Chris Pirillo » data-storage

Disk Encryption and PGP

Chris — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 02:56:20 +0000

Disk Encryption and PGP is a post from Chris Pirillo

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – PGP’s “Whole Disc Encryption” sounds like a good idea. Everything is protected! But, what about the drawbacks of that? What about the fact that it’s considered a ‘feature’… one that can be disabled anytime a user chooses?

Four of my friends joined me for this discussion: Kat, SC_Thor, Wirelesspacket, and last but certainly not least… Datalore.

PGP Corporation’s widely adopted Whole Disk Encryption product has an encryption bypass “feature” that allows an encrypted drive to be accessed without the boot-up passphrase challenge dialog, leaving data in a vulnerable state if the drive is stolen when the bypass feature is enabled. The feature is also not in the documentation that ships with the PGP product, nor the publicly available documentation on their website, but only mentioned briefly in the customer knowledge base.

According to PGP themselves, “PGP Whole Disk Encryption locks down the entire contents of a laptop, desktop, external drive, or USB flash drive, including boot sectors, system, and swap files. The encryption is transparent to the user, automatically protecting data.”

What good is this though, if someone decides it’s too much work? Let’s say Company A’s employee doesn’t want the hassle of going through all that to get to his files and programs. So, he disables it. Uh oh… the laptop was stolen. Now, all of Company A’s documents are accessible to anyone who can turn the laptop on. Kinda defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?

I don’t know about you, but I don’t see this as much of a “feature”. I see it as a big loophole, in an otherwise excellent product.

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Dealing with Hard Drives NAS, eSATA, and ZFS

Chris — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:56:43 +0000

Dealing with Hard Drives NAS, eSATA, and ZFS is a post from Chris Pirillo

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – The round table got into a pretty deep discussion about SATA drives, and different ways of getting more storage on your computer.

Four of my friends joined me for this discussion: Kat, SC_Thor, Wirelesspacket, and last but certainly not least… Datalore.

An eSATA port is built into most newer motherboards. This is a port built right into the back of your computer that allows you to plug in an external hard drive directly, allowing it to run at much faster speeds.

Drobo is the world’s first storage robot. It keeps your data safe by automatically monitoring and repairing problems that could put your data at risk.

ZFS is a new kind of file system that provides simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability. ZFS is not an incremental improvement to existing technology; it is a fundamentally new approach to data management.

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Second Hard Drive

Chris — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 03:15:45 +0000

Second Hard Drive is a post from Chris Pirillo

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http://live.pirillo.com/ – A Community member wrote in to ask exactly when and why someone would need a second hard drive. In my mind, there is only ONE reason… and it’s a darn good one.

Say it with me: DATA. BACKUP. PEACE. OF. MIND. .

Your main hard drive just died. All of your documents, pictures, videos and important data are on that drive. What do you do now? Often, there is nothing you can do. This is why I believe everyone should have a second hard drive inside their computer. I keep all of my data on my “Documents” drive. Spreadsheets, videos, pictures, PowerPoint presentations, documents… you name it, that’s where you’ll find it. If my primary drive fails or I need to reinstall Windows for some reason, I don’t have to worry about my data. It’s all safe and secure on that completely separate hard drive. That, folks, is called peace of mind.

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Amazon S3 Web Services Pricing

Chris — Tue, 01 May 2007 09:00:37 +0000

Amazon S3 Web Services Pricing is a post from Chris Pirillo

Changes are afoot:

This is a note to inform you about some changes we’re making to our pricing, effective June 1, 2007.
With Amazon S3 recently celebrating its one year birthday, we took an in-depth look at how developers were using the service, and explored whether there were opportunities to further lower costs for our customers. The primary area our customers had asked us to investigate was whether we could charge less for bandwidth.
There are two primary costs associated with uploading and downloading files: the cost of the bandwidth itself, and the fixed cost of processing a request. Consistent with our cost-following pricing philosophy, we determined that the best solution for our customers, overall, is to equitably charge for the resources being used – and therefore disaggregate request costs from bandwidth costs.
Making this change will allow us to offer lower bandwidth rates for all of our customers. In addition, we’re implementing volume pricing for bandwidth, so that as our customers’ businesses grow and help us achieve further economies of scale, they benefit by receiving even lower bandwidth rates. Finally, this means that we will be introducing a small request-based charge for each time a request is made to the service. Below are the details of the new pricing plan (also available on the Amazon S3 detail page):
Current bandwidth price (through May 31, 2007)
$0.20 / GB – uploaded
$0.20 / GB – downloaded
New bandwidth price (effective June 1, 2007)
$0.10 per GB – all data uploaded
$0.18 per GB – first 10 TB / month data downloaded
$0.16 per GB – next 40 TB / month data downloaded
$0.13 per GB – data downloaded / month over 50 TB
Data transferred between Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2 will remain free of charge
New request-based price (effective June 1, 2007)
$0.01 per 1,000 PUT or LIST requests
$0.01 per 10,000 GET and all other requests*
* No charge for delete requests
Storage will continue to be charged at $0.15 / GB-month used.
The end result is an overall price reduction for the vast majority of our customers. If this new pricing had been applied to customers’ March 2007 usage, 75% of Amazon S3 customers would have seen their bill decrease, while an additional 11% would have seen an increase of less than 10%. Only 14% of customers would have experienced an increase of greater than 10%.
We don’t anticipate making further structural changes to Amazon S3 pricing in the future, but we will continue to look for ways to drive down costs and pass the savings on to you.
P.S. Please note that the reduced bandwidth rates shown above will also take effect for Amazon EC2 and Amazon SQS. The bandwidth tier in which you will be charged each month will be calculated based on your use of each of these services separately, and could therefore vary across services.

How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Using GoToAssist is the easiest way to view and control another person's computer online. Use it to provide instant technical support to family, friends and customers. Start a session with just one click, and instantly connect with the other party.

Network Tools for Windows

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

You need these network tools, no matter which operating systems and networks you have to support. SolarWinds ipMonitor: Affordable Network Monitoring for SMBs. Get turnkey network, server and application availability monitoring with SolarWinds ipMonitor v9.0. This easy-to-use, reliable solution for SMBs delivers out-of-the-box availability monitoring so you always know exactly what's up with Active Directory, DNS, Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, and SMTP. Download your free trial today. Or, try their totally free tools! And, through 2/29, save 20% when you purchase ipMonitor 9.0.

Get Your Own Web Site

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

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VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

This feed is fueled by Lockergnome Online Shopping and Coupon Codes

Before you shop next time, see if we have a coupon first.