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Stanford/Palo Alto Macintosh User Group Newsletter September 29, 2010
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| Dear Steve, | |
What? Another SMUG meeting? So soon?
Yes, we're back on our old schedule at last - first Monday of the month - and October 4th is coming up fast. Added to which, when is it going to cool down? As the Bard put it - oh heat, dry up my brains! My tiny office air conditioner is losing the unequal struggle to keep my and my computers' circuits at a reasonable operating temperature.
Anyway, this month we have our own Dave Strom showing off the capabilities of his iPad and android phone (apparently not including heating or cooling or use as a weapon except in a virtual alternate universe.
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| October 4th SMUG Meeting Agenda | Dave Strom displays the wonders of IPad & Android - syncing, powerpointing and so much more!
Plus Q & A, Dave Aston with Shareware and raffle - on this last, if you missed ProSoft at our last meeting (see notes below), Macware have alternative "caring" software for your Mac and they've sent us some to raffle off:
MacTuneUp for cleaning up your Mac - remove unwanted junk, create bootable backups, etc.
DiskToolsPro - their version of Drive Genius - defraging and testing the condition of your hard drive.
If you don't win the raffle and still want a copy, they can be had at for a special discount at the MacWare website, along with other stuff they produce - use MUGDTP50 for 50% off DiskToolsPro, MUGMTU10 to save $10 on MacTuneUp
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September Meeting Report: ProSoft's products for your Macintosh hard drive
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Presented
by Gordon and Jennifer Bell, and on the sidelines, their incredibly well-behaved
baby.
www.prosoftengineering.com
(Note from Dave: Do not try www.prosoft.com, that goes to
another company.)
Most people using Macintoshes are using ProSoft, since Apple
has some ProSoft built into its OS now, such as in Disk Utility, and disk
burning software.
ProSoft is located in Pleasanton, although when people think
of California, the think of the beach. (Note from Dave: I know. When I went to
college in Chicago, I heard about that. And I grew up in a dairy town to the
sweet smell of silage!)
DATA RESCUE 3
This is top of the line hard drive recovery and file
recovery software. It focuses of data recovery from the hard drive, rather than
repair of the hard drive. This is the type of software you use when your hard
drive has a topological problem, like the drive won't mount or it is corrupted.
Data Rescue 3 is made to recover data from faulty, unmountable, corrupted hard drives.
It can recover deleted or trashed files.
It has a new graphical interface. (Note from Dave: I have
used this new interface on Drive Genius, and it looks great). The interface for
Data Rescue 3 has a Clone drive icon. You can clone the bad hard drive fast,
put its image on another hard drive, a healthy one, and scan that image from
there.
Data Rescue 3 supports hundreds of file types, but there are
some really obscure types they do not have support (perhaps in dark parts of Asia?).
You can drag in sample files of those obscure file types and teach Data Rescue
to recover that file type.
Animations show up when you do scanning, and that cool
animation shows the file types in a list, a lot like how the prologue text
scrolls by in a Star Wars movie, but cooler.
For deleted files, the Macintosh OS might strip out its file
type. Data Rescue can still look for those deleted files under those types.
DRIVE GENIUS 3
Drive Genius 3 maintains, manages, and optimizes your hard
drive. Drive Genius is tune up and maintenance product for your hard drive. It
first does a quick smart test, 2 to 5 seconds (Drive Pulse). It only does that
if it senses no keystroke or mousing for 3 to 5 minutes.
Drive Genius 3 also has Enhanced Defragmentation. It does a
weekly fragmentation check; you can turn that off if you want). Drive Genius is
64-bit, few disk maintenance software packages for the Mac are! The question
is, do you have to defragment OS X? OS X only optimizes your hard drive for files
less than 20 mb in size. Apple uses Drive Genius to defragment hard drives, but
yes, the Apple OS version has that 20 mb limit. Video, audio, photo files
defragment more often. More often you defragment, less noticeable the
defragmentation process it is.
Enhanced Defragmentation has full support for RAID. It scans
and defragments your hard drive, regardless of file size, or the fragmentation
level, so your files exist on one contiguous block.
(Note from Dave: I had a fragmentation problem recently!
Drive Genius found it, but could not fix it in this case. However, Drive Genius
did tell me that fragmentation was exactly why my hard drove was running so
slow. I just completely restored that hard drive from a backup, and it had been
running fine ever since. Lesson: Always have and maintain a back-up of your
hard drive! External hard drives are cheap! )
Gordon checked file fragmentation and the volume
fragmentation. The colors on the Volume Fragmentation map showed colors for
fragmented, free space, used space, and reserves space.
Office Max sells Drive Genius.
George thinks Drive Genius 3 supports RAID hot swapping, but
he is not sure.
Other features of Drive Genius 3: Repair, Information, Drive
Slim (will look for stuff you don't need, and identify it to delete), Shred,
Sector Edit, Initialize, Benchtest, Clone, and Integrity Check.
Drive Genius has a more Snow Leopard type look to its
interface. It is not just a boring black background.
As for solid-state hard drives, repartition, scanning,
defrag are important. You can try to defragment a solid-state drive, and then
Drive Genius 3 will identify the drive and say that is not needed.
If you have Apple Pro Care, you can have Apple defragment
your drive, or you can buy Drive Genius 3 and do it yourself (Apple uses Drive
Genius 3).
DATA RESCUE CENTER
www.thedatarescuecenter.com
This is a full service, clean room, hard drive recovery
service. ProSoft Data Rescue Center can do analysis of your poor little ailing
hard drive, and quote a price in writing to recover its data. You might find no
one will match their price. Data Rescue Center won the Best of the East Bay
(Diablo magazine). They were founded in 2009. They are Professional, Fast, and
Trustworthy. (Note from Dave: TAH DAH!!! Well, I kid them, but I also trust
them to get needed data off a bad hard drive!)
They do not charge by the hour. They told one lady that she
only needed a new USB cable. In their lab, they transfer a bad hard drive's
contents to another hard drive.
That hard drive was going up and down, working
intermittently. Data Rescue Center got the data off it for a relatively cheap
price.
A lot of companies offer cloud back-up, like Mozy, Comcast.
AT&T will likely offer that in the future. If you do this, try to do with a
major established company, one that is likely to stick around, so your data
will also stick around. ProSoft does not offer this type of online backup.
Data Rescue Center does hard disk and deleted file recovery.
They also do data migration, taking the data off your old floppies and the
like. Whatever files you have on old media, they can transfer it to m=new
media. They can digitize your old VHS tapes for $15 per tape (the VHA tapes
cannot be copy protected or PAL).
Do you have boxes of old printed photos? Data rescue does photo
archiving. They scan your photos, slides, and negatives for 29 cents a photo.
Another company does this. The difference is that Data Rescue Center is in
Pleasanton; the other company is in India.
Data Rescue's scanners are high-end scanners with good
optics. They scan your photos fairly inexpensive. For really old photos, they
also can do some correction. Oh, they also do vinyl and cassette tapes! And
Super 8. They do not do reel-to-reel.
Data Rescue is also in the Stoneridge Mall by Starbucks. You
can drop your stuff off there on weekends. Their future location: 1599
Greenville Road, Livermore.
He showed us some MUG pricing. Data Rescue $99, Drive Genius
3, Data Rescue Center has gift cards. You could scan a lot of pictures this
way!
(Note from Dave: I have owned Drive Genius for years, and it
has helped me see what is ailing them, and save my data. I HIGHLY recommend
ProSoft! And I say again: nothing beats having an external hard drive where you
back up your Mac. Really, you can find fine USB 2.0 / Firewire 800 hard drives
for a decent price. And then buy some ProSoft so you know when you hard drive
needs help. I just checked mine with Drive Genius 3: 14 percent fragmented.)
Dave Strom/SMUG Vice-President
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As advertised, Monday October 4th, 6:30pm in the Redwood Room.
See you there!
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Steve Bellamy
SMUG President
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