What you should already know about Windows XP Backup

Author: Erik Eckel

For many small to midsize businesses, the native backup utility in Microsoft Windows XP is sufficient to handle data backup and recovery chores.

Data backups aren’t as exciting as dual-core Intel chips that dual-boot Mac OS X and Windows XP, but maintaining a sound back-up strategy can prevent excitement of a different kind (the kind you don’t want). Although technology professionals can choose from a confusing array of OEM, proprietary, and third-party solutions, Windows’ native back-up program often proves adequate for meeting the data backup and recovery requirements of most small and medium businesses. The trick is in knowing Windows Backup’s benefits and drawbacks. By playing to the utility’s strengths, you can eliminate unwanted excitement and keep your workday low key.

#1: It’s proven (i.e., no one ever got fired for buying IBM…)

No one in their right mind wants to explain to a client or director why a backup or recovery operation failed. Losing data is among the greatest technology sins, so it’s only appropriate that the job be entrusted to a reliable solution. The old saying reminds us that “No one ever got fired for buying IBM.” The same holds for technology professionals in small or medium-size businesses who opt for using Microsoft tools.

Although many criticize Microsoft’s native Backup tool for its lack of sophistication and flexibility, the Windows utility’s lack of complexity is its greatest strength. Windows Backup provides a simple and proven method for safeguarding data. Further, it’s a capable tool for backing up data to a medium that’s easily stored off site.
#2: The wizard is your friend

Sure, you can elect to work in Backup’s Advanced mode (see Figure A), but wizards simplify complex tasks. More important, they help ensure that you don’t forget a step. And let’s face it, when the phone’s ringing and you’re downloading a service pack, applying a patch, and configuring a backup, it’s easy to overlook a setting.
Figure A



Windows Backup’s Advanced Mode lets you specify all backup configuration details manually.

There’s a reason wizards dominate Windows Small Business Server administration: They work. When creating a critical backup, take a few extra moments to allow the wizard shown in Figure B to walk you through the process.
Figure B



The Windows Backup Or Restore Wizard simplifies back-up creation and helps ensure that you don’t miss critical configuration settings (such as scheduling the backup to occur daily or configuring an Incremental versus a Normal backup).

The Backup Or Restore Wizard first asks whether you want to back up or restore files and settings. Assuming you specify a back-up operation, the next step involves specifying the data you want to back up. You can elect to back up local files and folders as well as network shares, of course.

After you configure the data to be backed up, you’ll have to select the back-up location. I’ve encountered clients who back up data to the same hard disk, believing it’s a second disk (due to its being partitioned and possessing a different drive letter). Backups always work best when a copy is stored off site, thereby protecting against fire/smoke/water damage that might occur at the central place of business.

Next, the wizard will prompt you to provide a name for the backup. It will then provide a summary screen, shown in Figure C. But you’re not through yet.
Figure C



The wizard’s summary screen leads you to believe you’re just about finished configuring the new backup; you’re not. You still need to configure advanced settings.

Click Advanced to configure the type of backup:

* Normal backs up all files and marks each as backed up.
* Copy backs up files but does not mark them as backed up.
* Incremental backs up files only if they were created or modified since the last back-up operation completed and marks them as backed up.
* Differential backs up only those files created since the last backup completed, but unlike Incremental backups, a Differential backup doesn’t mark the files as backed up.
* Daily backs up only files created or modified that day (without changing files’ archive bits).

Once you’ve specified the back-up type, the wizard presents two options: Verify Data After Backup and Disable Volume Shadow Copy. A third option, Use Hardware Compression If Available, will appear if the system has the appropriate equipment. Make your selections and specify whether to append or replace the backup, select a time for the backup to run, and enter a back-up name (this name identifies the back-up operation, not the .BKF file the backup creates). Enter a user account with the appropriate permissions to run the back-up operation and then provide the password.

Before clicking Next to finish creating the back-up routine, click Set Schedule. Use the Schedule tab to specify how often and when the backup should run. Use the Settings tab to configure additional options, such as the length of time the backup has to complete the process and whether the backup should run even if the power fails and the system’s battery power kicks in.

Once those settings are configured, you’re finished with the wizard. You can rest assured all important steps have been considered (even if you’re interrupted mid-process by a telephone call).
#3: You must watch names when creating new backups

When creating backups using Windows Backup Or Restore Wizard, you need to provide a name for the back-up routine. In fact, you must enter two names — one to identify the back-up operation itself (the job name) and another for the actual .BKF file that Backup creates (the backup name). They’re easy to confuse, and worse, Windows Backup remembers the last names you used and displays them by default; it’s easy to overwrite an existing routine or back-up file when creating a second back-up operation. Take care to ensure you don’t accidentally overwrite an old back-up file or mistakenly alter an existing back-up operation when configuring new backups.

When using the Backup Or Restore Wizard, the first name you specify is for the back-up file itself. This is the data file the back-up operation creates. It’s entered on the wizard’s Backup Type, Destination, And Name screen.

Scheduling a backup triggers the Job Name box, found on the wizard’s When To Back Up menu. The name you enter there determines the job name used to administer the back-up operation.
#4: Advanced options are key

Advanced Options, accessed using the Advanced button found on the Backup Or Restore Wizard’s summary screen, shown in Figure C, provides access to critical settings. In addition to configuring the back-up type as described above, you use Advanced options to specify whether backups append or replace older backups and whether a backup is scheduled to run regularly.

When scheduling back-up routines, the Set Schedule button provides access to yet another set of tabs. The Schedule tab enables configuring the backup’s frequency, while the Settings tab, shown in Figure D, permits customizing Scheduled Task completion parameters, managing the system’s idle time, and setting power management.
Figure D



Critical power management and idle time settings are configured using the Settings tab reached by clicking the Set Schedule button from within Advanced options.
#5: You needn’t overcomplicate schedules/types

Microsoft exams and practice test companies love quizzing you on how you best recover from a disk failure if you’ve got a six-day-old Normal backup and five days of Incremental or Differential backups. Although such practices work well in theory, they’re more difficult to complete as intended in the real world. Office managers forget to replace the tapes or Rev Disks in a system and copy a Tuesday Differential over a Monday Differential. Disks get lost; tapes fail over time.

I recommend simply talking with clients or reviewing with corporate staff how much data you can afford to lose. Can you get by without a week’s worth of data? Then configure weekly Normal backups, ensure they complete properly, and get them off site. Regularly recover backups to ensure all necessary data is being properly protected.

However, some organizations need data backed up every day. In those cases, I recommend setting Windows Backup to complete Normal backups daily. Just be sure to keep several copies (at least a week’s worth, if not more) and rotate them. That way, if a user accidentally deletes a needed customer file on Monday and you don’t discover the problem until Friday, you still have a week-old backup from which you can obtain the file.

Still other companies can’t afford to lose even a half-day’s data. Microsoft Backup isn’t the solution for them. That’s when it’s time to turn to high-availability data provisioning services (such as RAID arrays and on-line backups).
#6: You likely need to replace–not append–backups

In most small and medium businesses, there’s no need to obtain more than a week or two’s worth of backups. Although for some it makes sense to keep master quarterly back-up copies forever, typically just replacing Normal backups works well as part of a regular rotation. Thus, many will elect to use the Windows Replace feature rather than the Append feature when configuring scheduled backups.

If circumstances require, you can append backups or add them to your media as opposed to replacing an existing backup. But more often than not, you’ll run out of storage space quickly. Most midsize businesses and many small businesses will be best served by maintaining fresh sets of operative Normal backups. Therefore, these organizations can simply replace existing backups.

Larger organizations requiring more complex data back-up regimens will be best served using a more sophisticated backup system. Because of Windows Backup’s simplicity, it quickly becomes unwieldy when trying to manage multiple back-up sets in small organizations. And trying to scale appending Incremental or Differential backups in addition to weekly Normal backups simply isn’t worth the effort in large enterprises, where more sophisticated systems help ease the tediousness of the process.
#7: Data compression is weak, so plan accordingly

If you need to back up 30GB daily, as I often do for everyone from one- or two physician-practice health care providers (due to patient records and x-ray images) to realty firms wishing to retain copies of various blueprints, contracts, and show house images, your backup requires a lot of storage space. Windows Backup works well for these businesses, but don’t expect the backup to compress data effectively.

Third-party tools typically outperform the compression capacities Windows Backup boasts. In larger backups I’ve configured for clients, I see little data compression result from Windows Backup (using standard removal hard drives, Rev Disks, and the like). Using tape technologies, additional compression benefits emerge.

When calculating media storage required to manage back-up routines, I recommend planning at least 12 months ahead. Thus, if you’re using Windows Backup and you must back up 12GB worth of data weekly, and the organization adds 500MB of new data a month, I’d recommend working with at least a 20GB tape or disk.
#8: Data verification can take forever

Windows Backup offers a data verification feature, which helps confirm that backups complete properly. Almost everyone advises that you use it. The option should be selected with care when creating larger backups, however, as the confirmation process can add an inordinate amount of time to the back-up operation. In one example I’ve seen in the field, a 32GB backup regularly and consistently failed to complete in eight hours due to the verification feature taking too long; when data verification was turned off, the backup completed much more quickly.

If you’re completing smaller (5GB or less) backups, consider selecting data verification (the Verify Data After Backup check box) from the Backup Or Restore Wizard’s How To Back Up screen. For larger backups, I recommend periodically verifying backups complete properly firsthand instead, by opening a backup and checking its uniformity.
#9: When scheduling backups, once is the default

It’s important to note that the default setting for the Schedule is Once. This is true even though you can set the backup to begin a week or months in advance. As a result, it’s easy to configure a Normal backup to occur on Friday at 11:00 p.m. and forget to select Weekly from the Scheduled Task drop-down box. If you don’t confirm that you’ve selected the appropriate frequency, you’ll wind up configuring a scheduled backup to run only once. When you create a new back-up routine using Windows backup, always be sure you specify that it run Later and click Set Schedule.
#10: You need to limit Backup’s default run time

Backups can easily suck up a system’s resources, not to mention network bandwidth (when backing up files from network shares). Add in the fact users are constantly making changes to files during regular business hours, and it’s easy to see why backups are traditionally programmed to occur during off hours.

When configuring Windows Backup, be sure to review the timeframe Windows allots the routine to complete. The default setting (reached by selecting Set Schedule and clicking the Settings tab from Advanced options) is 72 hours. That’s an incredibly long time, especially in the event that a back-up routine becomes stuck, confused, or locked in an endless access, read, or write cycle. You don’t want users rendered unable to access the server, network data, or the network. Configure reasonable run times and make it a habit to review backups and confirm that they’re completing within the allotted time.

Five things your boss doesn’t want to hear

Author: Toni Bowers

If you’d like to develop a better relationship with your CIO, you might want to check out this list of things your boss doesn’t want to hear.

Mary K. Pratt wrote a good article for Computerworld after she asked a group of 2008 Premier 100 IT Leaders to talk about the kinds of messages they never want to hear from their staffers.

Here’s the list she compiled from the conversations:

Don’t talk only about the technology and not about the business. These CIOs say that technology-for-technology’s-sake won’t get you far. You should couch any technology discussions in terms of what it would mean to the business.

Don’t be too enamored with one solution. Most IT people have a technology preference (just witness some of the fights we’ve had in TechRepublic’s forum over the years about Linux vs. Windows). Be open to all solutions.

Don’t operate from the stance that something is impossible. No CIO wants to hear this word. A task may be insurmountable, but the best way to get that across is to present the challenges in a logical way. Let the CIO come to the conclusion about whether it’s still worth pursuing.

CIOs don’t want to hear you express bad opinions about your colleagues. CIOs want their employees to work out problems on their own.

No surprises. This seems a little contradictory to point number 4 to me. Pratt quotes Ian S. Patterson, CIO at Scottrade Inc., a St. Louis-based online brokerage firm, as saying he “always prefers to hear news — good and bad — directly from his workers.” How would one address the fact that a colleague may be causing delays in a project without expressing a bad opinion? I guess it’s all in the way you say it.

When IT pros go bad

Author: Toni Bowers

The recent case of the network administrator who shut down San Francisco’s FiberWAN network may cause some corporate executives to initiate unneeded policies. Would that be yet another example of too much time spent on something that, in reality, rarely happens?

The Terry Childs case has been a wake-up call to corporate executives across the globe. (Childs, a network administrator for San Francisco’s Department of Telecommunications and Information Services, is currently in jail and being held on $5 million bail for allegedly altering the city’s FiberWAN network system to deny service to authorized users and setting up devices that would allow unauthorized service to the system.)

I would guess that few executives (and staff-level end users for that matter) had any idea of the power one lone IT pro could have until now. Since the mindset of most employees is that IT is the department you call when you can’t access your files or your e-mail is running slow, it’s pretty disconcerting for them to find out that, depending on their position in the company, IT pros pretty much hold the keys to the kingdom.

So now, of course, the media is feeding this newly found fear in the hearts of corporate executives everywhere.


Last Monday, in the Globe and Mail, a story by Rebecca Dube brought to light some other recent cases of disgruntled IT pros wreaking havoc on their employers. The stories included the Australian engineer who was sentenced to two years in prison for hacking into a waste-management system and causing millions of liters of raw sewage to be dumped into rivers and parks. And Roger Duronio who was found guilty of computer sabotage and securities fraud for creating a logic bomb that took down 2,000 of UBS PaineWebber’s servers.

Then there was Alan Giang Tran who, after he was fired from his job at an airport limousine company, hacked into his former employer’s network and wiped out the customer database.

You just know that company leaders are going to be instituting policies to protect themselves against any kind of retaliation like this. There are a couple of reasons such policies could be a waste of time. For one, those executives don’t understand enough about IT to know how to form a policy to curtail its activities or access.

Second, if you think about all of the opportunity IT has to manipulate or destroy data or shut down networks, it’s pretty amazing how rarely it happens. So this could be another instance of putting precious time into creating policies because of something that happens maybe 1% of the time.

Now I could be wrong. You could all be out there using the skills of your job to funnel streams of money into your Swiss bank accounts. But I don’t think so.

So let’s discuss. In your jobs, do you have the power to paralyze the company you work for? Why do you think some people take advantage of this power while most don’t?

10 tools that will make you a Twitter power user

Author: Jason Hiner

Twitter can be powerful for professional networking and collective intelligence. Here are ten tools that can help you become a Twitter power user and take full advantage of Twitter for business and professional use.

In my article Is Twitter the most important development on the Web in 2008? I wrote about the fact that Twitter has made me better informed and better connected with my colleagues and peers in the technology business. For those who are using Twitter — or plan to start — here are 10 tools that can help you get the most out of it for professional networking.


1. Summize

Since Twitter is a great way to do a quick scan of what people are talking about, wouldn’t it be great to search it to see what people are saying about a specific topic? A site called Summize came up with a nice little search tool to do that.

In fact, the tool is so good that Twitter bought Summize earlier this month. The URL is now search.twitter.com but, at the time that I’m writing this, it hasn’t actually been integrated into Twitter’s default search so you’ll have to bookmark that URL or go to summize.com (which redirects to it). Using this to do searches on specific tech topics that interest you is also a great way to find people to follow who have the same interests.





2. Tweetburner

One of the most common things to do on Twitter is share URLs to interesting stuff. But, since Twitter posts are limited to 140 characters it’s best to use Snurl or TinyURL or similar services to shorten the URL. While all of these services work just fine, the best one to use is Tweetburner because it gives you “personal statistics” to show the number of clicks that your links generated.
3. Twitter Mobile

At least half of my Twittering is done from my cell phone, and I’m not alone. Back in December, there was a big stink when T-Mobile was suspected of blocking its customers from using Twitter. There were a bunch of T-Mobile customers who were ready to drop the carrier over this before the issue got resolved — that’s how important it was to them to be able to Twitter from their cell phone. While there are lots of mobile clients like TinyTwitter, Twitterific, TwitterBerry, and TreoTwit, I still prefer to just use the mobile version of the Twitter site: http://m.twitter.com.
4. Ping.fm

If you also do status updates on other social networks in addition to Twitter, then Ping.fm can be a great time-saver because it allows you to write a message and then it can post it to your account on Twitter plus simultaneously post it to Linkedin, Facebook, Plaxo and several other networks.
5. TwitPic

Another popular thing to do on Twitter is post photos. While you can put photos on Flickr or other photo sharing sites and then post shortened URLs, the better way to do it is to simply use TwitPic, which will allow to upload the photo and write the Twitter post and then it will post it with the URL automatically shortened for you. You can even use TwitPic from many smartphones. For example, earlier this week I posted a photo of the LCD TV I just set up in my office.
6. TweetAhead

If you’re not caught up in stream-of-consciousness, but want to use Twitter to announce something at a specific time (or automatically post an update at a time when you won’t have access to a computer or phone), then you can use TweetAhead to schedule a post at a specific time.
7. TweetStats

If you want to get serious — or at least scientific– about your Twitter use, then TweetStats will give you lots of data to see, for example, how many times you posted this month compared to last month, what times you tend to post the most, which users you respond to most often, and which tools you use the most to post on Twitter.
8. Twist

Twitter can be used as a research tool to see what users are saying about a certain topic, that’s where Summize (now Twitter Search) is handy, but you can also use Twitter for trend data to see how many posts there are about a certain topic by using Twist. Twist lets you see the number of posts for big topics over the past week or month, and you can even compare topics by simply entering multiple terms separated by commas. For example, a popular search right now is “iphone, blackberry” (see results in graph below).



9. TwitterLocal

Want to see if any of your local connections are on Twitter or find Twitterers in your local metro area? TwitterLocal allows you to search by area code for posts from Twitterers within 1 mile or as far away as 20 miles.
10. Twitterholic

Who has the largest following on Twitter? You can find the top 100 on Twitterholic. At the time that I’m writing this, the top of the list is dominated by a lot of personalities from the tech world, including notables such as Leo LaPorte, John Dvorak, and Guy Kawasaki. Twitterholic is a good place to find some top tech thinkers that you might be interested in following.

So, that’s my list. I hope it helps you put Twitter to use for professional purposes.

Is Twitter the most important development on the Web in 2008?

Author: Jason Hiner



For those who have never used Twitter, my biggest challenge here might be giving you a concise definition. Here are some of the common ones that you’ll hear:

* It’s micro-blogging
* It’s a 140-character note about what you’re doing
* It’s an up-to-the-minute status update for all your friends
* It’s a great way to keep up with what your colleagues are working on
* It’s a very timely source for news and links
* It’s like being part of the Borg but you choose your own Collective

Here’s how I explained Twitter to my mom a couple weeks ago:

“It’s like a text message or an instant message — limited to 140 characters — that you send to everyone on your buddy list. You use it when you’re doing something interesting, you have some news to share, or you have a Web link that you want to bring to people’s attention.”

f you don’t think that sounds very exciting or useful, you’re not alone. A lot of the most active Twitterers I know didn’t take to it right away. There’s an interesting phenomenon with Twitter where a user gives it a first try and then sort of abandons it, while still occasionly checking on the messages posted by the people on their contact list. Then, the user eventually starts doing and seeing stuff and thinking, “I should post that Twitter.” Pretty soon they actually start remembering to post that stuff, either from a Web browser or a cell phone, and before long they are hooked.
Five reasons why Twitter matters

1. Twitter provides a method for tapping into the brainwaves of people whose thoughts and opinions are valuable to you.
2. It can help you catch breaking news very quickly. It’s the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth.
3. It can allow you to communicate and network with people that you’ve wanted to meet.
4. Twitter lets you keep track of colleagues, see what they’re working on, and better understand what they do.
5. It can serve as a messaging tool to quickly communicate with multiple contacts.

Twitter for IT

I primarily use Twitter for three things:

1. Posting a lot of the stuff that doesn’t make it into my blog. That includes links, breaking news, thoughts on current events in the tech world, and occasionally a few off-topic notes about digital living and civilization as we know it.
2. Keeping up with current and former co-workers and other friends and colleagues — mostly people in the IT industry or the media business. I’ve learned more about some of my co-workers from Twitter than I did by working with them in the same office for years.
3. Responding to thoughts and notes from my network of contacts and get to know some of my contacts better in the process.

You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jasonhiner.

Because so many of the early adopters of Twitter are techies, it can be a valuable tool for IT leaders, who can not only follow pundits like me but can also follow like-minded IT experts. In this way, they can build their own custom community of people of interest for IT. That’s the greatest strength of Twitter, and that’s why it will end up being the most important development on the Web in 2008 — the year it really started to gain critical mass.

There’s another reason why IT pros may be interested in Twitter, and it has nothing to do with its use for communication. As an online application built on RubyOnRails, Twitter has run into scaling problems that have recently led to several outages of the service and repeatedly dogged its IT department. In fact, the outages have become so common that they are — dangerously — becoming one of the distinguishing characteristics of Twitter. There’s even a recommendation to put ads on the outage page. Check out the TechCrunch article Twitter At Scale: Will It Work? and this blog post from the Twitter staff to get up to speed on the issues involved.
Further reading

For more on Twitter, take a look at these articles:

* The secret to Twitter (Scobleizer)
* The several habits of wildly successful Twitter users (Slacker Manager)
* Perspective on Twitter and its brethren (CNET)
* In Twitter’s Scoble problem, a business model (GigaOm)
* Twitter, again (ZDNet)
* 8 cool Twitter tools (Wired)
* Five Twitter tools we love (GigaOm)
* Twitter Valued at $80 Million (WebGuild)
* The three business models that make Twitter a billion-dollar business (Calacanis.com)
* End Of Speculation: The Real Twitter Usage Numbers (TechCrunch)

Bottom line for IT leaders

While Twitter launched quietly back in mid-2006, 2008 will likely be remembered as the year that it reached critical mass. In fact, the masses have grown to the point that Twitter’s infrastructure can’t keep up, which has led to almost-weekly service outages and outrage from users. However, whether Twitter itself is the brand or product that survives, the phenomenon of group messaging that it pioneered will undoubtedly continue. It has already hooked too many users, and there are lots more joining every day right now. IT leaders should join the party, too, because they can take advantage of Twitter to become smarter, more timely, and better connected.

UPDATE, May 26, 2008 at 9:10 AM EST:

One other effective use of Twitter is for following your most valuable RSS feeds. It’s not a replacement for a full RSS reader, but it is very useful for keeping track of your most-watched feeds (if they are on Twitter). Once you add them to your list, the new posts simply show up in your Twitter stream. Here are some RSS feeds you can follow on Twitter:

* TechRepublic Blogs
* ZDNet Blogs
* CNET News