How to recover from computer disasters Part 1

Since someone on my f-list had one just today, I figured I'd talk about it some.

First step is to try to *avoid* disasters.

There are three parts to that. The first is hardware.

Have a UPS. Get one that's rated for the load it'll be carrying. That means you check the wattage (or "VA") rating on *everything* that will need to be plugged into it. Computer, external hard drives and monitor.

You don't need to have the printer plugged in. And shouldn't. Having the modem/router plugged in is probably not necessary. You can always get a smaller UPS for stuff like that if you need to stay online during an outage.

The monitor is especially important. Without it on the UPS, you can't shut down the system properly if the outage lasts longer than the UPS.

Two things to look for on UPSes. One is easy to check, the other is a lot harder.

The easy one is to see if it has a port (usually serial or USB) for connecting to the computer. And software that let's the UPS talk to the computer. With the software installed, the usual thing is that if the powrer goes out, when the backup gets down to a certain amount of time or battery power left, it'll initiate a shutdown of the computer.

If you are the sort who leavre the system up when you aren't in front of it, this can be a lif saver. You may lose some data from unsaved documents or the like, but you won't have any mangled files to deal with.

You have to make sure that the software works with your OS, of course. And this software is why you really want to have each computer on its own UPS.

The harder thing to find out is whether the UPS is *really* a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) or just a backup power supply. A backup power supply switches in if the power goes off. But *won't* switch in if the voltage drops to 90 volts (I happened to have a volt meter plugged in to check something when a power sag hit. I watched my computers shut down and the one on the "UPS" I had at the time didn't even beep. Because there was still power).

A real UPS will handle power sags. In fact, many of them *always* run the computer off the batteries and just use the AC power to keep the batteries charged.

For folks like me, with multiple computers, you can split things up a bit. I'll eventually have the monitors on an *old* backup power supply, because they can weather a sag on their own. So the picture goes away for a minute. I can deal with that. And stuff like the modem, routers, etc can go on much smaller UPSes, located with them.

UPSes take care of *two* aspects of power. There's a third.

You want surge protectors. And not just on the power line. You want them on the phone line(s). You want them on your cable TV & cable modem. Otherwise a nearby lightning strike, an accident that causes a high voltage line to fall onto the regular distribution line (or the cable TV lines) can fry equipment.

*Nothing* will protect against a direct strike.

But lots of surge protectors will protect against the more likely sorts. Check to see home much coverage the unit will give. Many state that they'll replace up $$$ of gear if they fail. A friend of mine actually collected on that and got a new monitor when her under- monitor power switch & surge protector *caught fire* (and yes, that *can* happen under some circumstances) She got a new monitor.

The other thing that's nice is having lights on the power strip/surge protector that indicate that the surge protector is still working. They *do* "wear out" (a lot of small "hits" can take them out gradually, rather than one *big* hit doing so). When the light no longer says thayt the surge protection is working, replace it. It's cheaper than replacing the computer.

For folks with cable TV, cable modems, or satellite TV (or internet) you'll have to check the packages or even write to the manufactuirer to find out if those coax connectors for surge protection are actually rated for what you need.

I had to replace two power strips that I'd been using for surge protection on my cable TV cable when the local provider went digital and I got a cable modem. They'd been designed for broadcast TV signals that only go up to 80 MHZ or so. Digital Cable, cable modems and satellite TV run up into the gigahertz range. Try using an older surge protector with those and the *least* you'll get is bad "ghosting" on the TV pics. You may scramble the signals into unusability.

The final step is making sure that the environment is suitable.

Keeping the computers or other electronics from getting too hot or too cold (though too cold is hard to pull off unless the gear is in an unheated space).
I lost a laptop a few summers back by having it plugged into an old-style docking station instead of putting up with more cable clutter and running it sitting on the cooling pad I had for it.

Keeping them from getting wet. No damp basement floors. Not too close to sinks or the like. And no hanging plants near them *yes, I've read of folks who had a hanging plant over the desktop and killed it when they overwatered the plant). Drinks near the computer need to be treated with caution as well.

And finally *dust*. Running a computer near an open wind *can* result in it sucking up incredible amounts of dust. Computers on the floor, especially a carpeted one, can get pretty bad as well.

Biggest problem with dust is that it interferes with cooling.

There are utilities to report the internal temp of computers by using sensors on the motherboard. Check with the manufacturer of your computer or the motherboard if it's not a name brand system.

Learn how to open the case and clean out the dust. Your computer will last a lot longer.

Computer disasters Part 2

Okay, now we get to software.

Malicious software, poorly written software, etc can do terrible things to your computer or your data.

For the most part, you can't cause actual hardware damage via software on modern computers (on some older computers, you *could* actually do things like fry monitors by messing with video settings)

So, you need antivirus software. You need a firewall. And you need anti-spyware programs.

I personally recommend F-Prot antivirus. Especially for home users with multiple computers. A single license will cover up to 5 PC for $29/yr.

For anti-spyware, I tend to run Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy every so often. Note that with the anti-spyware products it makes sense to use more than one because some of the folks pushing spyware are companies big enough to pressure somre the anti-spyware companies into not reporting their stuff as a hazard.

I don't use realtime protection on the anti-spyware stuff because it's generally a resiurce hog, and unless you are adding a lot of programs often, the occasional scan will do just as well.

I do use realtime protection *and* weekly scans of the drive with the anti-virus software. And you pretty much *never* want to have more than one anti-virus program installed at the same time. At best they slow the system. At worst they'll fight with each other.

Alas, I can't currently recommend a firewall, because the one I used to recommend is no longer available. The company that made it combined the functions into their anti-virus package. I'll just note that I do *not* recommend using the firewall that comes with Windows.

I prefer my firewalls to bother me. To ask my approval for anything I haven't told it is ok. So, for example, if anything other than one of my browsers ties to make an outgoing connection to port 80, I want to know. I may give a blanket approval. Or a blanket ban. Or just deal with it on a case by case basis.

Oh yeah. If your cable modem, or dsl modem doesn't contain a router, buy a router. Routers *default* to blocking a lot of the incoming crud that is one of the reasons you need a firewall.

If you've got a decent firewall program, the difference between plugging straight into a modem or going thru a firewall is quite amazing (at least if your firewall is as "talky" as mine).

Computer disaster prevention Part 3

This part gets into the biggest risk to the computer. The user.

Practice safe computing. Be careful about what you let install stuff on your computer. There are a lot of videos out there that if played in Media Player (and often in other programs) that claim you need to download a codec to play them.

Don't do it. Write down the message, then do some checking on the net. If it's a legit codec, download it *yourself* and let your AV program scan it.

If you let the download happen automatically, you may well be downloading a trojan. And by-by system.

Likewise, be careful about clicking on stuff in emails or webites.

If you get *legit* emails from your bank or the like and they include clicable links to do something instead of telling you where to go on their website, *complain*. That's training people to be stupid.

And then we get to backups.

Sooner or later *something* will happen. If nothing else hard drives wear out.

So, minimal level of protection is to have a second drive, internal or external (most of the time internal will be faster, but it does have drawbacks we'll get to). You'll want software (I use Second Copy) that does scheduled, automatic backups. There are files you won't want backed up. For example, the recycle bin and a lot of stuff in some of the Windows & "documents and settings" directories.

The recycle bin is obvious. And the various temporary files directories in Documents and Setting are equally obvious. The rest are more a matter of the files being *unable* to be backed up because they'll be open most of the time and the OS won't *let* you copy them.

So you either live without those or go for one of the fancy backup programs that pretty much requires putting the system into a "backup mode" where the regular stuff is all shut down.

That drawback I mention with an internal drive for backups (even on in a removable rack) is that you can't change the backup drive without (at a minimum) shutting down the system.

Why would you want to change the drive? Well, there are things (like some viruses) that will nail all the drives in or attached to the system. Which means your backup is toast just when you need it the most.

Likewise, if there's a disaster that's not computer related (fire, flood, etc) the backup is, once again, toast.

So external drives, or the newer sort of removable racks that can be "hot swapped" are necessity if you want a higher level of protection and the ability to have a backup that's at another location which (hopefully) won't get nailed by the same disaster.

If you don't need the whole drive backed up, but just a relatively limited set of files, burning those files to CD, DVD or even Blu-Ray disks may be the way to go. And this tends to encourage having multiple generations of backups as well.

But for "whole drive" backups beyond the most basic, you want two sets. Backup onto set A and remove the drive. Next time back up onto set B.

This means that if (for example) a virus has nailed the computer, you'll have at least one backup that isn't touched )unless the virus is *way* more subtle than most)