A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC Fifth Edition Chapter 9 Optimizing and Protecting Hard Drives

2 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition You Will Learn… About supporting hard drives and making backups About viruses and other computer infestations, and how to protect against them How to troubleshoot hard drives

3 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Managing Hard Drives Use Windows utilities to protect, optimize, and maintain hard drives  Defrag and Windows Disk Defragmenter  ScanDisk  Disk Cleanup  Disk compression  Disk caching  Making backups Access utilities from command prompt or Windows desktop

4 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Defrag Command and Windows Disk Defragmenter Detects and repairs fragmentation, which can slow down access time and complicate recovery of a corrupted file Defragment hard drive once a month

5 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition ScanDisk Designed to replace Chkdsk command Repairs cross-linked and lost clusters Checks FAT for problems with long filenames and the directory tree Scans the disk for bad sectors Repairs problems with structure of a hard drive that has been compressed using Windows DriveSpace or DoubleSpace

6 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Cross-Lined and Lost Clusters

7 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition ScanDisk Results

8 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition ScanDisk in MS-DOS Mode

9 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Disk Cleanup

10 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Disk Compression Methods Store data on hard drive in one big file  Manage writing of data and programs to that file Rewrite data in files in mathematically coded format that uses less space

11 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Disk Compression Disk compression in Windows XP and Windows 2000  Use the NTFS file system Disk compression in Windows 9x  Use DriveSpace utility on a FAT 16 file system

12 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Disk Cache Temporary storage area in RAM for data being read from or written to a hard drive Speeds up access time to the drive

13 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Disk Caching

14 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Disk Caching ( continued ) Hardware cache versus software cache How disk caching methods have changed  DOS  DOS with Windows 3.x  Windows 9x  Windows NT/2000/XP

15 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Making Backups Child, parent, grandparent method Full, incremental, and differential backups Scheduling backups Backup software Disk cloning software Planning for disaster recovery

16 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Child, Parent, Grandparent Method

17 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Full, Incremental, and Differential Backups Full  Backs up all data from hard drive Incremental  Backs up only files that have changed or been created since last backup Differential  Backs up files that have changed or been created since the last full backup

18 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Scheduling Backups

19 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Scheduling Backups ( continued )

20 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Scheduling Backups ( continued )

21 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Backup Software Comes with most tape drives Third-party software also available Backup utilities are provided with Windows NT/2000/XP and Windows 9x

22 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Windows 2000/XP Backup Utility Can perform immediate backup from Backup tab Can schedule repeated backups

23 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Disk Cloning Software Replicates hard drive to a different computer or to another drive on the same computer Examples  Drive Image by PowerQuest  ImageCast by Innovative Software  Norton Ghost by Symantec Corp

24 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Planning for Disaster Recovery Verify your recovery plan Keep a record of regular backups  Folders or drives backed up  Date of the backup  Type of backup  Label identifying the tape, disk, or other media

25 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Viruses and Other Computer Infestations Virus Has an incubation period Is contagious; replicates by attaching to other programs; infected program must be executed for a virus to run Is destructive Worm Spreads copies of itself without a host program, overloading the network as it replicates Does damage by its presence Best defense is a firewall Trojan horse Does not need a host program to work Substitutes itself for a legitimate program Most cannot replicate Logic bomb Dormant code added to software; triggered at a predetermined time or by a predetermined event

26 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Understanding Computer Infestations Where viruses hide  Boot sector viruses  File viruses  Multipartite viruses Cloaking techniques  Polymorphic viruses  Encrypting viruses  Stealth viruses Potential damage ranges from minor to major

27 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition How Infestations Spread User activities can increase susceptibility Virus replicates A Trojan horse gets into your computer A worm gets into your computer

28 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition How a Virus Replicates

29 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition How a Worm Gets into Your Computer

30 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Virus Hoaxes warnings about a nonexistent virus Overload network traffic Check Web sites that specialize in debunking virus hoaxes

31 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Protecting Against Computer Infestations Make backups Use antivirus software regularly Keep Windows current with updates and patches Implement a firewall

32 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Protecting Against Computer Infestations ( continued ) Be aware of virus symptoms Know what to do when you suspect a virus infestation  Run antivirus software  Check Web site of AV software manufacturer Use antivirus software

33 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Capabilities to Look for When Selecting Antivirus Software Download software upgrades and virus definitions from the Internet Automatically execute at startup Detect macros in word-processing documents Automatically monitor files being downloaded from the Internet Send virus alerts to your address Scan both automatically and manually

34 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition General Troubleshooting Guidelines Make backups and keep them current Run antivirus software regularly Defragment files and scan the hard drive occasionally Don’t smoke around your hard drive Don’t leave the PC turned off for weeks or months at at time

35 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition General Troubleshooting Guidelines ( continued ) High humidity can be dangerous for hard drives Be gentle with a hard drive Take precautions when moving a hard drive or changing CMOS setup

36 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Resolving Common Hard Drive Problems Categories of problems  Caused by hardware or software?  Prevent hard drive from booting or prevent data from being accessed? Gather basic information from user; diagnose and address the problems Focus on the main priority Use available resources (documentation, manufacturer’s Web site, technical support)

37 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Troubleshooting Hard Drives with Third-Party Software Norton Utilities SpinRite PartitionMagic

38 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Hardware Problems Hard drive not found Invalid drive or drive specification Damaged boot record Damaged FAT or root directory or bad sectors Cannot boot from the hard drive Drive retrieves and saves data slowly

39 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Software Problems with Hard Drives Corrupted OS files Corrupted partition table, boot record, or root directory, making all data on the hard drive inaccessible Corrupted area of the FAT that points to the data, data’s directory table, or sector markings where data is located Corrupted data

40 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Resolving Hard Drive and Data Access Problems Partition table Boot record FAT and root directory System files Data and program files

41 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Data and Program File Corruption Options for restoring a data file that is not backed up  OS system tools and commands  Third-party software  Professional data recovery service

42 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Data and Program File Corruption ( continued ) Recovering data when portions of a damaged file are still intact  Create a new file on another disk  Use Copy command  Edit new file to replace missing data

43 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Data and Program File Corruption ( continued ) Potential problems with files and file system  Corrupted file header  Lost clusters  Erased file

44 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Getting Technical Support Before you call, have available:  Drive model and description  Manufacturer and model of computer  Exact wording of error message  Description of the problem  Hardware and software configuration for the system

45 A+ Guide to Managing and Maintaining Your PC, Fifth Edition Summary How to optimize hard drive performance through disk compression and caching of hard drives Types of viruses that can infect your hard drive; how to remove and prevent them What to do when a hard drive fails or produces errors The importance of keeping reliable backups of the file system and data