Archive for the ‘Computers’ Category

Bullet Proof Backup
March 26, 2010

If you don’t have a back up plan set up, you are risking losing critical data, such as your photos, email, or any work or projects you have on your computer.

Backing up for some people is a habit they need to learn, now. Hard drives fail, it’s just a matter of time. You may have been using your computer for years and your hard drive is still running, but take it from me, they don’t last forever and a failure with out a back up plan, you are asking for a nightmare. Over the years I have had about 8 hard drives fail on me.

Here is my Bullet Proof Backup Plan.

Notebook:

I use two Seagate FreeAgent Go drives, one is 320 GB and the other is 500 GB. I back up data by dragging and dropping data into folders I have created on the back up drives.

More about Seagate FreeAgent Go Drives here:

http://blog.unicus.com/2010/03/25/why-i-like-freeagent-go-drives-3/

I also use drive imaging software to create an exact copy of my notebooks hard drive in case it fails. I use Acronis True Image Home 2010 for this, but there are other programs out there as well. True Image works well for me and I like the program.

I use two drives, cause I alternate, one week I will back up and image to the 320 GB drive and the next week I use the 500 GB drive. This way my data is spread over 3 drives, my notebook and two external drives.

Desktop:

I use the two FreeAgent Go drives for critical data, alternating drives every week and I use a 1 TB Cavalry USB external drive with an external power supply for my disk images.

This 1 TB Cavalry USB drive has an on off switch, and it is only on when I am creating a back up image of my hard drive, or restoring an image.  Keeping the drive off when not in use protects your hard drive images.

Important note: When you turn off your external USB hard drive, turn off the computer, then turn off the power switch.  If you don’t have a power switch, turn off the computer, and power bar and unplug the drive from your power bar.  Failure to do so, may result in data loss from the hard drive heads contacting the drive platters.  This advice comes from makers of these external drives.

I image my desktop once a week. If I do more than my normal workload per week, I will back up that data to the FreeAgent Go drive to be safe.

This system works for me.

Backing up data to more than one drive and imaging once a week has saved me many times from disaster.

One major incident and success was in 2001. My hard drive failed on my desktop when the system was turned on, the hard drive was dead. I drove to the computer store, which was only a mile or so from my house, installed the drive, created a partition, formatted it and restored a recent image I had of the drive and was up and running in only one hour. At that time I was using two removable hard drives in hard drive trays in my computer. The disk imaging software I was using at that time was Drive Image, it was an excellent piece of software made by Power Quest.  Power Quest was acquired by Symantec in 2003 and they used Drive Image technology in Norton Ghost, and in my opinion wrecked a great piece of software.

I tried Ghost by Symantec, but did not like the look and feel of it, so I went with Acronis True Image.

If you do not have a backup plan, get one now. I hope my system may give you some ideas to create your own back up plan that will work for you and not take up too much time.  Once you start, backing up will become a habit, and one day you will be so happy you have a plan in place when disaster eventually strikes.

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Why I like FreeAgent Go Drives
March 25, 2010

I use 2 of these drives for my back up routine. They are USB powered and preform well.

Seagate FreeAgent Go Drives

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/freeagent/freeagent_go/

Quality durable cases for the FreeAgent Go Drives are available on Ebay for only $10.00 dollars, and that includes shipping. I own three cases and they are high quality cases.

Posted in Computers | 1 Comment »

Why is tech support so bad these days?
March 22, 2010

I called Lenovo tech support last night for a problem I was having with dual monitors on my T60P Lenovo ThinkPad notebook. The external monitor I had plugged in the VGA port turned into my primary monitor (1) and my notebook screen was the extended desktop (2).

The notebook’s screen should have been my primary monitor, I could not figure out what was happening. So I got a tech support guy on the phone who was from Georgia, USA. I had to explain the problem 3 times to him. He told me to Google it and he would check his database and call me back, as he had no idea what was causing it.

So I Googled and no luck. Played around a while trying different things and solved it. It was the order the power was turned on that was the issue. If the external monitor was powered up when the computer was turned on, it would turn into my primary monitor and my notebook screen would be the extended desktop.

The solution, turn the power off to the external monitor and power the notebook up first, then turn the power on the external monitor, that solved the issue. My notebook was now the primary monitor (1) and the external monitor was my extended desktop (2).

The Lenovo tech support guy never did call me back.

I have owned so many computers over the years and would call tech support on issues and bugs I was having on my Windows 95/98/2000 machines. 90% of the time I got a tech support guy or gal that was extremely knowledgeable and would either have the solution on the tip of their tongue or in their database. The problem would be solve and an explanation why it occurred was given in most cases.

Not so now a days, tech support from most companies is REALLY bad. I wonder how many “days” of training these guys go through before becoming a tech support technician? It surely can’t be years of training, some of the techs are so clueless it’s pathetic.

I long for the old days, when tech support would solve your problems, sadly I don’t think we will ever see those days again.

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How to post an image or chart on SI with Jing.
March 19, 2010

Silicon Investor’s Image Uploader is gone.  This is how to post a chart or image that is on “your” computer or a Flash based chart, and make it appear in a Silicon Investor message using Jing. This may look overwhelming, but once you know how to do it, should only take you 30 seconds or less to complete. Jing is a free program that gives you 2 GB of server space and 2 GB of bandwidth.

Download Jing here:

(Watch the video first, to see all the things you can do with Jing)

http://www.jingproject.com/

1. Capture your image with Jing, by clicking the first icon:

2. The next screen in Jing will come up, click the Share via Screencast.com icon (first icon) to upload it to the Screencast.com server. As soon as it is uploaded to the server, a link will be copied to your clipboard in Windows. Note: You can’t see the clipboard, it’s buried deep inside Windows and it’s not necessary to view the clipboard. We can discuss how to view the clipboard in another topic.

3. Start a message on Silicon Investor and paste the link in your post using Ctrl V or right mouse click and select paste.

4. Your message and link will look like this (use the Preview mode first):

5. Click on that link, you will see your capture in a screen like this, with Jing advertising. (Jing Pro users won’t see advertising, you will just see your capture surrounded by black space)

6. Click on the image, and the URL will change to the image URL that you need to post on Silicon Investor. It will look like this, the image surrounded with white space:

Note the URL will end in .png, this is an image file. Your URL must end in .png or you can not post the image on Silicon Investor. If it does not end in .png, make sure you clicked on the image in the screen with Jing’s advertising.

7. Firefox users, right click on the image and select copy image location. Or even easier, in the address bar in your browser, copy the URL and then paste that into your post on Silicon Investor.

8. After pasting the URL, using Silicon Investors method for posting images, at the beginning of the URL type: [chart] and then at the end of the URL type: [/chart] You must use the brackets around the word chart.

9. One last step and you are done, delete the http:// from the image URL, once that is done, click Post Public, and your image will show up in your message post:

10. You can delete your original link you were given when you uploaded your image to Screencast.com’s server. (Step 4)  It will be in your history section in Jing if you ever need it agian.

If you are still having problems, please post a message for help on the Computer Learning board on SI:

http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/subject.aspx?subjectid=22366

If you would like to test your captures before you post them in your public messages on SI, post them on this board that was created for testing your posts before public viewing:

http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/subject.aspx?subjectid=12305

Update September 23 2010 :
If you find the above tutorial a bit confusing, I created a VIDEO  tutorial on this same subject:
http://www.screencast.com/t/NzM3MDA3MD

Posted in Computers | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

My Jing a ling, my Jing a ling, won’t you play with my Jing a ling.
March 9, 2010

A couple weeks ago I came across this awesome piece of software from Techsmith.com, it’s called Jing.   A small download, quick install and you are ready to go.  Capture images of your screen and upload them to Jing’s server with a couple mouse clicks, display images in your message board posts or website.  Or, capture video of that nasty computer bug you can’t describe, and narrate it so it can be diagnosed by others you share the video with.  The uses with Jing are endless.

Download Jing today, it’s 100% free and very easy to use.

http://www.jingproject.com/

My experience with Jing.

I did a lot of testing with it when I first downloaded it, posting images and videos on chat sites.  Then one day I needed Jing to help my mother learn how to bookmark websites in Firefox.  She knows hardly anything about computers, so I created a video in Jing and explained how to bookmark her websites.

I had other uses for it as well, posting screen grabs for investment chat room messages and computer related topics.  Jing and I are going to get a long just fine, very impressed with this software, so I upgraded to Jing Pro for only 14.95 a year.  You get MPEG4 videos, better quality sound and you can upload your videos to Youtube. 

Here are a couple test video captures I did with Jing, just to show what you can do with it.

http://screencast.com/t/MjdkYWQ4NDUt

http://screencast.com/t/MjAxMGQzOD

I LOVE JING!!

Posted in Computers | Leave a Comment »

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