How should I solve 'backup' issue?

My Western Digital MyBook Pro died a couple of months ago and when I took it apart (it was really painful) I realized that I did not have a TB drive in it. Instead, it was 2 x 500GB Western Digital HDs. Apparently, they were using JBOD technology to offer 1TB space.

So either I had to find a similar card or forget  about recovering backup data on the HDs and think about getting a new external backup system. I have an 4 year old HP XW6000 sitting idle with 2x750Gig drives in it. So, I thought I could try freeNAS. I installed it on a 64KB usb stick. It was able to detect my drives but sharing them proved to be quite challenging for whatever reason.

I started looking at other alternatives and one of my friends suggested I take a look at Drobo. So I did. It's simply impressive although there are  several horror stories about it. It's using a proprietary technology to mix and match different size hard drives and that was the biggest reason I was sold. I have several healthy HDs that I did not want throw away.

So, I ordered it ($350) from Amazon the other day with two 1.5 GB HDs (2 x $120). 1 from Seagate and 1 from Western Digital. A common mistake is that people just go and buy 2 (or 4 ) of the same make/model hard drive and they usually fail at times close to each other (yeah happened to me in an earlier life).

With 200MB/min HD video clips of my two year old and thousands of pics a month, soon the drives at my Fragbox2 will not be enough and I know I will have to move some stuff to Drobo. That defeats the purpose though. Using Drobo as storage would mean, I need to back up drobo somewhere else as one should NEVER have data in a single drive (or location or...)...

While doing the research though, I fell in love with real-deal NAS solutions. Especially QNAP & Synology have terrific feature-sets for such solutions. My friend gave me a great idea: Use one of these NAS solutions as your primary/secondary data storage area on network, then connect drobo to it and use the 1-button backup on these NAS solutions to back them up! I loved the idea.

Right now I am eyeing QNAP TS-410 Turbo (~$450). TS-439 Pro with its 1GB DDRII RAM and 1.6GHz Intel processor looks sexy but is double the price. 4x1.5TB HDs will cost around another $500. Such solutions are not cheap.

Cloud is another way to go for backup. Prices came down and $50 to $60 a year does not seem a bad price to pay for back-up. It has the advantage of reaching your data from anywhere as well.

By the way, while I was doing research, I re-discovered a neat feature of Google: www.google.com/Products. It's very useful to find all kinds of information, including price, about a product.

Also when using Google to search for recent reviews, you can simply put the product name and add +October +2009 then expand "Show Options" and choose reviews from left hand side menu.

Passwords

Recently, I encountered a common issue in programming. My perl application needs to use a service account to pass some parameters to another application. One of these params is a password. So, question is how do I pass the password to the other application while securing it from people who can view the source code...

I will not go into details of the solution I came up with but discuss the "password issue" we face everyday. In today's world, almost every site requires username/pwd, give you the same simple password recovery options etc.

So, if someone is trying to hack into your account; the first thing they will try is the 'password recovery' option of the site. Some sites allow you to create your own question; but most don't. The answer to these common questions may not be that difficult to find out considering how much of our information is exposed.

What's worse? It's common knowledge that people use the same password most of the time on web sites. Assume you have a password and make it unique for each site. Much better safety but that approach is not fail-proof either if you think about the possibility that a couple of your passwords may be exposed and someone may figure out your system...

How about using a say MD5 (now broken and not safe) or SHA1 hash instead of password? Well, good thing about hash is that it's one way function. So, if you are not using the same password; then the hashes you will use will be unique for each site.

Sounds great; right? Guess what? Most sites; even the very respectable financial ones have restrictions on your password that will make them quite unsecure.

Take a look at Microsoft's often cited "Strong Password: How to create and use them"

Following is from American Express Password Change Page:

Your Password should:

• Contain 6 to 8 characters - at least one letter and one number (not case sensitive)
  
• Contain no spaces or special characters (e.g., &, >, *, $, @)
  
• Be different from your User ID and your last Password

Check any password you create with these rules against Microsoft's Password Checker

Not surprisingly; you cannot get a strong password with these restrictions.

Only 6-8 chars, and not even case sensitive?

You cannot use any special characters??

What were they thinking ???

How about storing passwords? Well, long story short; it seems that Passpack is leading the pack. Check that one out...

Path Maximum Transmission Unit (PMTU) Black Hole Routers

Windows XP SP3 promises detection of Black Hole Routers, which is supposed to improve over all networking experience especially for laptops. While investigating the subject, I came across a good, comprehensive article about PMTU (Path Maximum Transmission Unit) at Microsoft site.

By default PMTU Black Hole Discovery for TCP/IP is disabled on Windows XP machines. It can be enabled though:

Setting: EnablePMTUBHDetect
Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters
Value Type: REG_DWORD Value: 1

"Changes in PMTU black hole router detection in Windows Server 2003 and in Windows Vista" is a good follow up article.

Enabling of PMTU Black Hole detection and changes are all result of Microsoft's "Next Generation TCP/IP Stack".

The Cable Guy from Microsoft has an article on enhancements that "Next Generation TCP/IP Stack" (terrible name IMHO) offers.

Vista Documentation & Tools

Microsoft has a lot of good reading material for IT Professional on their site about Vista. They have also released a few useful tools:

SyncToy v1.4

SyncToy helps you copy, move, rename, and delete files between folders and computers quickly and easily.

Group Policy Log View

This page provides the Group Policy Log view tool for Windows Vista

Windows User State Migration Tool (USMT) version 3.0

Microsoft® Windows® User State Migration Tool (USMT) version 3.0 migrates user files and settings during deployments of Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista™. USMT captures files and settings from the source computer and then migrates them to a new Windows installation.

Windows AIK

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (Windows AIK) helps you to install, customize, and deploy the Microsoft Windows Vista™ family of operating systems.

Remote Desktop Connection (Terminal Services Client 6.0) for Windows XP (KB925876)

Remote Desktop Connection (Terminal Services Client 6.0) provides a way to use any new Terminal Services features introduced in Microsoft Windows Vista and Microsoft Windows Server Code Name “Longhorn” from a computer running Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 1.

Consolas Font Pack

The Microsoft Consolas Font Family is a set of highly legible fonts designed for ClearType. It is intended for use in programming environments and other circumstances where a monospaced
font is specified. This installation package will set the default font for Visual Studio to Consolas.

and even more documentation on Security:

Windows Vista Security Guide

The Windows Vista Security Guide provides recommendations and tools to further harden Windows Vista. Use the GPOAccelerator tool in this Solution Accelerator to efficiently establish the Enterprise Client (EC) environment or the Specialized Security – Limited Functionality (SSLF) environment.

What about Users? Well, they can take a look at this:

Windows Vista User Experience Guidelines

Download a preliminary draft of the Windows Vista™ User Experience Guidelines (UX Guide).

and Best Practices?

Power Management for Windows Vista Best Practices

Use computer power plans to reduce consumption with Windows Vista.

Everyday Work with Windows Vista Best Practices

Work smarter with new features in Windows Vista.

Enjoy!