For people who have computers for quite some time, you would normally notice that your CPU would be as silent as possible. Aside from perhaps the fan or when your CD drive loads, you would hardly hear a thing.

When you boot up your PC, the beep is all you expect to hear. But what if you suddenly hear something weird such as clicking sound? Chances are you will open it up and try to find if there is something malfunctioning. In some cases, you may notice that it is coming from your hard disk. Once this happens, rest assured your hard disk is about to give way.

Hard drives have a certain life span. Some say it depends on the brand but others say that they are just the same. The thing here is that your data and files are perhaps the most important stuff to be considered. Once weird sounds start, you better start backing up your files by writing them on CDRs.

If you value your files and important documents, you should do it immediately. While you can make use of the hard disk drive for the meantime, you never know when the next time would become the

My business requires me to safeguard the security of certain files. For years I have used Encrypted Magic Folders (EMF) from PC-Magic to encrypt those files, and to hide them from the view of an interloper. I loved it, because files were always encrypted on disk and yet were fully accessible to applications. However, when I upgraded to Vista 64, the new EMF crashed my system so completely that it was unbootable even in safe mode. I tried it twice, recovered twice with some difficulty, and gave up on EMF.

In the meantime I had heard about TrueCrypt, an open-source disk encryption package for Windows and Linux. It’s free! I must admit that after I downloaded it, I needed some time to get my mind around it.

Here are the basics:

• Using the TrueCrypt application you create a large “container” file on your system, larger than you will need to hold your encrypted files. It can be on any read/write disk, even a memory stick, and is initially filled with random data.
• The container file can be copied, moved, deleted, or renamed just like any other file. It’s not fragile.

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Working perfectly!

Usually, a person needs a backup when their disk drive fails. All disk drives fail sometime - there is no escape from that truth. But there are other reasons for keeping good backups:

• Total disaster, such as a fire or flood that destroys the whole computer and all nearby backups.
• Deliberate mischief, such as a virus that deletes important files.
• Accidental deletion or modification of one or more files.

I’m sure there are more reasons, but if we cover these we’ll probably have the rest covered.

Drive Failure:

Disk drive failure can mostly be avoided by using two mirrored drives in a configuration known as RAID 1. RAID means Redundant Array of Independent Drives, and has several well-defined levels. RAID 1 is a simple comfiguration with two drives which always contain exactly the same information, hence the term “mirrored.” If either drive fails, the other simply becomes the system’s sole drive and takes over without a hitch. Since the probability of two drives failing at once is very small, RAID 1 pretty well covers that problem. The new computer here employs RAID 1.

Total Disaster:

If the building burns…

Few days back, I bought Windows Vista Business Upgrade the other day so I could start playing with it. Since I did not want to mess up the configuration of my current computer, I thought I would install Vista on a blank hard drive.

Sounds easy enough, after all the previous versions of Windows required you to have a legitimate copy of an older Windows operating system and simply asked for that copy during the install so they could verify upgrade compliance.

Before installing Windows Vista, I ran the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor on my current system. As I suspected, my video card was not up to Vista standards and the 512MB of RAM was on the low end of what Vista wanted. (more…)

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And I’m pleased with it.

Performance:

The overall Windows Experience Index is 5.4, which I believe is pretty good. The limiting subscore (5.4) is the disks, actually, and they are very high-speed SATA II 7200-RPM drives, though you can get 10,000 RPM drives which should be faster yet. The highest subscore is the Windows Aero graphics, 5.9. Everything else falls between, so the system is reasonably well balanced.

Quietness:

When there is nothing else going on in the room, TV and the old computer turned off, sitting at my desk, I can hear a faint, low-pitched roar similar to the sound you hear by holding a large seashell up to your ear, but certainly not that loud. It has a resonance to it, despite my efforts to dampen sounds inside the box. I think that the rear fan is the origin of most of the noise. It’s not objectionable, because it’s faint, but I will probably try to do more to limit the sound, such as:
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Written by Don on November 4th, 2007 with no comments.
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