SoftwareTalks

by Yuri Maslikov
experience: Marketing Manager at SoftLogica
education: Economics at Novosibirsk State University

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Imagine carrying your favorite software, settings, profiles and data on a device that can fit your key chain. It is possible with portable software - computer programs that can be carried around with you on portable device and used on any Windows computer. When your flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other device is plugged in, you have access to your favorite software and personal data just as you would do on your own PC. You can work, play a game, message friends, send email, edit photos and more - all without worrying if applications are installed on the computer. Not all software can be portable. It needs to comply with the following requirements.

There are two major media types used for the portable software: а portable hard drive device and a flash drive. The main advantage of a hard drive is its low cost per megabyte, so a portable 20 Gb hard drive can cost the same as 2Gb flash one. However, а portable hard drive has moving parts, and a good bump or drop from a few feet can damage it. A flash drive uses flash memory, which means that information is stored in a memory circuit, and there are no moving parts in it. You can drop it and be sure it would be fine. Also it is usually much smaller than a hard drive. However, keep in mind that flash memory can sustain only a limited number of write and erase cycles before failure. Thus, an active everyday usage of the flash memory can result in a card lifetime of 1-2 years. If your flash drive is 1- or 2-years old, consider buying a new one. Also, there are some programs configured to place temporary or intermediate files in memory rather than store them temporarily on the flash drive, that reduce the flash memory usage.

Recently a new type of flash drives appeared, that is specially designed for the portable software. They are coming preinstalled with the Launchpad which emulates the Windows OS start menu, and controls program installation and two partitions - one for the launch menu, and one for the programs and data. While such portable drive is highly attractive, one of the downsides of it is that most of the software for it is commercial. The best way to fill your portable drive with the best tools is to look for a portable versions of your favorite software. Everyone has its own tastes in making their collection. The following freeware tools are a pretty common choice.

Launch your portable programs from a simple menu

PStart is a simple tray tool to start user defined applications. Designed to run portable applications (like portable Firefox & Thunderbird), it can start anything runnable from USB key devices or removable disks: www.pegtop.net

Protect information on your flash drive with encrypting tools

Dekart Private Disk Light. This free disk encryption software creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk. All data encryption is fast, automatic, on-the-fly and with no performance penalty: www.dekart.com

TrueCrypt. You can create a virtual drive of any size you choose that contains all your private data and information. You can use it to encrypt your entire USB drive or only a segment of it if you prefer: www.truecrypt.org

Carry your web browser with all your favorite bookmarks

Opera Portable - Opera browser that has been repacked so that you can run Opera by just clicking, without the need of installation or administrator rights. With download size of about 3 MB, you get the same features of Opera compared to what you get in the installation version: www.kejut.com/operaportable

Portable Firefox is the popular Mozilla Firefox web browser packaged with a PortableApps Launcher as a portable app, so you can take your bookmarks, extensions and saved passwords with you: www.portableapps.com/apps/internet/browsers/portable_firefox

Carry your calendar with all your appointments

Portable Sunbird is the handy Mozilla Sunbird calendar and task manager packaged as a portable app, so you can take your calendar and to do list with you: www.portableapps.com/apps/office/organization/portable_sunbird

Essential Pim performs all your basic PIM needs: calendar, contact manager, etc. Conveniently, you can import your Outlook information, and it supports built-in encryption: www.essentialpim.com

Carry your email client with all your contacts and settings

Mozilla Thunderbird Portable is the popular Mozilla Thunderbird email client packaged as a portable app, so you can take your email, address book and account settings with you. You can also get it with GPG and Enigmail preconfigured to encrypt and sign your email: www.portableapps.com/apps/internet/email/portable_thunderbird

JBMail is a compact and portable secure e-mail client. The software has been designed for simplicity, security and “on-line mailbox access” meaning that mail is manipulated remotely and NOT stored locally. JBMail supports POP3, SMTP, SSL/TLS and all essential mail client features: www.pc-tools.net/win32/jbmail

Carry your instant messenger and your buddy list

Trillian multi-protocol instant messaging client works with AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ and IRC: www.trilliananywhere.com

Miranda IM is a multi protocol instant messenger client for Windows. Miranda IM uses very little memory and is extremely fast. It supports ICQ, AIM, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo, IRC and more: www.portableapps.com/apps/internet/chat/portable_miranda

Carry your whole office suite along with your documents and presentations

AbiWord Portable. AbiWord is a free word processing program similar to Microsoft Word. It is suitable for a variety of word processing activities and has the ability to read and write a number of document types including Microsoft Word, Word Perfect, OpenOffice.org, RTF, HTML, Palm and more: www.portableapps.com/apps/office/word_processors/portable_abiword

Portable OpenOffice is the complete OpenOffice.org office suite including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, drawing package and database packaged as a portable app. the only downside is its size (86mb to download and 167mb to install): www.portableapps.com/apps/office/suites/portable_openoffice

Carry all your important passwords and account information securely

PINs is a free feature-rich Windows program for safe and comfortable storing of any secure information like passwords, accounts, PINs etc. PINs uses a secure 448 bit Blowfish algorithm to ensure the data are not crackable. The password used for securing access to stored data is not saved anywhere: www.mirekw.com

KeePass is a free/open-source password manager or safe which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key-disk. So you only have to remember one single master password or insert the key-disk to unlock the whole database: keepass.sourceforge.net

Have utilities handy when visiting family or friends that are having PC problems

Portable ClamWin is the popular ClamWin antivirus packaged as a portable app, so you can take your antivirus with you to scan files on the go. Portable ClamWin has scheduled scans and updates disabled as they are not used in a portable scenario: www.portableapps.com/apps/utilities/antivirus/portable_clamwin

Handy Recovery is data recovery software designed to restore accidentally deleted files on hard and floppy drives with FAT12/16/32, NTFS and NTFS 5 file systems: www.handyrecovery.com

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Good backup habits are essential to everyone who uses a computer with important information. It takes just a few accidental clicks of the mouse - or worse, one isolated hardware failure - and valuable data can be lost.

One dilemma for backup users is often where to put their backups. Storing them on your own hard drive is obviously not the best option. Not everyone wants to split their backups into several parts using a CD or DVD burner, and an external hard drive isn’t a standard fixture on many users’ desks.

Offsite backup over a network:

Most backup programs support network backup, and the way to use this is simple. Local Area Networks (LAN) and Wide Area Networks (WAN) usually feature “network drives”, which appear to your computer as an ordinary drive. They often have names like M:, N:, O: and so on. Depending on permissions set up by the people administrating your network, you may be able to write to certain drives but not read from them, or you may not be able to change or delete data once it’s written. These are common situations, but they should not affect the way you back up.

Once you have found a suitable location for your data - your administrator will be able to help you with this - backing up can be as easy and fast as with an external drive. Select the appropriate drive and the data you want to save and that’s it. Even though a network connection is usually not as fast as a local cable, this is just a matter of waiting. Most programs allow you to set a backup timetable, which is a great way to take the effort out of backup. If you leave your computer on at night, then setting an incremental backup every second day at 2am, for example, ensures the safety of your data. A possible disadvantage here is that if your network goes down, you might not be able to get your data back for some time. Laptop users might not always be connected to the network at the scheduled backup time, defeating the purpose entirely.

Offsite backup through FTP:

Another form of offsite backup uses a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server over the Internet. FTP is traditionally used to move large files online and can reliably transfer any files of any size.

To access data stored on an FTP server, you can use your backup program, a special FTP client or just a regular web browser. While there are two “types” of FTP server, public and private, you will almost certainly be using a private server, which requires a password to access your data. Advantages of this method include that you can view the files stored on the FTP any time you wish using any FTP client, mobile users can back up from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection, and FTP backup can be somewhat cheaper than a specialised remote backup service.

The main disadvantage inherent in this method is data security. The FTP protocol is not secure, and even a private FTP account does not ensure the security of your files; it only protects access to the FTP server. Anyone with access to your username and password has access to your data. Added to this, unless you take steps to protect it, your data will be unencrypted as it travels to the FTP server, and could possibly be intercepted. We recommend that you encrypt your files before sending them.

One option is to store your data in a standard password-protected ZIP archive. This is a quick method that allows you to extract your files on any computer using any ZIP client. There are ZIP programs that provide tighter security by applying stronger encryption algorithms, like AES or Blowfish. This increases the security of your data, but to decrypt your files you may need to use the program that encrypted and backed them up.

To obtain access to a private FTP server, find a good hosting company (try searching with Google) and compare based on price and location - companies with servers based in your country will usually be faster. Beware that your Internet Service Provider (ISP) might charge you for the data you send, so you may wish to make incremental backups over FTP, which only backup what was changed since your last backup.

Specialised offsite backup:

Another form of offsite backup is the use of a special server provided by the company that makes your backup solution. They usually use their own protocols to encrypt and transfer your data, and a special program on their end to store it. You may have some issues using such services if you’re behind a firewall, as some of these services use non-standard Internet Protocol (IP) ports.

Offsite backup services are usually paid for by the month, by the amount of data transferred or both. They can be quite expensive, especially if you wish to back up a lot of data, or use the service over a long period of time. As with FTP servers, you may also be charged by your ISP to send your data.

SoftwareTalks Podcast
(Time 6:46 min; File Size 5.43 Mb)

Let’s get to the important part first - if you’ve just lost your data, skip past this introduction and go directly to our first tip, so you can start your rescue operation. If not, a few minutes spent now might help you a lot in the future. Pay special attention to our third tip.

These handy tips will help you stay confident in the face of data loss, no matter how it occurs.

Tip #1: Use your system as little as possible until you recover all of your lost files. The more activity taking place on your hard disk, the greater the chance that some of your lost data might be written over.

- Don’t copy any files to the disk containing your lost data;
- Avoid browsing the web, because your web browser saves cache files on the disk;
- Don’t launch any unnecessary programs, because they can also use your disk;
- Don’t restart your computer.

Tip #2: Before you go further, take steps to free up some space on the disk containing your lost files. The more free space your system has, the less chance of overwriting any lost files with new ones. You can do one or more of the following things.

- Delete old files that you don’t need anymore (you can also move them to another source, like a USB flash drive, instead of deleting);
- Empty your Recycle Bin - making sure that you haven’t put any important files in there by mistake;
- Empty your browser cache. For Internet Explorer, click on the “Tools” menu, then select “Internet Options”. Then, on the “General” tab, click the “Delete Files…” button.

Tip #3: To install any software after data damage increases the risk of your data being overwritten, so if you haven’t had any data problems yet, consider installing a data recovery program just in case. Prevention is always better than cure, and a recovery program is good insurance for your data. However, if you don’t yet have a recovery program, find one and - if possible - avoid installing it to the disk where your lost files are located.

Most recovery programs work fairly similarly. You need to select the disk where the lost files are located, let the program analyze the content of the disk - this can take a while - and then select the file you want to recover. Then, provide a location where you want to save that file. You should try to avoid recovering files to the same disk. You could use another hard drive, a network or removable media like a floppy disk or USB flash drive.

After you recover your files, check that they are correct. If you’ve recovered applications, check that they still run, or if you’ve recovered documents, check that your words are still there. Even the best recovery software can’t guarantee 100% results. If some parts of your files were overwritten - meaning that other data was saved to their location on your disk - after recovery they might contain invalid information. Depending on the type of file involved, partially recovered files like this can be mended by special utilities.

SoftwareTalks Podcast
(Time 3:49 min; File Size 3.07Mb)

Fifteen years ago, increasing numbers of people had computers, but their important data consisted of small documents and perhaps a few basic programs. To backup all they needed was several blank floppy discs and a compression utility. Even a “power user” might find themselves with two megabytes of data to preserve.

There are a number of media types available to most computer users for their backup purposes. Many businesses use magneto-optical or large-capacity tape drives for their daily and weekly backups. With very high capacities, these drives are technically impressive, but the media is usually very expensive. The common backup media for home and office includes CD/DVD discs, dedicated internal drives and external hard drives that exist in capacities over one terabyte (1TB) with fast Firewire 800 and USB 2.0 interfaces. Companies like Iomega found little home market success with smaller drives such as the Jaz (1-2GB) and Rev (35GB) series.

Where cost is a priority, a better option for home and small business users is often disc spanning, where cheap blank media can be used to the same effect as a tape or a dedicated drive. The benefits in cost of disc spanning are easily measurable. For a 20GB backup set the cost per gigabyte (CPG) will be as cheap as 33c for a DVD-RW disc, compared with up to $6 per gigabyte for an external hard drive of comparable size. Even for a larger backup of 250GB the optimal cost per gigabyte for external hard drive will be around 80 cents, still twice more than for a DVD-RW disc. A large internal drive can have a similar cost to a DVD-RW disc, but unless you make enough backup sets to fill it, your excess disk space is effectively wasted. In this sense, disc spanning is an attractive and economical option.

This table summarizes the cost per gigabyte for different types of storage media and various backup sets.

Moreover, disc spanning is simple. All you need is to choose the files, obtain some blank discs, and a good backup program will inform you of the total size, and how many media units are required for backup. Since a CD/DVD writing drive became a part of a basic PC configuration, you don’t need to fiddle around switching external devices, adding hard discs, installing drivers and playing other “hardware games”. The ability to store your backups on discs offsite is also a major advantage.

Not only is disc spanning a cheap, simple and flexible backup method, but it is also one of the most reliable backup forms today. Modern optical storage media has a shelf life of at least 30 years and some manufacturers even offer 100 year guarantees. Compared to an average lifespan of 5-7 years for hard drives and up to 20 years for a magnetic tape, optical discs are very long-lived. Disc spanning makes it possible that our backups will outlive ourselves.

Finally, this backup method continues to gain popularity as technology develops. Next-generation forms of blue-laser discs using organic dyes, such as the Sony Blu-ray format (between 23GB and 54GB) and Toshiba’s HD-DVD, will further reduce the cost of removable media, meaning that inexpensive and simple backups are within the reach of everyone.

SoftwareTalks Podcast
(Time 4:05 min; File Size 3.2Mb)