Ask DACS
August 2009

Moderated and reported by Jim Scheef.

Ask DACS is a Question and Answer session before the main presentation at the monthly General Meeting. We solicit questions from the floor and then answers from other audience members. My role as moderator is to try to guide the discussion to a likely solution to the problem. I’m adding a new paragraph marker “D” for discussion or digression to the regular “Q” and “A”.

Q – I would like to use an online storage service. I’ve looked at SugarSync, Mozy, DropBox, and Box.Net. Does anyone use one of these services and what has been your experience?

A – One member offered a good recommendation for Mozy. I related how another member uses Carbonite to back up a very large set of files (about 160GB) and was able to restore the entire set. Naturally this process did not happen in a heartbeat. The restore took more than two weeks to complete, but it did complete.

D - These services all offer slightly different features. Some are purely for backup. Some will backup all of your Windows settings and thus allow a full restore in the event of a disk failure from a bare Windows installation. Some offer a service where they will make DVDs of your data and send them overnight to you. This is the highest bandwidth method for a large restore. Mozy and Carbonite are in this category. I also have experience with iBackup.com, a true backup service. This product runs at a set time and performs a backup similar to the Windows backup program (ntbackup.exe). The cost is based on the amount of storage used and they can store multiple “generations” of a file which can chew up space pretty fast. iBackup.com uses the Windows shadow copy facility to allow it to backup open files and thus can interfere with a normal backup using ntbackup.exe.

Some services are oriented to collaboration (aka: file sharing, which is a bad word in some quarters) and file synchronization between computers. DropBox and SugarSync are in this category. I use Box.Net to share files I want public. The DACS board was using drop.io to share files amongst the board but we found that email attachments were easier most of the time.

Anything that is “automatic” requires that you install software on one or more of your computers. This will run in the background and requires Internet access to operate. Constant or continuous backup implies a constant Internet connection.

Other pure backup alternatives are tape drives (costly but offer many generations of the entire computer and easy portability), external hard drives (low cost per gigabyte), optical media (DVD, CD – slow and low capacity).

A member mentioned that business requirements may dictate backup methods and handing. A health services provider, even a single doctor or therapist, must comply with applicable regulations. Even if regulations like HIPAA do not apply, ethics would make security paramount.

One last thought, it might be a good idea to read the service agreement carefully before using a free online service to backup your Quicken file or anything of similar nature. Free services tend to be worth every penny.

Q – My computer is set up to dual boot two operating systems, Vista and Linux. I would like to remove Linux and return the space to Vista.

A – After some questioning, we determined that the goal was to remove everything and then reinstall Vista. There are several “levels” of cleaning out the computer. The nuclear option is Darik’s Boot ‘n Nuke which will wipe the disk clean and make it “new” as if nothing had ever been installed. This removes even the master boot record. This may be overkill.

The simple option is boot from the Vista installation DVD and when it asks where you want to install Windows, follow the prompts to delete all of the partitions. When the disk shows as all empty space, either use the entire disk or create a new partition to install Vista.

D - In between these alternatives are disk management utilities like Partition Magic and Acronis Disk Director. These allow resizing or moving a partition in ways you never imaged. The Acronis product can still be purchased online from Gene Barlow of User Group Relations, who has presented at many DACS general meetings. I still use Acronis Disk Director.

Q – A member asked if I could demonstrate Windows 7. At the time of the meeting I had the Release Candidate 2 version installed in a virtual machine. A demo attempt failed and I promised to have the final release version installed in time for the next meeting in October.

Questions for the upcoming meeting can be emailed to askdacs@dacs.org.

Disclaimer: Ask DACS questions come from members by email or from the audience attending the general meeting. Answers are suggestions offered by meeting attendees and represent a consensus of those responding. DACS offers no warrantee as to the correctness of the answers and anyone following these suggestions or answers does so at their own risk. In other words, we could be totally wrong!