PC Stuff Made Dead Simple

Genie Timeline - File backup made dead simple

With OSX 10.5 Leopard, Apple introduced Time Machine. This new back-up concept allows you to retrieve older versions of documents that traditional backup programs tend to overwrite. This can be useful if you’ve edited out some vital detail in a current version that you want to restore from an older one.

 

At least as useful was the fact that Time Machine made it a cinch to set up a fully automated backup routine, unlike most current file back-up programs. It soon became a boasting point for Mac users – ‘see what I can do and you can’t.’ Now Geniesoft, maker of the excellent Genie Backup, has released Timeline - www.genie-soft.com/.

 

 
Timeline is about as easy as it gets. The ‘smart’ selection lets you choose major groups like Email or My Documents, My Music etc. Or you can just tick everything, then move on and select your backup drive.

 

Genie’s data selection also gives users the option to select the folders and sub-folders they want to keep backups of, and this is a straightforward box-tick exercise. You can skip step 3. unless you want to encrypt your data, which Genie will happily do for you. There are stern warnings, as there should be, that losing your password will make it impossible to retrieve your encrypted data. 

 

Timeline is designed to operate in the background without impacting on the work you’re doing. This means it takes hours to do the initial backup but from here on, updating the Timeline folder every half hour is fast.

 

Travelling back in time is nowhere near as slick as it is on a Mac – it opens a Windows Explorer-like panel with a timeline slide added on the right. It lacks Leopard’s 3D appeal.

On the practical side, you can unplug the backup drive anytime, as you would often do with a laptop, and Timeline simply picks up where it left off when you connect back up.

 

Timeline is utterly simple to set up and live with, apart from getting in the way on occasion when it updates the backup - it can strangle your PC for several minutes if there's a lot to do. No doubt it'll get better in future versions. Timeline’s folder on your external disk will swell in size over time since it keeps every version of every document you create and download, but that’s not a such big problem these days since you can buy a decent size external hard drive for less than $100.

 

When Genie Timeline runs out of room, it will simply delete the oldest versions of your documents to make room for new ones. This is the easiest backup software we’ve ever installed and set up for automated backup. The cost is US$35, which at current exchange rates is pretty reasonable for such a slick product.

With OSX 10.5 Leopard, Apple introduced Time Machine. This new back-up concept allows you to retrieve older versions of documents that traditional backup programs tend to overwrite. This can be useful if you’ve edited out some vital detail in a current version that you want to restore from an older one.

 

At least as useful was the fact that Time Machine made it a cinch to set up a fully automated backup routine, unlike most current file back-up programs. It soon became a boasting point for Mac users – ‘see what I can do and you can’t.’ Now Geniesoft, maker of the excellent Genie Backup, has released Timeline - www.genie-soft.com/.

 

 
Timeline is about as easy as it gets. The ‘smart’ selection lets you choose major groups like Email or My Documents, My Music etc. Or you can just tick everything, then move on and select your backup drive.

 

Genie’s data selection also gives users the option to select the folders and sub-folders they want to keep backups of, and this is a straightforward box-tick exercise. You can skip step 3. unless you want to encrypt your data, which Genie will happily do for you. There are stern warnings, as there should be, that losing your password will make it impossible to retrieve your encrypted data. 

 

Timeline is designed to operate in the background without impacting on the work you’re doing. This means it takes hours to do the initial backup but from here on, updating the Timeline folder every half hour is fast.

 

Travelling back in time is nowhere near as slick as it is on a Mac – it opens a Windows Explorer-like panel with a timeline slide added on the right. It lacks Leopard’s 3D appeal.

On the practical side, you can unplug the backup drive anytime, as you would often do with a laptop, and Timeline simply picks up where it left off when you connect back up.

 

Timeline is utterly simple to set up and live with, apart from getting in the way on occasion when it updates the backup - it can strangle your PC for several minutes if there's a lot to do. No doubt it'll get better in future versions. Timeline’s folder on your external disk will swell in size over time since it keeps every version of every document you create and download, but that’s not a such big problem these days since you can buy a decent size external hard drive for less than $100.

 

When Genie Timeline runs out of room, it will simply delete the oldest versions of your documents to make room for new ones. This is the easiest backup software we’ve ever installed and set up for automated backup. The cost is US$35, which at current exchange rates is pretty reasonable for such a slick product.

Disaster Recovery Made Dead-Easy

We entrust ever more aspects of our lives to our PCs, from our bank details to the family photo album. These days, a home PC failure is often catastrophic. A friend had his disk drive crash on his PC the other day. He had to reinstall Windows and all his programs, which took him off the air for most of a week. This is known as ‘bare metal recovery’.

 

The simple way of avoiding this level of pain is to use disk imaging software to make a snapshot of your PC’s hard drive, which enables the full system with all its data and programs to be restored to that exact state when a PC refuses to boot up or Windows won’t open, or to ‘clone’ your whole system to a new hard drive after a disk crash.

 

The most popular choices for disk imaging are

§    Acronis True Image http://www.acronis.com/

§    Paragon Drive Image   http://www.paragon-software.com/

§    ShadowProtect from Storagecraft  http://www.storagecraft.com/

 

These programs are easy enough to use, and full restores are made possible with special boot CDs you burn which allow the programs to run in memory. They don’t cost a lot of money but the good news is that you can get basic versions for free. This PDF elaborates further on the technology and shows how to use the software with screenshots: http://www.technoledge.com.au/pdfs/seagate_disc_wizard.pdf

 

There’s only one catch: in order to get the free OEM version of Acronis True Image, you must have a Seagate, Maxtor or Western Digital disk drive. A single external USB hard drive is enough. The downloads are pretty hefty – in the order of 100mb:

Seagate/Maxtor http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp

 

Paragon simply offers an older version of the drive imaging software that will work with any and all disk drives http://www.paragon-software.com/free/db.html . Needless to say, you’ll receive offers to upgrade to the latest version from time to time.

 

Take a snapshot once a week on an external hard drive, or even once a month, and you’ll recover from a PC disaster in hours rather than days. If all goes wrong, and your PC refuses to even boot into Safe Mode, boot it up from the CD Acronis or Paragon has helped you cut and simply load back the last image. Assuming that you back your working data up every day, you simply update your data since the last image was taken and all is well again.

 

We haven’t covered theft or fire, but you have the option of buying a second external drive (their prices have come down so much lately) put an image on it and leave it with a friend or your parents or one of your kids. Now you can sleep with the sweetest of dreams.

We entrust ever more aspects of our lives to our PCs, from our bank details to the family photo album. These days, a home PC failure is often catastrophic. A friend had his disk drive crash on his PC the other day. He had to reinstall Windows and all his programs, which took him off the air for most of a week. This is known as ‘bare metal recovery’.

 

The simple way of avoiding this level of pain is to use disk imaging software to make a snapshot of your PC’s hard drive, which enables the full system with all its data and programs to be restored to that exact state when a PC refuses to boot up or Windows won’t open, or to ‘clone’ your whole system to a new hard drive after a disk crash.

 

The most popular choices for disk imaging are

§    Acronis True Image http://www.acronis.com/

§    Paragon Drive Image   http://www.paragon-software.com/

§    ShadowProtect from Storagecraft  http://www.storagecraft.com/

 

These programs are easy enough to use, and full restores are made possible with special boot CDs you burn which allow the programs to run in memory. They don’t cost a lot of money but the good news is that you can get basic versions for free. This PDF elaborates further on the technology and shows how to use the software with screenshots: http://www.technoledge.com.au/pdfs/seagate_disc_wizard.pdf

 

There’s only one catch: in order to get the free OEM version of Acronis True Image, you must have a Seagate, Maxtor or Western Digital disk drive. A single external USB hard drive is enough. The downloads are pretty hefty – in the order of 100mb:

Seagate/Maxtor http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

Western Digital http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp

 

Paragon simply offers an older version of the drive imaging software that will work with any and all disk drives http://www.paragon-software.com/free/db.html . Needless to say, you’ll receive offers to upgrade to the latest version from time to time.

 

Take a snapshot once a week on an external hard drive, or even once a month, and you’ll recover from a PC disaster in hours rather than days. If all goes wrong, and your PC refuses to even boot into Safe Mode, boot it up from the CD Acronis or Paragon has helped you cut and simply load back the last image. Assuming that you back your working data up every day, you simply update your data since the last image was taken and all is well again.

 

We haven’t covered theft or fire, but you have the option of buying a second external drive (their prices have come down so much lately) put an image on it and leave it with a friend or your parents or one of your kids. Now you can sleep with the sweetest of dreams.

Repairing a Sick Vista PC Without a Vista DVD

Most likely, Windows Vista came to you on a new PC or laptop. If it’s one of the big brands, chances are you didn’t get a Vista installation disc with it. All they gave you is a recovery partition on your laptop. That’s not much help if disaster strikes unless you want your system set back to where it was the day you bought the PC. Once that's done, you’d have to reinstall all your programs and your data.

 

I outline how disk imaging software makes bare metal recovery much easier here http://briard.typepad.com/kims-konfection/2009/10/dont-just-think-about-pc-backup-think-about-recovery.html, but what if your system is still functioning but just not working as it should? If you had the Vista installation DVD, you could repair it using the Windows Vista DVD recovery centre. Here you can perform an automated recovery or roll Vista back to a system Restore Point without losing any data.

A genuine advance in Vista is the ability to roll back to a Restore Point from the Vista DVD, but that’s not much use when you don’t have the DVD. One option is to buy one from Microsoft but why on earth should you have to fork out more money after shelling out a big pile for a new PC and operating system?

 

There is a simpler option, as it turns out: the helpful people at Neosmart Technologies offer a Microsoft recovery disc that contains only the Vista DVD’s recovery and repair tools. http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/. You can’t use the disk to reinstall Windows Vista, but you can use it to boot into your sick PC and access a system recovery menu where you’ll find options like System Restore, complete PC Backup, automated system repair, or a command-line prompt if you’re a tech-savvy user.

NeoSmart Technologies makes the Vista Recovery Disc available for free but, for some reason, the download is a torrent. That means you need (to intsall) a program like utorrent or bittorrent before you can grab the 120mb download. The Neosmart website has appropriate links and instructions.

 

The download is in the standard ISO format needed for boot disks, and most modern CD burners will cope with that. If yours doesn’t burn ISO disks, the free version of Ashampoo’s great Burning Studio 6 will. http://download.cnet.com/Ashampoo-Burning-Studio-Free/3000-2646_4-10776287.html Or you can buy the latest version 9.20 for $10 here for a limited time  http://download.cnet.com/Ashampoo-Burning-Studio/3000-2646_4-10041527.html

 

There you go: three bargains in one post.

J