data

The next few feature articles of our newsletter will spotlight 4 editorials written by Kevin J. Vella of UniBlue, and provides an interesting and in-depth view of choosing a backup solution. -- It was Sunday, the 23rd of November 2003 at 4 PM, and I ... was in my final months of Graduate Business School. Two chapters of my research project were stashed on my hard drive -- no hard copies, just bits and bytes of hard work compiled over the last three months. I was punching away at my keyboard -- when all of a sudden, my notebook slowed dramatically. I started closing down open applications in hopes ... (view more)

What would you do if your hard drive crashed and the data it contained was not recoverable? Worse yet -- what would you do if the software you used to backup your drive refused to work unless you paid the company for another license? Yesterday, ... Pippie1969 sent me the following email: " ... [Continuing on with your discussion on PC Security ], I thought I would share with you the following story. A little while back, I purchased 2 identical 120 gigabyte Western Digital (WD) hard drives. In April, one of the drive's crashed (totally), and I was not able to recover *any* of the data on the ... (view more)

I live in my MS Outlook Inbox; at least 75% of my computing day is devoted to reading RSS news feeds and responding to emails. If my system crashed and I lost all my MS Outlook data, my business would be 'up a paddle without a creek', so to speak. ... Thankfully, WinGuides (makers of Registry Mechanic ) created a program called Email Saver Xe with email Inbox protection in mind. Side Note: RSS is an acronym which stands for Really Simple Syndication. You can subscribe to RSS news feeds using a news reader application like NewsGator (compatible with MS Outlook as a 'plugin') to receive automated ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Kevin C. writes: " Dear Dennis, I just read your article on Guardian Monitor 8.0 . I checked the Washington Post article that you included in your review and read the comparison of Guardian Monitor versus the other surveillance ... programs ... but none mentioned the possibility that an outsider (hacker) could access your PC and obtain the data captured by the surveillance software -- and possibly obtaining passwords, account numbers, etc. Should this be a concern? " My response: Excellent question. As I previously discussed, Guardian Monitor records key strokes ... (view more)

If you think you might be getting a new computer during the upcoming holiday season, make sure you bookmark this review! The one dreadful thing about upgrading to a new computer is the process of having to transfer all your applications, data, and ... files from the old computer to the new one. Fortunately, there is a program called "Move Me" which can make upgrading to a new computer completely hassle-free. What is Move Me? Move Me is an application to simplify the process of configuring the settings from your old computer on a new computer. Move Me transfers all Windows preferences to ... (view more)

I received a fascinating question the other day from Infopackets Reader John B. He writes: " Dear Dennis, I just read about a new privacy program which is able to hides files inside jpeg image files. My question is: If I downloaded a jpeg file from ... the Internet, can it have a virus hidden inside? The reason why I ask is because I found a jpeg image file in my temporary Internet file folder. When I tried to open it, I was told that the file .exe could not be located. I immediately deleted the jpeg and am worried that my PC is now infected. What do you think? " My response: What you ... (view more)

Yesterday's feature article on Eazy Backup stirred up some emotions from a few Infopackets Readers. In fact, Tina P. from Franklin, Indiana told me about her recent horror story: " Dear Dennis, I am grinning now, although I wasn't on Monday! I just ... finished reading yesterday's feature article on Eazy Backup , and must admit: doing regular backups is very important. I don't know if it was a combination of the full moon last Friday and Monday's date being the 13th -- but it seems that all of my electronic equipment have formed a revolt. On Thursday, my desktop's motherboard finally gave ... (view more)

According to a recent IDC report , "more than 300 million business PCs have a combined 109,000 terabytes of data that is not backed up regularly -- which is about half of all the data on corporate PCs and laptops." That's 10 times the quantity of ... information in the entire Library of Congress! Unfortunately, I know first hand what it's like to lose important data. I never used a backup application until I had a hard drive containing hundreds of hours of writing, music, and video which all vanished in a blink of an eye. If it can happen to an "expert" computer user like me ... (view more)

I visit dozens of web sites daily, and many of them require a username and password. I once used RoboForm to manage my passwords and form field data. Recently, I discovered a program called AccountLogon which organizes my password information and ... protects my data with 448-bit ["blowfish"] encryption -- an encryption level higher than RoboForm Pro (3DES). Side note: A higher encryption level means greater security. In short, it would take a very skilled hacker to "crack" an encrypted 3DES file, and much (much!) longer to crack a 448-bit blowfish encrypted file. What is ... (view more)

Yesterday's feature article was about file recovery after a hard drive crash. File recovery after hard drive crash? In a nutshell, I outlined some steps one might take in order to recover files from a corrupt hard drive. I also asked Infopackets ... Readers if they knew of any good freeware or commercial file recovery software which could undelete / recover lost data. Here are some of the responses I received: Haukur B. and Pippe both recommended a program called "PC Inspector File Recovery". From the web site: " PC Inspector File Recovery is a data recovery program with support ... (view more)