Thursday 8 May 2008

Best data recovery ever?

Just came across this story c/o the front page of Slashdot. I'm always warning clients about backups. They need to be done religiously. The only people that I find doing that though are the ones that have had a massive data loss in the past. I usually recommend online backup as the simplest, most effective approach. You get your critical files offsite every night automatically. As soon as people and tapes are involved the chances of having a good backup when you need it most start dropping.

Wonder what the recovery bill was for getting 90% of the data back from this drive that survived the Columbia Shuttle explosion? Or do you think Ontrack just went with the publicity generated?

Did your backup work last night?

Wednesday 7 May 2008

XP SP3 finally puts in an appearance

After a false start or two in the past month Windows XP Service Pack 3 finally arrived on the server's Update Services list this morning. So much for a quiet time catching a rare sunny day.

I dived over to the Microsoft Downloads page to get a copy for my test machine, no luck can't see it. Surely they haven't pushed it out to Update Services .... and yes I can see it on WindowsUpdate too ... without making a download available for techies.

Anyway tracked it down from the notes on the Microsoft Update site in the end. If you're looking for it you'll need to go here for the Network Install Package.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5B33B5A8-5E76-401F-BE08-1E1555D4F3D4


Install went smoothly, rebooted and no errors in Event Viewer. Everything looks ok.

Be interesting to see whether that rumoured 10% performance boost comes off, would certainly help this 3yr old PC :-)

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