In my recent recovery test, I found that not having a good checklist to follow really hurt my ability to recover my backup quickly. A lot of the things I got hung up on I had though, "Oh, I'll remember that when the time comes." It turned out that, in fact, no, I didn't remember, or I didn't remember everything. In the heat of the moment, I didn't always remember all the steps involved in, say, setting up my printer or which applications I had installed. That's why I think making a couple of lists and cheat sheets now can go a long way in helping you when the time comes to get back up and running.

So what lists should you make?

1. What equipment needs special set up on the new computer?

   For me, this is things like my printer and wireless internet. By having a list written out with all the steps involved and the drivers my operating system need in one place, I can quickly get these set up without having to remember every step needed along the way. If you have any special equipment that will need configured, have a step by step process of how to get it set up on a new computer.

2. What applications do I need to install?

   As I said in the application backup post, make a list of all your installed applications and locations (either web addresses or location in your backup) of where to download them. You'll also need a list of license keys written up in a text file in your remote backup. If you do have a fire, you won't be able to go back to the CD to find the key.

3. What special things do I need to do to get back to my current state?

   I have a network drive share on my laptop that I use to share video with a couple of other computers in the house. I had forgotten how involved this was to set up and so I wrote all the steps down this time and put it on Dropbox. Any complicated set up like this should be written down and stored in your remote backup so that you won't have to spend the time to figure it out again.

If this was a real recovery, and not just a planned test, I would have gotten myself in a slight panic over all the things I couldn't remember how to do. The number one reason this test took six hours was because of all the little things I just forgot about.

Now, all of these lists have gone straight into my Dropbox under a recovery folder, including any special drivers I need for my printer and scanner. Next time, I should be able to run through these lists a lot quicker to get my computer back up and running.

Happy Holidays everyone. Keep your family and your data safe.

On Dec. 13th, I tested my backup system the best way I know how; I put an empty hard drive in my computer and got myself back to my original configuration with only my remote and local backups.

It worked, but it was a little bumpy at times and showed that I still have a couple holes in my system, as far as speed of recovery is concerned. I also found some things that I need on a remote backup that I don't currently have. Here are some things I learned:

1. Make a list

   There were a couple of applications I knew I didn't have to backup since I could just download them from the internet once I had my computer back up. The problem was, once I had my computer back up, I couldn't remember what those applications were! If I had made a list in a text file of what those applications were and where to get them, it would have made things a lot easier.

2. When you install new applications, make sure their settings are included in the remote backup

   There were a couple of application settings that I didn't have in the remote backup. I did have them on the Drobo, but I would have been in trouble if I only had the remote backups. I'll be setting up a periodic remote backup setting review so that these don't fall through the cracks again.

3. Properly backup SQL databases

   This doesn't apply for most, but it did for me. I was backing up my PostgreSQL database via the file system, but I should really be exporting the data to a file first. I was able to recover the data, but it wasn't quick or pretty. I'll need to figure out a way to dump that data somewhere on my file system so that it can get backed up remotely.

4. It's good to test

   There are some things I found out that I never would have known if I hadn't run this test. I'm not quite ready to say that everyone should do this, but I'm close. I think that the Merlin Mann quote I put up earlier is exactly correct: Backup is a little like Taekwondo; it's hard to know whether you're really good at until you're in the midst of getting your ass kicked.

   I'm now planning on running a recovery once every six months or so. My biggest realization: I don't have a solid process around my recovery. I'm backing everything up better than I thought, but it still wasn't easy to get up and running and took way too much time. I need certain lists and procedures written up before hand before I'd feel comfortable with the whole thing. And I need to shorten the time from the current record of six and a half hours.

All in all, it went well. I still have my recovered drive in the computer and plan on keeping it there. I don't see a big difference between this new hard drive and the old one except this one is faster (attributable to a fresh install of the operating system). As I figure out ways to streamline everything, I'll be sure to let you all know.

I've also been writing up quick little procedure/checklists and putting them on a folder in Dropbox. It's little things that I didn't know I didn't know until I ran a recovery. Now they're captured in text in a place I know I can get to when my computer decides to give up the ghost. Future posts will flesh out what you might need to write down to make your own recovery successful.

Bottom line? I did good, but I've got a long way to go to get great.

WiFi has had a rough security past. The 802.11a, the first WiFi standard, first came out, there wasn't much security set up around using it. The WEP security standard was added later, but has been easily broken and found to be as weak as not encrypting your connection. A new standard, WPA, was soon introduced, but it has recently been found to have a weakness that may lead to it being completely useless too.

So, how does WiFi security work and how do you protect your network and your communications when using it?

How WiFi Works

A wireless connection acts like a two way radio, where one side is the router and the other is your computer. Your computer identifies itself with an id number and then asks the router to get some information for it from the internet. the router then gets the information, whether that's email or your latest Twitter posts, and sends it back to your computer via that id.

When you visualize that, you might be thinking of the router sending long wavy lines to your computer and your computer sending wavy lines back to the router. But it's really not. Like a walkie-talkie, the router just broadcasts the data in all directions and just hopes your computer gets it. Also like a walkie-talkie, every other computer is getting the same signals, your signals with your data.

the way computers normally work is by checking that id that the router sends. Since it sees everything the router is sending and even everything every other computer in the area is sending, it checks each message to see if the message is for it. Does this message have my id? Nope. Ignore it. Does this message have my id? Yep, process it. And on and on for every single message it sees.

The Consequences

More importantly, there's nothing stopping the computer for taking every message anyway and doing whatever it wants with it. They can save it for later perusal, search it for passwords or upload it to another server somewhere. If you're on an open access point, say in the airport, hotel or restaurant, everyone in the are can see everything you're doing on the network.

Hotels and airports have actually become areas ripe for identity theft because of this. Many people still access their email and online accounts in an in secure fashion and, over an open network, all of that is available for anyone to steal.

The Solution

There are ways to secure an access point that you own. You should do the following steps for home and office access points that you are in control of.

Enable WPA2 Encryption

Open your access points settings and enable WPA2 Personal encryption with a nice strong password. You can get a truly random password to use via the GRC perfect password site. Feel free to write this down and keep it somewhere in your house or on your computer. It's not a password you'll want to forget and it's also not that bad of a password for someone to get their hands on since it will only allow them to log into your network.

Using WPA2 will encrypt your messages over wireless. Everyone will still be able to get them, but they'll just be so much garbage and impossible to crack. Also, by using WPA2, everyone else on the network will get a different key for the encryption, so even if you and a hacker are logged in, he still won't be able to read your messages. WPA2 is vital if you're using WiFi in your home or office.

Be Careful on Open Networks

Watch what you do on networks you don't have control over. If you must connect to check your email, make sure you connect in a secure way. that means SSL or TLS for email in Outlook, Thunderbird, or Mail.app and using https: for any web based email like GMail, Yahoo! Mail or MSN Mail. If you have to log into any other sites, verify https.

You can also set up a Virtual Private Network, but that can end up being a huge pain to set up and maintain. I'll try to cover some simpler ways to do it in later posts.

For now, just be fully aware of what you're doing on open networks. Assume everyone can see what you're doing and act accordingly.

Answer: Maybe

Is WiFi secure? Not open networks, and some secured networks aren't even very secure. If you use WPA2 encryption with a good password, you'll be okay. there's also WEP encryption, and if you know anyone using it, tell them to stop. It is no longer secure and can be hacked in a matter of minutes, putting all of your data right back out in the open.

Bottom line: be careful on open networks and use WPA2 on networks you control.

I've gone back and forth on whether or not to backup applications. Backing up user preferences for applications is a must, but the value of backing up the actual application files is more up in air.

One of the things that makes this hard to mandate a backup rule about applications is the fact that applications act differently on each platform.

Mac

The Mac might be the one platform where I could see backing up the applications. Most Mac applications are self contained and can be recovered by simply dragging and dropping them back into the Applications directory. The only issue to watch for is an application's size, which could get pricey for remote backups. If that's not a concern I would say, for the Mac, backup your applications.

Windows

Windows applications are different since they install, not just the applications, but a lot of other auxiliary files and registry entries. Running applications without all these other files can have unexpected results. It makes more sense to backup the installer programs and not the installed application.

Remember to also backup the Application Data folder in your user directory. That's where all your preferences are stored for most of your applications.

Linux

Although Linux doesn't have a registry, applications do install a lot of data into various directories in the system. There's /usr, /usr/local, /var and so many others that it's hard to tell if you've gotten everything or if the permissions are right once you've recovered your data.

Luckily with most Linux distributions, all the applications you have installed are in the central repositories and can just be reinstalled with a simple command line call. There's no need to backup most of them when they can all be gotten from a central online location.

I will backup things that I've installed myself, usually under my home directory or in /opt. It's also important to backup application preferences in your home folder. But, you don't need to backup your applications under Linux.

Conclusion

In general, for Mac, go ahead and back them up. For Windows, don't bother, but backup the application installers if you can. For Linux, backup a list of the applications you have installed, then just run your package manager to get them all back out again.

Have any other ideas on how to backup installed applications?