F-Secure Rescue CD

Malware is my most recent cause of headache. A specific antivirus product (looking at you SEP) has been completely worthless for preventing, detecting, and removing this stuff. Because I only have a few hours at client sites a full reinstall of Windows and applications, which would be the ideal solution, isn't an option.

Enter the F-Secure Rescue CD. A free removal tool, it has successfully detected and removed the Malware that other product didn't even detect. The F-Secure Rescue CD is a bootable Linux live CD that will boot the computer, download up to date malware detection patterns, and then scan the hard drive. Because it's booted into Linux and not Windows it's able to detect and remove malware that can go undetected while Windows is booted.

The downside is that the F-Secure Rescue CD will rename important Windows files that could prevent Windows from booting, resulting in a BSPD. If you do use this CD make sure you review the log file of files that are cleaned. In one instance it renamed C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\volsnap.sys to C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\volsnap.sys.virus. The volsnap.sys was infected with malware, but renaming the file also caused Windows to BSOD on boot, even when attempting to boot into Safe Mode. In most cases you can restore the file from your Windows install media using the recovery console, but you have to be well versed in the DOS command line to do so.

For example:
extract e:\i386\volsnap.sy_ C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\volsnap.sys.

No good could come of this...

Job posting on a technical mailing list I'm subscribed to...

WANTED: Spare-time, moonlighting Systems Administrator with a Remote Access capability, to operate a Win XP mail server on a commission bases.

Really, using Windows XP as a mail server? Smells like SPAM...or worse.

How much is the data on YOUR computer’s hard drive worth?

This is for my friends and family in hopes that you read it and take action before you have the “Oh crap my computer won’t boot now what?” scenario. I’ve worked in Information Technology for 10 years now. Trust me, if you use a computer, some day you will find yourself in this scenario.

Your data is valuable

What is on your computer’s hard drive?

• Important (and not so important) documents.
• Bank Statements or bank information.
• Tax Returns created by tax preparation software.
• Your school work for your high school, college, post-grad degree.
• Everything you’ve purchased from iTunes, Amazon MP3, or other services.
• Digital pictures of your friends, families, pets, and whatever else you’ve pointed your camera at.

You may be able to recreate those documents, but some of that data cannot be replaced if it’s lost. If you want to download the music from the iTunes Store again, you’ll have to pay full price for each song/album. The same is true for Amazon’s MP3 store. (iTunes: Why do I need to back up my music library?, Amazon MP3: Can I download another copy of my MP3 files after the initial purchase?) Your pictures are a snapshot in time. We don’t have time machines that will allow you to go back in time and take another picture to replace the ones you lost.

Do you consider your time to be valuable? If you can honestly answer no, please write out a full argument justifying your position. I’m sure that it would be worthwhile reading. For the rest of us who will answer “yes, my time is valuable” consider that creating those files stored on your computer took time. We haven’t attached a dollar value to it, but already that data has some value.

In the case of digital data that you have purchased, assigning a value is obvious enough. A song purchased from the iTunes store costs $0.69, $0.99, or $1.29. The latest version of Turbo Tax costs around $60 to buy and download. The school work for your college degree could be valued in the time it took to create the documents as well as the money that you are paying for for education. Even if you’re a K-12 student your education isn’t free. Taxpayers are funding the public schools, and some day you’ll be a taxpayer too. 

So how much is that data worth?

It seems like a hard question to answer, and would involve multiple spreadsheets, extensive time tracking, job costing, and any multitude of processes that could be applied to determine the value of your data. At first glance, it seems like a task that could take hours, days, or even longer to answer.

Let me make it much simpler. The minimum worth of the data stored on a single hard drive is $600-$2,500. That is what I was quoted when I looked into a well known service to recover data off of a failed hard drive. Fortunately for me, the failed hard drive had nothing that couldn’t be replaced, and most of it was backed up. Keep in mind, this pricing was from 2007. At work, we’ve paid the same well known service $1,500 to recover a single file that was accidently deleted.

Back it up!

Instead of depending on a service who may or may not be able to recover data that was accidently deleted or was stored on a damaged drive, back your data up! If you have only a single copy of your data your data is at risk, but proper data backup goes beyond having a second copy of your data.

For starters, get yourself an external hard drive to connect to your computer(s) that is exclusively dedicated to backups. My current favorite drive is the LaCie Rugged Hard Drive ($96.96 – $128.99 on Amazon.com). The drive is bus powered so you simply connect it to your computer’s USB or FireWire port. No power supply required. The drive works great with both Windows and Mac OS.

Backing up to an external hard drive is a good first step. To really protect yourself, you need to have an off site backup as well. If your house was broken into the thief would take your computer and your external hard drive. Keeping your backup hard drive in your safe may solve the problem of the thief (you do have your safe bolted to the floor so the thief can’t steal your safe right?) but what about fire?

Paper documents stored in a fire safe are more resilient to heat than our digital media. Your safe may only have a half-hour to two hour rating for fire protection, and even if the fire is extinguished before you meet your safe’s UL rating your data is still at risk.

You need an offsite backup.

One option would be to have two external hard drives. One that you have at home and another that you store offsite. The LaCie drive I linked to above is small enough that you could easily fit it into a smaller safe deposit box at your bank. It fits perfectly in my $40 per year box.  Having two external drives requires some diligence on your part as you have to remember to change your drives on a rotation.

In any backup strategy, the human element is the most common failure. An alternative to this type of offsite/onsite rotation that requires human intervention is to use a service that will backup your data to a company’s servers on the internet. This option shouldn’t be used by anyone on dial-up or who is using a Version, Sprint, T-Mobile, etc. cell phone or data card as their primary internet connection. Dial-Up is too slow, and the cell phone companies usually have a 5 GB limit on data transfer.

If you have DSL or cable internet service, services such as Carbonite, JungleDisk, and BackJack provide excellent offsite backups. To be on the safe side, store a hard (paper) copy of your offsite backup’s authentication information (username, password, encryption keys, etc.) in that $40 a year safe deposit box at your bank.

I’m using JungleDisk myself and it’s working well for me. I’ve heard good things about the other services but I haven’t used them myself. JungleDisk uses Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) or Rackspace Cloud Files to store data. Carbonite and BackJack provide their own storage service. 

OK I’m convinced, now what?

Now it’s time to get your backups working. I would never finish this post if I wrote out instructions. Here are a few resources to get you started:

• Managing Your Digital Life (Blog and Podcast)
• Apple Time Machine (Mac OS Leopard 10.5)
• Windows Backup and Restore Center (Windows Vista)
• PCMag.com: Best Backup Tools (07-01-2008)
• Lifehacker.com Search: Backup

Leaving you with a song…

I don't remember where I found this little adaptation of "If You're Happy and You Know It," but I never forgot it after reading or hearing it for the first time.

Sung to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It:"

If you can't afford to loose it back it up!
*clap*clap*clap*
If you can't afford to loose it back it up!
*clap*clap*clap*
If you can't afford to loose it
then there's no way to excuse it.
If you can't afford to loose it back it up!
*clap*clap*clap*

Silly maybe, but also true.

VirtualBox on OS X 10.5

My wife fell asleep during Heros tonight as she missed most of Season 2 and had no clue what's going on. Not even a handful of episodes are available on NBC.com and Hulu.com, but all are available via Netflix's watch instantly service, but despite rumors as far back as last year Netflix doesn't offer Mac support.

I remembered reading that the Netflix player worked in VMWare and Parrallels on a Mac, but if I was going to pay $80 for one of these products just to watch a few instant movies, I may as well Roku Netflix Player for $100.

Instead of spending money (leveraging a MSDN subscription for the Windows OS) I downloaded VirtualBox for Mac OS. After a couple hours of installing and patching, I had Windows XP Pro ready to go in VirtualBox. The result: really close. Playing a watch instantly movie on a 2.4 GHz MacBook looks fine. So far so good, but how about going full screen mode? First VirtualBox went full screen, and then I started a new a new Netflix movie and entered full screen mode on teh Netflix player. The video playback was noticably pixilated and choppy.

Well it was worth a shot and now I have a functional Windows XP virtual machine on the MacBook to play with...

Microsoft releases the long-anticipated Windows XP SP3

Microsoft has officially announced the availability of Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. Computer Administrators around the world breath a sigh of relief. Now get to it and update those installation images!

read more | digg story

Windows XP Service Pack 3 Released to Manufacturing

According to Chris Keroack on the Microsoft TechNet forums Windows XP Service Pack 3 was Released to Manufacturing 21 Apr 21, 2008.

It appears that SP3 will be released for download on April 29th via Windows Update and the Microsoft Download Center. Automatic Update distribution for home users is set to begin in early summer.

Great news. A freshly imaged Windows XP SP2 computer is currently installing 92 updates from the internal WSUS servers. SP3 is just in time for a large roll out of new computers around here.