be used for many purposes, including storage and applications. 

Where is “the cloud?”  Typically that disk space resides in specialized data centers. Those data centers have disk backups, power supply backups for the servers, more disk backups, and several generators in case of area power outages.  These are typically heavy-duty IT facilities. Gaining access to a professional data center can be more difficult than getting into NORAD. Some companies keep the exact location of their data centers a closely guarded secret.

How do I get to “the cloud?”  Via an Internet connection.

Cloud computing is when the data and/or application resides on remote servers instead of being installed to your local computer.  If you use Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo, you are using cloud computing. The programs and data reside on those companies’ servers; you access them via the Internet.  Google Docs, Spreadsheets, and Calendar are other examples of cloud computing.

Cloud storage is when you back up your data to a remote server using backup services like Mozy, Carbonite, or DropBox.

We saw a recent article entitled If you think cybersecurity isn’t a big deal, guess again. The author tells of looking for images of a baseball player, clicking on one—and that’s when the adventure started:

“I started to get a bunch of official-looking pop-ups telling me that my computer was infected with all sorts of nasty viruses. They also told me that all I needed to do in order to mitigate the threat was to click on the button contained in the pop-up window and the anti-virus program — which had a very official-sounding name—would make the crisis disappear.”

“I knew enough not to do that. So what I did instead was close the pop-up. That was a big mistake, as clicking anywhere on the desktop is what actually unleashes the virus.

“This particular virus was particularly nasty, burrowing deep into my operating system and rendering my computer inoperable. It took the IT guy two days just to find where the virus was hiding in my system, and then several hours to get rid of it and fix the damage to my operating system. It was a total pain. “

What should he have done? Power off his computer immediately and call his IT people. Stat.

When infected, many people ask: “Why didn’t my antivirus software stop it?” No antivirus software is 100%; things can and will slip through. Unfortunately, whether you are an individual or a corporation, downtime is costly in terms of both repair and … being down.

Here is the $64,000 question: do you have current backups?  Many times it is a lot less costly just to wipe an infected computer and reinstall the system from scratch—reloading all your software and restoring your data.

But if your data backup is not current and we have to try to salvage the system instead of wiping it, it is not out of the realm of possibility to spend a couple of days trying to rid the system of the virus as described in the scenario above.

Got backup?

Make sure you don’t miss messages from important people (like your boss) in Outlook, with color coding.

In previous versions of Outlook it was very easy to color code messages from specific e-mail addresses by selecting “Organize”.  You can still color code messages from certain e-mail addresses in Outlook 2010, but there are a few more steps involved: 

1. Go to the View tab
2. Click View Settings
3. Click the Conditional Formatting button
4. Click the Add button
5. For the Name of the rule, type in Mail received from [name of sender]
6. Click the Condition button
7. In the From field of the Filter box, type or paste the e-mail address, or select from your contacts list
8. Click OK on the Filter box
9. In the Conditional Formatting box, click the Font button.
10. Select a color then click OK in the Font box.
11. Click OK on the Conditional Formatting box
12. Click OK in the Advanced View Settings: Messages box

The problem is that so many websites deliver ad content dynamically, including pop-ups, and sometimes the servers that deliver that content can be infected either unknowingly or deliberately.  Personally, I run a utility on my computer that blocks all server delivered ad content.  It not only protects me from the drive-by ad content and infection, I find it a lot more pleasurable to view a page with the small word “Advertisement” in place of a big flashing ad. 

The only drawback is that you sometimes receive an error when you click on a “sponsored” link.  That is easily enough bypassed with a management utility or simply copying and pasting the link.

If you are interested in learning more about protecting yourself, please contact us.

Are you guilty of keeping the default password that comes with your computer or device?  Many hackers take advantage of people who do not change default passwords; some demanding ransom.

Remember some of these basic password guidelines:

1.  Select a password that you can remember, don’t keep written passwords in your wallet or desk drawer.
2. Use at least 8 characters, mixing letters (upper and lower case), numbers, and characters such as $, #, %, and so on.
3. Don’t use a word found in a dictionary, English or foreign.
4. Don’t use passwords based on personal information such as: name, nickname, birth date, wife’s name, pet’s name, friends name, home town, phone number, social security number, and so on.
5. Be creative.  Misspell words, string together phrases.  For instance, if you are a pet lover, you could turn “a tail and four paws” into “tayl4Paz”.