ontrack Archives - The Silicon Underground

Victory ping.

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 11:00:14 +0000

“Whatever happened to the Legions of Doom server?” a coworker asked me as a technician swapped her computer. I smiled a wicked smile. “Victory ping!” I then turned to my computer. “Ping pmprint02. Request timed out. Request timed out. Request timed

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Handling data recovery

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:41:42 +0000

I took a strange phone call from the field today, asking for advice about creating policies and procedures on data recovery. There’s no easy answer. I don’t like trying to create those types of policies and procedures, because there are

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My first experience with data recovery

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 11:47:36 +0000

It was 1997. I was working my first full-time job, and my phone rang with my first crisis. “What happened to the K drive?” the caller asked. I glanced over at my network drive cheat sheet, which listed all of

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I need a hair dryer, some nail polish, and two clothespins

Dave Farquhar — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:16:39 +0000

At least it looked like a clean break. I commonly run errands mid-evening because strapping my two kids into seat belts is a good way to keep them from tripping over their own shadows and hurting themselves. So we did

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Spinrite 6: An overdue review

Dave Farquhar — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 22:39:57 +0000

Spinrite 5 is an old friend. It got me out of some jams in the late ’90s, but as new versions of Windows that defaulted to NTFS came into my life, Spinrite 5 ceased being an option, since it only

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Defrag scareware

Dave Farquhar — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 00:55:44 +0000

This isn’t exactly news, as word has been going around for a couple of weeks, but if you haven’t heard about it elsewhere, there are some fake defragmenters going around. I heard mention of it today, and it reminded me

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Why every sysadmin needs to know how to hack into Windows systems

Dave Farquhar — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 00:16:22 +0000

Yesterday, Lifehacker posted an article called How to Break Into a Windows PC (And Prevent it from Happening to You). Some people weren’t happy that they posted a tutorial on how to hack into Windows systems. Let me tell you why

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Creative ways to destroy computer data

Dave Farquhar — Mon, 15 Nov 2004 22:48:32 +0000

THe BBC has a feature story on data destruction. Of course I can't let it go by without comment.

The sidebar provides the tastiest tidbits.

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12/19/2000

Dave Farquhar — Tue, 19 Dec 2000 05:00:00 +0000

Quick thoughts on Norton Utilities 2001 (aka Norton Utilities 5). Not a full review, just the most important points. It now runs on all 32-bit Windows flavors. Excellent. I prefer Speed Disk over Diskeeper, since it also reorders files based on usage, which Diskeeper doesn't do. Executive Software argues this is unimportant, but my impressions suggest otherwise. File reorder does make those key apps load faster. However, Speed Disk does go against Microsoft's recommendations for how defraggers should run in NT/2000, which may matter to you. On servers I'd stick to Diskeeper. On workstations, I'd go Speed Disk.

They've cut some of the superflous junk out, which is good. There's still plenty of stuff in there to make your system worse though, so my advice from Optimizing Windows of just installing Disk Doctor, Optimization Wizard, Basefiles, WinDoctor, and Speed Disk holds, and if you're running 95/98/Me, so does my advice on how to use them most effectively. (You'll have to buy the book for that bit of advice--sorry. I can't give it all away.) Under NT and 2000, you get far fewer options, but the defaults are sensible, which is more than I can say for the defaults under 95/98/Me.

How do they do? Well, after I used my top-secret NU settings, Windows Me booted about 10% faster, and it was already anything but a slouch.

The biggest improvement for NU 2001 is that it now works on all Windows platforms. Competition with Ontrack's Fix-It and The McAfee Utilities (formerly Nuts & Bolts) suites at least gives us that. Unfortunately, there still is no best utilities suite--each one has some feature I wish the others had. NU is the best overall, but that's only by being second-best at just about everything.

If you've got an earlier version, don't bother with the upgrade unless you've switched to Windows Me or Windows 2000. If you're looking to buy a utilities suite for the first time, this is the one to get. A utilities suite is absolutely essential when you're optimizing Windows Me, Windows 98, or Windows 95, and with the right settings, this one's the best.

An FDISK Primer. A question of how to use FDISK came up on Storage Review's forum (I've been stirring up trouble over there), so here's my response. I figured I might as well put it here too, in case someone needs an FDISK tutorial.

Make your boot disk. Run FDISK. When it asks if you want to enable large disk support, say yes unless you want FAT16 partitions. (You probably want FAT32.) Hit 1 (Create Partition), then hit 2 (Primary DOS partition). It'll ask if you want to create the maximum-sized partition and set it active. I'm guessing the answer is yes. (Active means it'll be holding a bootable OS. Why they can't just say that, I don't know.) FDISK will do its thing. When it says you need to reboot, reboot. When the system comes back, format the drive with FORMAT x: (substitute your drive letter). I always do a DIR x: before formatting to make sure I've got the right drive. If you get an invalid media type error, it's the right drive. Proceed.

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