Transferring Mirrored RAID 1 Data

Question: My motherboard supports two SATA drives through the Intel connection. I have a Maxtor 140GB and a WD (Western Digital) that’s 160GB large in RAID 1, which is in two partitions. I need to replace both with 300GB drives and mirror what’s on the 140GB drive to the new drives, wtih new partitions so I can use the full 300GB. How do I get the current mirrored information that includes boot Windows XP to the 300GB hard drives?

Answer: Actually there’s many ways to do this, but the far easiest method is to use a partition tool like the Symantec Ghost, or Acronis True Image. Either of these will do the trick and clone a hard drive or backup EXACT copies of the disk, inlcluding the registery files (called a disk image) to the files for archiving.

Since there’s two SATA connections, it’s likely to be a multistep process. The current versions of Acronis and Ghost support back-up to optical drives, other hard drives including external drives, and over the network. Install the imaging software on your system and then create a bootable CD or DVD containing all of the software you need to restore the disk image, from the application.

With just two SATA ports you will need another physical drive or DVD burner. The physical drive could be external (USB or FireWire), or an internal IDE Drive if your motherboard has free IDE DVD’s (about 15 to 20 DVD R-single-layer discs for 80GB of actual data). If you use a hard drive, make sure it’s at least as large as your RAID array.

Be sure to enable any error-checking options on the disk-imaging software. If one of the DVD-R discs is currupt, you’ll lose all of the data. Imaging your hard drive can take serveral hours. As your data is precious, consider making a second copy/back-up.

Once you’ve backed up the hard drive images, power down the system and remove the existing hard drives without formatting them or destroying the data. Make a note of which SATA port each drive was connected to at the time.

Set up your new RAID 1 Array with the RAID BIOS set up, then insert the bootable CD you made ealier and boot into the image-restore utility. You can then clone the disk image onto the new RAID array. Once that’s done, you should be able to boot normally from the hard drives. The process of setting up the RAID mirror might change the boot drive order. You can correct this via the system’s BIOS Set up.

What can you do to ensure that your hard drive you want to copy keeps the security permissions?

The follow article contains a few tools that can help save a Windows Operating System Administrator time of a very large scale permission security dilema.

Lets use an exampe for the Extended Change Access Control List (XCACLS) tool so we can provide a visual picture to get a better understanding. You’re in a position now where you need to copy your hard drive data over to another that has around 100GB of data on it, which holds thousands of files and folders. These type of operating systems happen to be a part of a Microsoft Windows 2000 OS domain System, and the permissions are quite rough in definition. To start this process we first need to make a duplicate copy of this data we are having security problems with and then start using a synchronization to some other sort of duplication tool and leave it be for the day. As you return the next day everything seems to be copied and looks ok. When you try to access the data, there’s a problem.

Now the information has been replicated on to the new hard drive we can’t acess it any more: permissions security problem.

What you probably didn’t get straight away until now is the information you just copied is the data from the root directory of the hard drive and it had the incorrect permissions declared for it. To add, the allocation of the permissons were configured in such a way that any information that is added to the hard drive is over written with the same security permissions of the root directory. It was an old profile that didn’t exist any more. You may believe this or not, this can happen. Windows Administrators might know what I’m referring to. After all of this fiddling around we’re now left to figure out what we need to do. Do I need to make the necessary changes to the root hard drive so that this time they’ll contain the precise permissons we need to use to access the data and wait hours and hours for the settings to proganate. Or shall I go ahead and re format the newer hard drive then change the inheritance permissions on the root directory and try this again?
Why even bother when there’s a much simplier way. We can get around this by using the SUBINCAL too that helps display or modify Access Control Entries (ACEs) for file and folder Permissions, Ownership and Domain. Or we can use the previously mentioned tool XCACLS, the choice is yours.

To take the time comuming process away to reset file and directory permissions, XCALCS allows you to do this effectively and very fast.

Please note that because time is a limited for me right now I can’t go into great details about how to use the other tool SUBINCAL which you will need to use for complex permission structures.

You will find that the XCALCS tool is a very fast in which it will allow you to remove, change, add and set the security permission settings on directories and files. For instance it allows the replacement of all of the old permissions within the profile account with that of “computingsolutions.txt” on the file “file.txt” with read-only access: “xcalcs file.txt /Y /T /G domaincomputingsolutions:r”.
Although that is easy and very helpful to us, how about changing all of the files and directories that a lot of PC users have thousands of to allow the domaincomputingsolutions profile have complete and full access?
To do this very quickly one could enter the following from the root directory of the hard drive: “for /d %g IN (*.*) DO xcalcs “%g” /Y /T /G domaincomputingsolutions:f”
Then it will then proceed to go through every one of your directories, including sub directories and then file and replace the current permissions with computingsolutions giving it to the full access we wanted to let it have to the object.
Please also take note that I also added double quotes to the start and end of the %g command. Really you don’t need to have this there, however should you have a lot of files that have spaces between each word as your directory name in them you’ll need to have the double quotes. I think it’s best to leave it with the double quotes any way just to make sure that we do not miss those folders that have spaces in between the words.

Are there any other ways we can use XCALCS to help us modify the Security Permissions?

Here’s a few handy tips that you can use when using the Extended Change Access Control List (XCACLS) tool. Take note of the command prompt that allows the means for changing, updating and getting rid of profile accounts and its permissions from a huge number of files and directories.

The following instruction set will replace the existing permission access rights to a profile that contains the permissions with read only access.

for /d %g IN (*.*) DO xcacls “%g” /Y /T /G domaincomputersolutions:r

You can use this example that will not change existing profile permissions, however it does add account, for example in hte local admin account wtih read only permissions.

for /d %g IN (*.*) DO xcacls “%g” /Y /E /T /G administrator:r

You can also try using this which will remove the account “administrator” permissions from all directories, sub directories and files:

for /d %g IN (*.*) DO xcacls “%g” /Y /E /T /R administrator

And the following command will update every one of the directories and their contents you have to allow Domain Admins full access:

for /d %g IN (*.*) DO xcacls “%g” /Y /T /G “Domain Admins:f”

I tried this test on my Windows Operating system, it allowed me to change the profile account permissions on about 20000 directories and files in less 50 seconds. On one of my web servers I was able to get around a 300% increase in speed. Now it’s really fast.

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Question: Is there a way to minimize the programs taskbar into the tray. I find it really frustrating that Mircosoft hasn’t allowed us to move programs over to the tray. Please help me.

Answer: You’ll be pleased to hear, there is. It’s called “TrayIt“. If that site becomes unavailable then you can download “TrayIT” here.

Unzip it to a folder, and click the trayit!.exe file. Click the continue button and it’ll work in the background. If at any time you want to minimize the windows in the taskbar into the tray beside the PC’s clock, hold down the CTRL key and click the minimize button on the window you want to send over to the Tray. To open it back up again, double click the icon you minimized to the tray.

Mircosoft’s Vista, are you going to upgrade?

Just recently I put together a PC costing around $5,000.00. It’s a DreamMachine. Considering there’s going to be a technological shift appearing with the way how we’re going to be using our PC’s, I decided why not and get ready for the Windows Vista Candidate Release 1 and the beta 2 technical refresh of Mircosoft’s Office 2007. These are versions that thought they aren’t quite ready to be dispatched for shipment, are good enough however to get in the grasps of heaps of keen testers. In fact Mircosoft expects to send out over 6,000,000 copies of Vista RC1 Candidate in the next few months or so, leading upto the final shipping of the final version to large companies in November 2006 and to the rest of us in late January 2007.

Lots of questions still remain for Bill Gates Multi-trillion dollar company - Windows Mircosoft, for system makers and for those of us who have to make a choice whether or not to upgrade or keep with our 32bit Windows XP operating system.

How stable and compatible will Vista be?
I feel that one of many people’s concerns, yours too if you’ve tried it is with your current software applications and drivers that communicate with your hardware just will not work - some message will appear asking you to contact the manufactures for a solution. Boy that’s going to keep them busy for the next few years.

Some programs like communications and security packs will definitely need brand new versions. Seems like Bill Gates is trying to Monopolize the World Market again. That’s not going to go down too well with the French after they slamed that half of a billion dollar fine on his forehead. Knowing the French Government they’ll find some way to suck more money out of the Founder and Chairman of Mircosoft.

Though Vista seems to come across as a more secure operating system I’ve still ran into a few issues and feel is a little too early to make a full judgement on the current release of Mircosoft’s Vista.

How well will Vista and Office Perform?
It’s hard to say completely, but from a quick glance it’s a lot faster and Mircosoft continues to make more improvements as each day goes by. On an operating system that has 1GB of RAM (Random Access Memory), the combination seems to work pretty well. But I’m not convinced of the performance of Vista and Mircosoft Office 2007 on machines particularly using 512MB or less.

The Manufacturers of computer operating systems also face some other unknown issues at this point as well - what’s new.

Which version of Vista will the consumer buy?
Retail computer vendors have to decide which version to preinstall. Although Mircosoft say users can upgrade and most people will not do that. The low end version of Vista which is referred to as Home Basic, will be in the least expensive models.

I presume the most average user will most likely decide for the Home Premium which has the new graphics, Media Center, and Tablet PC functions. Small businesses however will most likely choose Vista Business and bigger companies may opt for the Vista Enterprise.

Most consumers will not have a choice between Vista and Windows XP; Vista will be on all retail computers the day it’s ready to be shipped out. Direct customers will be able to choose between Vista and XP though. I would expect that small businesses to choose Vista, however big businesses to buy Win XP since it more or less does the same thing. Such businesses typciallly wait for the first service pack to upgrade.

32 Bit, or 64 bit?
For the next year or so I would imagine that every system maker to choose the 32 bit version simply because it provides better support for legacy devices. Only those systems with very large memory requirements will need the 64bit right now.

Anyone going to upgrade to the Ultimate?
This is a special upgrade that not only combines the features of the business and Home Premium versions, but you’ll also be able to upgrade with out installing a new OS (operating system). So far it’s unclear what you may get from such an upgrade.

Peripheral support is also an interesting question as the OS will come with a variety of features that are enabled only as you add special hardware.

Tuner or no Tuner?
The Home Premimum still has all the features of the Home Media Center, though with all the bugs the current version of XP’s Media Center Edition clearly ironed out. Most machines or boxes if you will, will be shipped without a TV Tuner, but adding one and getting the TV features will be easier.

Tablet or no Tablet?
With Vista’s Premium or any versions above you can plug in a Tablet PC to get all the features of the tablet, including improved handwriting regconition and gesture support too. Some questions wont be answered until after the OS is out and people are starting to get used to it.

How secure will Vista be?
Mircosoft is addressing the security in quite a few ways, including forcing people to accept system changes. But no OS that allows users to install applications can be totally secure.

How good will vista play Video Games?
The best games I’ve seen so far are simulated demos that use Vista’s Direct X10 graphics, but unfortunatly there’s no hardware support for that just yet. The G-force 7950G 1GB graphics card I bought, well two actually with SLI technology are about 4-6 months away from being upgraded.

For the first year or so Computer games will continue to be made for the older typed PC’s and XP operating systems. It will take a while to se if Windows games can make a difference in a world dominated by the Xbox and Playstation.

The big question is will Vista really matter now that more applications are appearing on the Internet? Vista may herald the development of more applications that have both online and offline modes. The next few months however promise to be intertesting indeed as Vista is finally moving toward completion.

Question: Recently Yahoo updated Yahoo Messenger to verison 8.0.0.716. MyYahoo Module 8.0.0.1. I’m using Kaspersky Internet Security 6.0. For weeks now I’ve not been able to Login to Yahoo Messenger. Please help this is driving me crazy.

Answer. Firstly the bare basic system requirements are…

Microsoft Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows ME, or Windows XP
Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 or later
Pentium II 233 Mhz or better (500MHz recommended)
Minimum 64 M B RAM for Windows 98 and ME
Minimum 128 M B RAM for Windows 2000 and XP
Minimum 30 Mb disk space needed to install

Avatars need Macromedia Flash Player installedAvatars and Audibles require Macromedia Flash Player this must be installed via Microsoft Internet Explorer
Yahoo! Games requires Java to be enabled
spring open Internet Explorer
hit Tools
select Internet Options
select the Advanced tab
Scroll down to Java Sun category
put a check mark beside Use JRE 1.5..
click Apply
click Ok
restart when prompted

If you don’t have or need a Java update head to http://www.java.com/en/download/windows_automatic.jsp and follow the instructions carefully, this must be installed via Internet Explorer

Voice chat requires the basics and also..
voice chat needs a no proxy connection. A non-proxy connection to the Internet. A microphone, sound card, and speakers DSP Group TrueSpeech™ Audio Compression (CODEC) software Voice Chat firewall and proxy settings Protocol: UDP or TCP
Servers: v1.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v2.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v3.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v4.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v5.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v6.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v7.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v8.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v9.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v10.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v11.vc.scd.yahoo.com, v13.vc.sc5.yahoo.com, vc1.vip.scd.yahoo.com
Ports: 5000-5010

Calling, Webcam, and Yahoo! Music require:
Windows Media Player - 7 or above
test your WebCamand to use the WebCam feature you will need to have a Yahoo! Messenger compatible WebCam.
A non-proxy connection to the Internet to check this setting login to Yahoo! Messenger click Messenger select Preferences click on the Connection category make sure No proxies is selected hit OK, log out of Yahoo! Messenger, log back in.

Your firewall must be configured to grant outgoing TCP connections on port 5100
Protocol: TCP Server: webcam.yahoo.com Port: 5100
for Super WebCam to work both parties must have a broadband connection

To test your web cam, using Internet Explorer, head to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/messenger/win/webcam/webcam-18.html, when prompted install the Yahoo! WebCam Upload Wrapper, it’s an ActiveX control so you need to grant permission first.

If Yahoo! Messenger crashes when you start your web cam then check out this article.

Yahoo’s PhoneOut feature may not be supported for Windows 98 usersPremium Yahoo! Voice services phone out requires Windows 2000 / ME / XP so Windows 98 users don’t be surprised if you can’t get this working properly
PC to PC calling requires Protocol: TCP Ports: 5061 or 443 or 80.
Voice Calls use
Ports: 5050-5070 to set up the call, Ports: 5000-65535 to pass the call media.

scripting must be enabled in Internet ExplorerScripting must be enabled via Internet Explorer (double check this if you can’t see the text in your incoming or outgoing IM’s)
Log out of Yahoo! Messenger and close, now spring open Internet Explorer.
hit Tools select Internet Options.
click on the Security Tab to select it.
Under Select a Zone to view or change security settings click on the Internet icon (world globe)
Under Security Level for this Zone click on Custom Level.
The Settings window will open, scroll down to the category Scripting
Enable
- Active scripting
- Allow paste operations via script
- Scripting of Java applets
click OK, click OK
Launch Yahoo! Messenger, now login again.

make sure Show Pictures has been enabledIf your smileys aren’t animated check…
log off Yahoo! Messenger and close
fire up Internet Explorer
click on Tools
select Internet Options
click the Advanced tab
under the Multimedia category
make sure Show Pictures has been selected
click Apply
click OK
restart Yahoo! Messenger
click on Messenger
select Preferences
under the Messages category
make sure Enable Emoticons is selected
click Apply
click OK

stop Yahoo! Messenger from launchingIf you want to stop Yahoo! Messenger from launching every time your computer boots…
launch and login to Yahoo! Messenger
select Preferences
in the General category
under the heading When I start up my computer
uncheck Automatically Start Yahoo! Messenger
click Apply
click OK

Question
I often need to move files and have found that the best way to do it is open two instances of Windows Explorer and then resize them so they fit side-by-side on the monitor screen. I find it’s very cumbersome to go through the motions of opening one instance of Explorer, resizing it, then opening another instance of Windows Explorer, and resizing that one. Is there any utility or program that can do this automatically?

Answer
You don’t really need any special utility. Windows makes it easy to get the effect you want. Exactly how you’ll do it depends on the circumstances. Start by launching your two instances of Windows Explorer. If Windows combines the taskbar buttons for the two windwos into a single one with a title that says something like “2 Windows Explorer”, simply right-click that buttn and choose Tile Veritcally from the pop-up menu. If each of them has its own button, try this:

(1) Click one button; (2) Ctrl-click the other; (3) right-click either buttons; (4) choose Tile Vertically from the pop-up menu.

Here’s another method you can also try, possibly necessary if you have more than two instances of Windows Explorer sharing a button on the taskbar:
(1) Minimize all windows except the two Explorer instances; (2) right-click the taskbar itself; (3) choose Tile Windows Vertically from the pop-up menu.

As you can see, there’s plenty of choices to choose from.

Question
With all the current emphasis on new worms, Trojan horses, viruses, and other malware, I have a quesion about Microsoft Outlook Express. I’ve shut off the preview pane to prevent someone from owning my PC, but evey time I’m purposely viewing my e-mail and elect to delete it, the next message in my queue opens up. I really want the application to go back to the inbox view. I haven’t a clue how to do that, nor have I found anything in the Help file. Any idea how I can make that happen? My Windows XP is fully upto date.

Answer
By turning off the preview pane and deleteing the suspect mail without opening it, you greately reduce the possibility that an HTML-based message could exploit some security flaw and compromise your system. You also foil any attempts to snag private information that’s sorted in the Web browser cookies using a “web bug” image.
It’s true that when you delete the current message, the next message in the queue will take its place. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution: Scan your list of messages starting at the bottom. Delete any that don’t look right and read the ones from your known correspondents. If you delete the last message in the list, you’ll go back to the Inbox view, as requested. And if the mesage you deleted is not the last, the one that takes its place will be one that you’ve already approved, since you’re working up from the bottom.

Question
When I installed Microsoft Outlook XP, I misspelled my name as the owner. Now it shows up as the owner name in the Task Window, and it’s spelled wrong for every new task  create. Is there a Registry place that I could change to correct this?

Answer
The task owner shows up in a variety of places, most commonly in the Owner column when you list taks By Person Responsible. The name shown there is the same as the name of the corresponding e-mail account, so you’ll definitely want to correct the spelling. Select Tools | E-mail Accounts from the menu, choose the option View or Change existing Email accounts, and click Next. If there are mulitple accounts, choose the one you normally use and then click the Change button.
Correct the spelling in Your Name box, click the Next button, and click the Finish button. This won’t fix the tasks that already have misspelled name, but all new tasks will show the correct spelling.

Question
In my Microsoft Word, the default automatic font colour was changed from Black to Blue. How do I change it back to Black?

Answer
Generall text gets its colour from your system’s colour scheme or desktop theme. Most likely, you may of happen come across a nice looking theme to use and chose to install it on your PC System, without really realising the full extent of the changes it makes globally throughout the workings of application runs.

The changes however do not affect your printed documents, they always default to Black unless otherwise chosen by the user - and of course if you’re using a colour printer, otherwise black text is the only thing you’re going to see. lol

Right click on the Desktop, choose Properties, and click the Appearance tab. If you’re using Mircosoft Windows XP, click the Advanced button. There’s a list of items shown; scroll down to the one named Window at the bottom and select it. You’ll see two coloured boxes shown. The upper one is the default window background colour and the lower one is the default text colour. Just click the lower coloured box and choose Black. Now click OK and, if you’re using Windows XP, click OK again to accept the change. Now it’s all fixed!

I bet many of us have reformatted our hard drives, reinstalled Mircosoft Windows, reinstalled all of our software applications, and reset all of the Windows settings, etc, you know what a time-consuming and generally a heinous task it can be. But sometimes, after a nasty spyware attack or when Windows has accumulated too much sludge, that kind of radical reconstruction is absolutely necessary. And Vista will only amplify the problem. before you move to Vista, make sure you back up your system.

Many PCs come with recovery CDs that will restore your system to factory-new conditions, but you can get the job done a whole lot faster and add all your favorite programs and system settings to the restoration point by creating a recovery partition. A partition of course, is a cordoned-off section of your hard drive that gets its own drive letter. All you need is the right software and enough available space to hold your information and its applications.

The “right software”, in this case, is a partition utility and a backup program that can create a compressed “image” of your newly reformatted and reloaded hard drive.

I’ve used Symantec’s Norton PartitionMagic 8.0 and Norton’s Ghost 10.0 which allows you to mirror copy your information over to the partitioned drive. However you can use any nondestructive partitioning utlity and back up applications of your choice. And all you need to do is create a partition that’s large enough to hold your infomration; then backup your primary drive to the newly made partition. If and when the time comes to restore your system, run Norton’s Ghost or any other kind of mirror imaging transfer software and expand the backup image to your primary drive. Bingo: You’re back in business before you know it.

1 Get started
For the best results, start with a fresh install of Windows, then load your software applications that you use regularly, utilities, drives. Make sure to install all of the latest updates for Mircrosoft Windows and your Security Software; firewall and anti-virus, etc. Finally tweak your system so it’s exactly the way you like it: video resolution, wallpaper, and all that kind of stuff.

2 Create the partition
Start up PartitionMagic (or a similar utility) and create a partition with enough available space to hold Windows and your apps. Ten Gigabytes should be ample for most users (remember, the backup imiage will be compressed), but consider making it larger if you have a lot of installed programs or storage space to burn.

3 Options Options
Unless you’re going to dual-boot with Windows 9x, which can’t read NTFS, NTFS is the right file system. As for the partition type, the active partition is the one that boots the system. You need to create a logical drive (that is, one you can assign a drive letter to), which will live in an extended partition, the application takes care of that part.

4 Set up Ghost
Run Ghost (or a similar utilty) to create a new backup. Don’t bother with scheduling, as this particular back up is a one-time-only affair. Disabling your anti-virus and firewall prior to starting the backup is a good idea as these can tend to get in the way and ruin a perfect backup.

5 Scheduling backups
Incidentally, take advantage of Ghost’s backup schedules to update your backup incrementally every week or so. That way you’ll always be sure that your information is constantly being backed-up when it comes to restore. If you’re using an external hard drive, make sure to leave it on and plugged in. For the record, this really isn’t a subsitute for off-site or off-PC backups, especially if the partition is on the same hard drive as your data and programs. If the drive goes belly uyp, you’re out of luck.

6 Recover
To use the recovery partition, make sure you’ve backed up all your vital data to another drive or removabe media, then boot your PC with the Ghost CD loaded in the optical drive. You’ll then be able to restore from the partition to your primary drive resulting in a ready-to-roll PC wtih all your applications, dirvers and settings loaded.