Facebook is for Sharing, Not Storing!

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When was the last time you held an actual photo album or actual prints of photographs in your hands? Maybe you look back at older photographs only when Facebook’s TimeHop app reminds you of a pic from five years ago. If so, you may be risking your visual history.

Facebook is a great way to share photos with friends and family around the world. You get to enjoy their comments and the affirmation of their likes. But using Facebook as storage for your photos is not a good plan. Here’s why.

Facebook photos

Some people treat Facebook as their photo album archive. They delete the originals from their devices or digital camera when they need more space. But Facebook compresses images for faster download. It satisfies impatient social media users, which means photo quality suffers. If you wanted to print those photos in the future, they wouldn’t look as good as the originals.

That’s not the only drawback. When you trust Facebook with all your photos, you’re letting a company control your visual archive. It’s hard to imagine, given Facebook’s reach today, but what happens to your photos if the company goes defunct? We don’t know. The people who were keeping their photos on Myspace in 2006 might have an idea.

The younger crowd is already moving onto other social platforms. Plus, Facebook’s growth rate in North America and Europe is slowing. Those daily active users are the primary source of revenue. So, you know Mark Zuckerberg is in some meetings about that.

Even if Facebook continues as the business behemoth it is today, we don’t know what policy changes it might make. It could change its terms of service whenever it wanted (if you even read those in the first place). Users have no guarantee for how long Facebook will store their images or any type of content.

Keep in mind also that many of the photos showing up in your timeline are actually taken by friends. Facebook provides an entire album of other people’s photos when they’ve tagged you, but if they decided to untag you or remove it, that photo would be gone.

Finally, there’s also the risk of your account getting shut down or hacked. You’ve probably had friends warn you not to accept any new friend requests from them because they’ve been compromised. You wouldn’t want a thief to steal all your photo albums. Similarly, you don’t want a cybercriminal to gain access to all your images.

Our Recommendation

Just as with data, we recommend you have a “3-2-1” backup system for your digital photographs. This means having three copies of the photos you care about. You don’t need to back up the blurry ones if you don’t want to.

You might keep one copy on the original device, but you’d have two other copies of the high-quality, uncompressed, original image as well. One might be kept on an external storage device such as a USB thumb drive, and the other you could upload to cloud storage.

The cloud backup gives you access to the photos from any device in any location. So, if a flood, hurricane, or fire devastates your home, and you lose your device and the USB thumb drive, you still have a backup. Your Facebook photos and videos are just there to be shared with friends and family.

Not sure where or how to safely store your photos and videos? We can help! Our experts may even become new Facebook friends. Then we can all like each other’s photos with the peace of mind that the original photos aren’t going anywhere. Call us at (970) 433-7454.

Loving your External Hard Drive

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External hard drives are relatively cheap and a great way to move around data. However, they can be somewhat fragile. Here are some tips to make your external hard drive last longer.

These drives free up storage, offer portability, and provide a lifeline in case of computer disaster. It pays to take good care of these compact, convenient devices.

Here are some helpful strategies.

External HDD
1. Don’t knock the drive.

Depending on the type of drive you have, impact could damage it. The hard drive’s mechanical drives work a little like a record player. Envision a spinning platter and a needle reading it. Note, you don’t have to worry about this with a Solid State Drive (SSD) as there are no moving parts.

2. Don’t pull.

You can damage the drive port with a hard or sideways yank on its USB plug. Remove the device cable with a gentle pull. It’s best to unplug the drive cable when it’s not in use. Then, when you are reconnecting the external drive, inspect the connector before plugging the cable back in. Look for any damage, debris, or corrosion to help maximize the device’s lifespan.

3. Don’t skip steps.

You may be in a hurry, but always take the time to remove the hard drive from your desktop before physically unplugging it. On Windows, you’ll usually right click on the drive and press Eject. For Macs, you can drag the drive icon to the recycle bin (which changes to an eject button).  Never unplug the drive while moving data to or from the hard drive unless you want to risk data corruption.

4. Don’t suffocate the drive.

Ever put your hand on the hard drive after prolonged use? It’s hot. Don’t immediately store it away in a bag or tight space. Give it some time to cool off first.
When it’s out, and in use, keep the drive’s vents clear of other objects so that it has some airflow. Set it on a flat, level surface. Avoid placing it on paper, towels, or other cloth items that could add to its heat levels.

5. Don’t take the drive swimming.

OK, you’re probably not going to do that. Yet it’s our way of reminding you that condensation is an enemy to your hard drive. Hard drive failures can be caused by environmental factors such as temperature and air quality too.

6. Don’t expect immortality or invincibility.

A hard drive isn’t going to last forever. They aren’t built for that. They can also get lost or stolen. Don’t let one external hard drive be the only place you are backing up your data.
Have a backup on your computer, on the drive, and a copy in the cloud. Then, you’ll always be ready to move on to a new drive that you will love with the same care and consideration outlined above.

If you need help deciding on the best hard drive for your needs, give us a call at (970) 433-7454.

What is the Best Way to Backup?

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“That will never happen to me.” We get through our lives telling ourselves the worst won’t happen to us. It’s the same with business: “We won’t need this data backup.” Yet, whatever your industry, secure, reliable backup ensures business as usual. So, what’s the best way to backup? Here’s help.

Backup
Why You Need to Backup

  1. Business disruptions of any kind can be costly. The disaster might take one of several shapes:
  2. Natural (e.g. wildfires, floods, earthquakes, or hurricanes)
  3. On-site (e.g. hardware/software failure, power outage, inability to access building)
  4. Employee driven (e.g. damaging mistakes or intentional sabotage by a disgruntled employee)
  5. Cyber-attack (e.g. data breach, ransomware, or distributed denial of service attack).

Regardless, the best backup solution can help reduce downtime and damage.

Plan B: Approaches to Backup

There are several off-the-shelf backup options your business can use. Let’s consider the pros and cons of the most popular ones.

USB Thumb Drives — Also known as “flash drives,” “pen drives,” or “memory sticks,” these thumb-sized devices are compact and portable. But, they have size limitations compared to hard drives. Also, the mobility makes them easy to lose (which can actually set the disaster scenario in motion).

Additionally, a USB thumb drive is robust when not plugged in, but more vulnerable when attached. If someone inadvertently snaps the drive or employs too much force, they can put the data on that backup at risk.

The cheap ones also tend to be slow, which can make backing up sluggish.

USB Hard Drives — Portable hard drives increase the data storage available, often at a decent price. They are designed to be compact and mobile. You can prioritize durability, processing speed, storage volumes and more.

Hard drives are less likely to get damaged than a thumb drive. If knocked or jostled, the cables are flexible. Still, a hard drive can be prone to physical failure. Selecting an external solid slate drive (SSD) can help since it has no moving parts. Information is stored instead in microchips.

Cloud Storage — Backing up to the cloud stores data on an external, secure server. If thieves take your computers and USB backup, you can still access your data on the cloud. Cloud storage providers build in redundancy to ensure your backup remains safe.

Most cloud storage services back up to secure centers with thousands of servers storing data. Oh, and they’ll have their own server backups too, just in case they’re the ones hit by a disaster. The providers also encrypt data during transit to further ensure compliance and security.

Migrating to a third-party cloud storage service also cuts the clutter at your premises. You can count on expert help to ensure security and compliance. Plus, you can cut operational costs by offloading in-house storage or external hard drive expenses.

OK, What’s the Best Answer? 

Don’t think disaster won’t strike your business. Research has found data loss and downtime are most often caused by:

  • Hardware failures (45% of total unplanned downtime)
  • Loss of power (35%)
  • Software failure (34%)
  • Data corruption (24%)
  • External security breaches (23%)
  • Accidental user error (20%).

We recommend the 3-2-1 backup strategy. This means having 3 copies of your data. Two (2) of these would be located on different devices (e.g. on your computer and on a backup drive). The other remaining backup copy (1) would be secured offsite, in the cloud.

Want to secure your data for the worst? Give No Ware Computer Repair in Grand Junction a call to set this up. (970) 433-7454 

Where did the DVD Drive go?

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DVD Drive
If you’ve bought a new laptop anytime within the past ten years you may have noticed something a little peculiar. Or maybe it seemed like something was missing.

We’re often asked the question, “Why don’t new laptops come with DVD drives anymore?” And though some still do come equipped with a DVD drive, they are few and far in between. Why is that?

Years ago it made sense for a computer to come with a DVD drive. CDs and DVDs were the cheapest way to back up your data, and the only way to install new software. Ten or fifteen years ago, it made sense to purchase a stack of those discs for a few dollars, with the potential to hold upwards of four or five gigabytes of data each – it was a hot deal back then. It’s important to note that at the time, flash drives were incredibly expensive, some costing nearly fifty bucks for a measly 128 MB of storage.

Nowadays you can pick up a 64 gigabyte flash drive for a little under fifteen dollars at your nearest hardware store. Files can be downloaded straight to your device within minutes, whereas they used to take a whole day, if not several, based on the size of the file. It’s a whole lot easier, and a whole lot more convenient for companies to offer their programs online rather than on a four to eight gigabyte disk. It’s cheaper and it saves a whole lot of vital resources in the process!

Not to mention that discs tend to scratch easily – which can mean a whole lot of lost data. Speaking of data, it’s now a thousand times simpler to backup your data using programs that offer cloud storage, online services like Google Drive and Dropbox are available at your fingertips, and allow you to access your files from virtually anywhere in the world on just about any device you can think of! It’s come to the point where even flash drives are becoming less and less commonplace.

In the end, DVD and CD drives just aren’t practical in our modern day computers any more. They’re expensive to produce, but more importantly, there are cheaper, faster, and more practical options available.

Keep in mind that if you do purchase a new laptop without a DVD drive, and run into one of those rare instances that you actually need one, an external DVD Drive can be picked up rather cheaply.

If you need help backing your data up, or have any questions about your computer, give the experts at No Ware Computer Repair in Grand Junction a call!

Client Success Story: My Own Computer

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Just because I run a computer repair business doesn’t mean that I don’t have computer problems of my own every now and again.

Just last week I came into the office my usual hour early, 9 AM sharp, so that I could get all the wonderful paperwork that comes with running a business done, and when I went to boot up my main office laptop, nothing happened. After double and triple checking that everything was plugged in and connected properly I tried pressing the power button again. Still nothing.

I checked the time and saw that it was only five after, meaning that I had plenty of time to get everything up and running before it was time to open the doors.

After doing a bit of troubleshooting, I soon found out that my trusty old work laptop had finally decided to go to the old electronic recycling center in the sky. It was as dead as the proverbial door nail.

It was now a quarter after nine, but I still had plenty of time.

I grabbed a laptop from off the shelf, and loaded up my preferred Operating System – Ubuntu, a flavor of Linux – and set everything up the way I needed it to be. I loaded all the programs that I use day to day to run the business, and got those set up too.

Now it was 9:40, and I only had twenty minutes before my first appointment of the day.

Fortunately, over the past few years I’ve made it a habit to back all my important data, including all the stuff I need for the office, up to the internet. Restoring my data was going to be easy. All I had to do was download my cloud drive software – I like Dropbox – sign in, and give it a few minutes to let everything sync up.

The clock said that it was now ten minutes ‘till ten.

Just enough time to make myself a cup of tea before greeting the first client of the day.

The moral of the story is that having good backups turned what could have been a serious catastrophe for my small business into nothing more than a minor inconvenience.. A small hiccup that was easily put behind me so that I could focus on what was really important – solving these sorts of problems for my clients.

How would you handle this sort of situation? Would this be a serious problem, or no big deal? Call No Ware Computer Repair today to learn how to protect yourself and your business from the unexpected.

5 Most Common Computer Problems

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Here at No Ware Computer Repair, we have to solve a lot of computer problems. While some complications are more puzzling than others, here’s a short list of the most common issues that are brought into our shop.

Computer spill

One of the most common problems we come across is the “hardware mishap.” Typically this includes spills or drops, laptop screens being broken, motherboards fried, and others of the like. Hardware mishaps are pretty common and can be expensive at times.

dirty computer

Another problem we see a lot of is the “slow computer.” Older devices have a tendency to fall victim to this particular annoyance because as they age they can build up dust and grime on the hardware, and the software itself can become clogged with useless files that do nothing but take up vital storage and leave a device in a miserably sluggish state. In a fast paced world, the last thing people want is a computer that runs at a snail’s pace.

viruses found

Viruses are the bane of a computer user’s existence. Not only do they knock a computer from NASCAR level speeds down to leisurely strolls in the park, they can also do some serious damage. From the mostly harmless popups that occasionally assault the user, to the dangerously malicious ransomware that could cost you thousands, viruses are unfortunately still a frequent occurrence.

data loss

Data loss is an extremely overlooked issue that people don’t usually think about until it happens to them personally. It could be due to a myriad of causes; theft, hardware mishap, software failure, and so much more. It’s the reason we highly recommend using a cloud to backup all of that highly important data you might have on your devices. It saves you a lot of time and money in the long run. Fortunately, even if you forget to back-up your data, there are experts who specialize in data recovery.

Blue Screen of Death

This final failure has been making a lot of us in the tech industry scratch our heads. It seems to be a little counter-intuitive, but many computer users have recently been having windows update problems. Whether it be the percentage simply stopping, graphics drivers failing, or operating system glitches, if you’re having a problem with any of the above, just know you are most certainly not alone.

Regardless of what problem your computer is having, No Ware Computer Repair in Grand Junction can have your device up and running in no time!

5 Reasons Why You Should Backup Your Data

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Backup
As often as we hear computer companies boast about the quality and efficiency of their products, it’s almost difficult to imagine anything going wrong. Sure, we see the warning signs and we know we should rationally be taking extra precautionary measures to ensure that nothing does go wrong – but more often than not, we simply push that thought to the side in favor of something more “important”.

The fact of the matter is that any day now you could lose all of the information stored on any of your computers or devices. Be it a liquid mishap, an internal shortage, or something completely unaccounted for, it can and does happen. Unfortunately that’s not always convincing enough in the argument of why you should backup your data though, so why else should you take the extra steps?

1. Accidents Happen

Computer Accident

Believe it or not, as much as we try to prevent them, accidents do happen, and they happen more often than we think they do. Maybe you forgot to save that paper before exiting, or maybe a program simply stopped working in general. Either way, backed up data is guaranteed to keep that data in safe from the occasional accident.

2. Theft

Computer Theft

Say you left your laptop in the library, or perhaps you fell asleep on the bus and your backpack was ransacked, while it’s not always easy to track that lost device, you can at the very least access your backed-up data if you’ve happened to save it on some sort of cloud storage. From there it only takes a few clicks to restore all of that data onto a new device, if you choose to invest in another one.

3. Hardware Failure

Computer Failure

Some malfunctions are completely out of your hands, they happen deep within the hardware itself and within an instant, all precautions you’ve taken aside, everything you had on your computer is lost completely. Unless of course, you had it backed up to begin with. Then it’s just a matter of getting a repair, or a new device.

4. Viruses, Malware, and Hackers

Data Ransom Note

Some problems you might face aren’t even technical errors, but malicious attack from hackers that aim to corrupt your data, steal it, or hold it for ransom. It’s easy to see why having safeguarded data is a good idea in that case.

5. Save Money on Potentially Expensive Data Recovery

Data Recovery

Regardless of what happens, if your data really means that much to you and you’ve somehow lost access to it, you can still take it into a computer repair shop and get the data recovered right off of the hard drive, but be warned that it can be a little expensive. With prices reaching upwards of hundreds of dollars, it’s not difficult to see the appeal in backing up your data.

When it comes to data backups, it’s always better to have it and not need it than it is to need it and not have it.

This is just a short list of why you should be backing your data up regularly. If you need advice on how to backup, or even need some lost data recovered, your friends at No Ware Computer Repair in Grand Junction are always happy to help.

Client Success Story: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

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About a month ago we had the pleasure of meeting Elaine. Elaine was passing through Grand Junction, on her way to one of the area’s many ski resorts.

Elaine liked to travel, in fact, since retiring she has spent a majority of her time traveling and taking pictures. Just like most everyone these days, Elaine takes her pictures using her smart phone. In fact, she takes so many pictures that she occasionally plugs her phone into her laptop to transfer all the pictures, so that she can make some room on her phone for more photos.

When Elaine turned on her laptop so that she could read the news while having her morning coffee in her hotel room, she was greeted with a black screen. She tried waiting, but nothing happened. Elaine then tried restarting the computer, but the screen remained black.

That’s when Elaine got on her phone and used Google to look for someone who could help.

Elaine called us, citing our reviews on Google, and told us about her situation. It sounded like Elaine was in a bit of a pickle, so we had her bring her laptop down to our office so that we could take a look.

While chatting with Elaine, we were told about how she uses her laptop as a way of storing all of the photos that she takes on her travels. Needless to say, she was extremely concerned about all of her pictures.

After assuring Elaine that we would do whatever we could to save all her pictures, we got to work.

It didn’t take long to determine that a botched Windows update was the reason that her computer wasn’t booting up. After doing a little more poking around, we decided that the best thing to do would be to pull all of the data, completely reinstall Windows 10, and migrate the data back on to the laptop.

We quickly learned that Elaine wasn’t kidding when she said that she has a lot of pictures on her computer. Almost 200 Gigabytes of photos alone had to be pulled off the laptop before we could proceed with reinstalling Windows. Once the pictures were backed up, everything else was a breeze.

When Elaine came to pick up her laptop, we had a brief sit-down, and discussed how she was backing up her photos, and brainstormed a better way for her to get the job done.

We ended up setting her up with Dropbox on her phone and computer, and taught her how to upload her files so that they would be saved in the cloud and synced to her laptop. She was absolutely ecstatic when she uploaded her first set of photos on her own.

After the work was done, we sat with Elaine for a while as she showed us some of the pictures from her many travels all around the world over a nice cup of green tea.

Is your computer giving you trouble? Call us now to see how No Ware Computer Repair can help you!

beach laptop

Is my Hard Drive failing?

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We do a lot of Data Recovery here at No Ware Computer Repair for our clients who have a Hard Drive that has happened to fail on them.  In most cases these Hard Drive failures happen at the worst possible time. One of the questions that these clients ask us is how they could have known that their Hard Drive was failing before it completely died on them.

Fail!

Hard Drive failure can happen for any number of reasons. The main and most frequent one is simply age. The Hard Drive could be damaged if the computer was dropped or otherwise roughed up. Dust and dirt finds its way into those tiny little cracks, which can cause overheating. And of course, liquid spills can really damage a drive.

While the small clues we talk about here can be a sign of something else, they will give you an idea of what to look out for. Being able to recognize these issues in your computer will enable you to catch the disaster and take action before it strikes.

Strange Sounds

This is especially true for mechanical hard drives. These noises can be anything from a constant clicking to a pulsing “click click” when you start a program or access data. Another sound to listen for is a whirling kind sound that is at a different frequency than the usual spinning of the fans

Corrupted Data

Trying to access a file that just doesn’t seem to be there any more, seems to have encrypted itself, or is missing those three paragraphs you added last night can be frustrating! But it also can be a sign of a dying hard drive.

Slowing Down, Frequent Freezes, Blue Screen Of Death

Let’s face it, we all get older and start slowing down, freeze periodically due to lack of inertia and wish we could hold up a sign with “file not found” written on it. When experiencing any of these things while you are working on your computer, it can make you feel hapless and a little frustrated. While these could be signs of another problem, they can also indicate an impending Hard Drive crash.

If you are experiencing any of these signs it might be time to start looking into backing up your data before it is too late, and picking out a new hard drive to replace the old one.

Even if you aren’t experiencing these or other signs; that lead to data misfortune, keeping your data backed up at all times is just good computer hygiene.

If you’re seeing signs that the Hard Drive in your computer is about to crash, give No Ware Computer Repair in Grand Junction a call.

Data Backups

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One of the things our clients ask us about the most often is backing up their data.

Unfortunately, a majority of them wait until we’ve had to perform some level of data recovery before they even think to ask us about what could very possibly be the most important aspect of maintaining their computer.

There’s a million good reasons for a computer user to keep a current backup of their data, and keeping your data backed up is always a good idea. When it comes to backups, it’s better to have them and not need them than it is to need them and not have them.

Backup

There are two primary types of data backup: Physical and cloud-based.

Physical backups are just that. Physical. Your data is stored on an external device of some sort. External Hard Drives, USB drives, even DVD discs can be used to store data.

Backing up your data to an external device can be done one of two ways: Either by dragging and dropping the data that you want to be backed up from your computer’s folders to a folder on your external drive of choice, or by utilizing software to automatically back up your data to your external storage – Carbonite and Apple’s Time Machine are good examples of software that can automatically back your data up.

Physical backups containing highly important data can be stored in a secure place, such as a fire safe or even a safe deposit box. Adding an extra layer of security to your physical backup.

External Hard Drive

The other type of data backup is what’s called “cloud-based”.

Cloud-based backups are backups that are saved to the “cloud”, or internet.

One of the main benefits of backing data up to the cloud is that you will be able to access your data from any device, anywhere in the world, just as long as you have the log-in credentials.

Just like with physical backups, there are two main ways of backing your data up to the cloud. The first is the drag and drop method that also works for physical backups – simply copy your data over to the folder for your favorite cloud drive (Dropbox or Google Drive are good choices). The second is by utilizing software that securely backs your computer’s folders up to the cloud. Programs such as Backblaze do this extremely well.

Cloud Backup

We actually recommend, and best practices are to do both physical and cloud backups – for that added security and for some extra piece of mind. After all, you never want to keep all your eggs in one basket. Again, it’s better to have backups and not need them than it is to need them and not have them

Backing your data up is always a good idea, and really isn’t all too difficult. If you need help backing everything up, or need help recovering some data that you haven’t backed up yet, give No Ware Computer Repair in Grand Junction a call. We’re here to help