Free Cloning software Part 1: Easus Disk Copy

Upgrading your hard drive can be a rewarding and simple procedure for the everyday computer user. Cloning your hard drive or making a exact copy is the easiest way to get the new hard drive up and running quickly, It’s also a popular tool for many professional IT people to backup a computer setup to be instantly restored in case of a disaster.

There is a number of paid commercial programs that serve this purpose, Norton Ghost is very popular as is my favorite, Acronis True Image. Both do a great job and have a number of useful options besides the cloning function. They are great programs but they cost money, and money is tight right now so I thought I try out a few free cloning programs that do the job just as well, albeit without the options the paid programs include.

The first program I tried successfully was Easus Disk Copy.  Disk Copy allows a user to replicate their hard drive on to a external hard drive, the only option besides a full copy is to choose an individual partition a useful feature that I didn’t test.

Easus Disk Copy is simple to use, you download the program and burn the iso image to a CD. You then boot to the CD and follow a simple set of windows guiding you through the process. Once your target disks are selected you simply wait for the process to take place. This is where Easus falls short of the paid programs I’ve used. The entire operation took over 3 hours to clone a drive with about 140GBs of data to the new drive, not a big deal for most situations but if you’re in a hurry you’ll want a different program.

Another issue which was no big deal but could be for some people, was that out of the 3 drives I cloned 2 required me to repair the Windows Boot Loader using an install disk. No big deal for me but if you don’t have an install disk for the operating system you have or don’t feel comfortable doing this, it would be a real hassle.

Overall I think Easus Disk Copy did a fine job, it’s free and relatively simple. Since hard drives have become so inexpensive it seems silly to pay for software if you’re only using it on rare occasions. I give it a conditional “fully recommend” rating’ the condition being the user knows how to burn an ISO file and is able to repair the boot loader if needed.

Get Easus Disk Copy here http://download.cnet.com/Easeus-Disk-Copy/3000-2248_4-10867157.html

The MSI Wind U115

The MSI Wind U115 is in a class of its own in the world of netbooks. Unfortunately it’s destined to stay exclusives a few months after being released, MSI is discontinuing the U115 due to the nuances of Microsoft’s licensing policies. The Wind U115 features a bit of technology people have been asking for, for some time. The U115 has a combination of a solid state drive 8 gigabytes in size with a 160 gig spinning hard drive for data.

This hybrid technology delivers a fast booting extremely responsive  little computer that gets up to 12 hours battery life running several applications at a time, wireless on, with the screen brightness turned up all the way. Right now I’ve got 81% battery life left after almost 4 hours of use showing 9:35 remaining.

Like I mentioned this great little machine will not be available long, thanks to Microsoft. The guys from Redmond have decided that the standard netbook pricing for Windows won’t apply to models running the two drive hybrid configuration. Its a shame looking at the U115 no one would ever  aware of the quick launching of programs and the excellent battery life.

The U115 works very well, but its 8 GB SSD drive is almost full when you get the machine. So you start getting nag screens telling you that your C drive is almost full after installing just a few applications to the C drive. The 8GB C drive is the U115’s biggest weakness, to make this design work the SSD needs to be at least 16GB and preferably 32. 32 would allow you to install Windows 7 and a number of applications without running into the space issues. The other negative to the little MSI is the keyboard, its just way to small for my hands. The keyboard is better than the early Eee PC’s but much smaller than some netbooks, and it may be the  deal breaker for me. The touchpad isn’t bad many netbooks do strange things with their touchpads, like sat them to one side and put the  buttons in the front, MSI keeps it conventional clicking is a bit stiff and requires a deliberate push to click on something.

The finish quality of the Wind is quite good, it looks nice and has a solid feel to it. I really like the U115, but you have to be selective about the apps you install unless you want to put them on the D drive. If your going to install iTunes or the Zune software you have to put it on your D drive. I’ll continue to use the U115 but the time to return it for a refund is drawing near and I’ll have to seriously consider if I can live with the keyboard and C drive limitations.

Extreme Tech Website and Podcast has been given the axe

Over the last few years Extreme Tech the great enthusiast website for computer builders and do it yourself guys and gals has been one of my top reads on a daily basis. Lloyd Case, Jason Cross, Joel Durham and Jim Lynch have done a great job over the last few years and they will be missed. PC Magazine which was the corporate parent (Under Ziff Davis) has been going downhill for some time. It started with the Departure of Bill Machrone former Editor in Chief a few years ago and ended up going to online only at the end of 2008.

Also gone is the Extreme Tech podcast hosted by the same crew. The podcast was quite informative but it seems PC Mag has ended all its west coast content and is going to run entirely by the east coast branch. Too bad, from what I've seen of the PC Magcast lately they could use some substance. The new "After Dark" iteration of the show is a quick fast forward, once I figure out what it is. The regular show is fine but not really for enthusiast who build their own PC's or think slightly differently from "conventional wisdom".

So it's quite disappointing to see where PC Magazine has gone, there's nothing there for me anymore, nothing I can't get in a million other places. Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, and Maximum PC all do a great job reviewing computer hardware, they don't do the "best bang for the buck" type articles in the same way Extremetech did but, they will have to do.

So to Lloyd, Jason, Joel and the rest of the Extreme Tech crew, goodbye and good luck! And thanks for all the great information over the tears. I'm sure they'll all do fine as cream rises to the top, I look forward to visiting their new sites which I'm sure will be up soon.

Troubleshooting a uninstall gone bad

Today I was doing a little maintenance on my daughters Gateway laptop, uninstalling one ant-spyware program and upgrading another to real-time protection. It seemed to go fine, I ran the Uninstall from Programs and Features in Vista and enabled the full time protection in Malwarebytes with the registration codes and rebooted. When the computer shut down I noticed it installing several updates, I didn’t think much of it at the time but when the machine restarted, the brown stuff hit the fan. I didn’t have any mouse! The trackpad was totally unresponsive so I plugged in a old USB trackball mouse, success! So I clicked on the admin account I keep on the machine and went to type my password, nope the keyboard didn’t work either. So I rebooted after plugging in my usb keyboard. Windows went through its usual routine and told me the keyboard had installed and was ready to use, except, it wasn’t. It wouldn’t work at all.

Basically I was hosed, I couldn’t run the device manager from the limited account, or do a system restore. I had to get into the admin account or I was stuck. So I did what any red-blooded geek would do I Googled “resetting a password in Vista”. I came up with usual Microsoft solution, you know the one where you use the password reset CD you made when you set up the com-pu-ter, yep that one, the one no-one ever makes! Fortunately for me I also found a reference to TRK or the Trinity Rescue Kit. TRK is a Linux based bootable CD, that can be used for resetting passwords, recovering files and a few other things relating to Windows calamities. It took a few tries, TRK is command Line based tool and none of the instructions worked exactly as they said they would. Once the CD booted normally I ended up typing winkey u admin, this started TRK searching and mounting all the files in the system. I choose 2/enter in the next dialog then typed an * confirmed with a y, and this created a new administrator account with no password.

I was able to log into the Administrator account and then began the next phase of fixing the corrupted drivers. This took a while longer than I anticipated, I tried deleting the trackpad and keyboard in Device Manager , both had the little caution signs next to them indicating a damaged or corrupted driver, rebooted but this didn’t work. I finally resolved the problem but using a restore point, fortunately you can get there with just a few clicks of the mouse. So I got lucky, the USB mouse worked and the TRK worked after some trial and error. Get the Trinity Rescue Kit here http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.php?wpid=1&front_id=12, I recommend it for your toolkit, it definitely saved my bacon.

Repair Install in Vista

I’ve heard a number of tech experts including the esteemed Mr. Lloyd Case from Extreme Tech podcast as well as others like Steve from the Podnutz podcast state that there is no way to do “repair install” in Windows Vista similar to XP, or all recent editions of Windows for that matter. Actually Microsoft has given Vista users a way to repair Vista with the install DVD, they're just hiding it a little. And although Vista doesn’t make it obvious like it used to be, it still exists.

So here’s where they're hiding it, you get a repair install in Vista by doing a “In-Place Upgrade”.

1. Start the computer boot to Vista OS.

2. Insert the Windows Vista DVD in the computer's DVD drive.

3. Use one of the following procedures, as appropriate:

If Windows automatically detects the DVD, the Install now screen appears. Click Install now.

If Windows does not automatically detect the DVD, follow these steps:

a. Click the Start Button, type Drive:\setup.exe in the start search box and then click OK.

Note: Drive is the drive letter of the computer's DVD drive.

b. Click Install now.

4. When you reach the "Which type of installation do you want?" screen, click Upgrade to upgrade the current operating system to Windows Vista. Please make sure the edition of Windows Vista is selected correctly.

I didn’t get these instructions by reading a 1000 page manual, I got them from Microsoft when I needed tech support installing SP1. I followed the instructions and it worked great for me. Of coarse if you’re doing anything this extreme make sure you have a full backup and are using the correct disk. If you have SP1 already installed you need have a SP1 disk to do what Microsoft calls an In-Place upgrade (Repair install) in Vista.

Using Malwarebytes Antispyware Program

I spend a lot of my day listening to podcasts and one of favorites is Podnutz and Podnutz Daily hosted by Steve Cherubino. In his latest episode Steve talks to Bruce Harrison lead researcher for Malwarebytes which is the best antispyware product currently out there, in my humble opinion. The biggest eye opener for me was that Bruce kind of squashed two old habits I've had for running antimalware programs, since I started using them. Bruce stated that Malwarebytes should be run in normal user mode, not safe mode as I've done for ages. He also stated that for the vast majority of users need only run the "Quick Scan" and not the deep scan which can take hours, especially on my Terabyte desktop drive. Bruce stated that Malwarebytes concentrates on folders where malware is targeted these days and ignores folders not targeted in the quick scan. He also gives good advice about running as limited user, and actually sounds pretty optimistic about the war against the cretins who create this junk. For once someone not spreading FUD, it was refreshing.

Check out Podnutz at http://podnutz.com/ and take a look at all of Steve's great content. He's a regular working stiff who still finds the time to put together an amazing amount of online audio and now video content for tech junkies interested in either fixing their own computers or people with their own computer repair business.

PC-BSD Best Unix for Beginners?

I recently downloaded and installed the latest versions of PC-BSD http://www.pcbsd.org/ and I have to say I’m extremely impressed. The install went fast (18 minutes), and it was extremely simple and straight forward. I downloaded the 7.02 version using the DVD option. Downloading using http went fairly quickly, I tried to use bit-torrent and there were simply not enough seeders to make it reasonable. During the install you get the option of adding various additional components already on the DVD including Firefox 3.0, Thunderbird, and Open Office 3.0. Based on FreeBSD version 7.0 PC-BSD is stable and secure, the GUI is the new KDE 4.1.2 and I really enjoy it. Installing new apps is far easier and straight forward than Linux in my opinion and I’m comparing it side by side with Kubuntu 8.10 which also uses the new version of KDE.

The secret to improving usability in PC-BSD is the PBI or Push button Installer or PC-BSD Installer. The .pbi extension has all the files needed to install the applications by simply double clicking the file, this is essentially the same as an setup.exe file in Windows or the .DMG file in OSX. The pbi applications can be found at http://pbidir.com/ where an great variety of programs can be had. For more hard core Unix geeks the FreeBSD Ports are also available. FreeBSD Ports are similar to the apt-get found in Linux systems and any FreeBSD Port can be downloaded with all their packages and dependencies to install them in PC-BSD. But for beginners everything you’ll need not on the install DVD will be found at pbi.dir.com site.

The default browser in KDE is Konqueror which is what the Safari browser was originally based on, it’s a very fast browser but I vastly prefer Firefox. Firefox on PC-BSD came with all the plug-ins installed to play you tube video’s and to render most web pages as they were meant to be seen.

PC-BSD seems like the perfect OS for a netbook, it’s lightweight and simple, and has great applications like the  Flock browser available which are perfect for social networking sites and cloud based email. Unfortunately a netbook isn’t in the budget right know  but I’d love to hear from anyone who’s installed it on one.

I’ve tried at least a dozen different Linux distros over the past few years and although they all worked fine, I really feel PC-BSD has surpassed them in ease of use for the  beginner. There were a few issue’s though. Although it runs flawlessly on my desktop, PC-BSD did have a few problems on my Thinkpad R60. The Ati video card isn’t supported for 3D graphics and the proprietary driver available on Linux builds doesn’t work. It also had a issue with my wifi card, although it would connect it never showed better than a 25% signal despite being in the same room as the router. The signal would also occasionally drop out only to reappear shortly afterward. So It’s worth looking through their support page and checking to see if your hardware is supported. If your trying it on a laptop with network cards not supported I’d hold off. It’s main feature is simplicity, but that will go away quickly if your hardware has know issues, in that case Ubuntu or Kubuntu might be a better choice.

Despite the few glitches I still recommend PC-BSD it’s well worth a try especially if your the sort of person who always like to try new Linux builds or are looking for a secure and stable operating system to put on your machine without shelling out for Windows.