House on Fire... Do You Rescue the Computer?

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mpm

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 5:39 am

Guest

On Apr 25, 4:13ï¿½pm, D from BC <myrealaddr...@comic.com> wrote:

Quote:

What can I do to protect my PC from a house fire?

Uh, stop smoking in bed?
Stop storing the Propane BBQ grille indoors?
Use only one candle per decade on the Birthday Cake?

Or failing that...
Live in an igloo? :)

Hey Mike,
You're giving the Donkey WAAAY too much credit.
Do you think he'd even leave the house if it were on fire?

Keith M

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:24 am

Guest

D from BC wrote:

Quote:

Huh... only 5 bucks a month for unlimited storage.
Do you encrypt before upload?

But of course. You can either have the software create and manage a
key, or you can specify a key of your own ---- either using a bunch of
text, or you can even specify a binary file as the key.

They give you multiple warnings if you decide to manage the key yourself
including a checkbox that says, "I realize I'm screwed if I loose this
key." And I think that's literally the language they use.

I'd never let my data sit on someone else's harddrive without being
encrypted.

Quote:

D from BC
British Columbia
Canada

Keith

Keith M

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:30 am

Guest

StickThatInYourPipeAndSmokeIt wrote:

Quote:

Oh yeah. My $2000 Predator LE-11 would come along, as would about four
other sticks.

Hell... the Predator case is over $350 alone.

My pool cues are actually inexpensive Hueblers. I love the hit and
wouldn't trade them for anything. I've had great successes and failures
with those cues, the memories are forever singed into my mind.

Keith

Keith M

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:33 am

Guest

Jim Yanik wrote:

Quote:

What do you use that Amiga for?

Mostly nostalgia purposes, but I've been working on an external amiga
floppy drive controller that attaches via USB for a couple years.

It allows a regular PC floppy drive and a windows machine read
Amiga-formatted floppies, and allow you to archive them into .ADF's for
use in PC emulators, etc.

see http://www.techtravels.org/amiga/amigablog

upper right hand corner links has schematics and overview

Keith

Eeyore

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:54 am

Guest

D from BC wrote:

Quote:

I think many people would grab their computer if their place was on
fire.

Would you save your computer during a fire?

I'd be yelling to the firemen below "Catch my computer!" :)

What can I do to protect my PC from a house fire?

I just wondered whether you're more concerned about saving the hardware
or the data.

MSN Hotmail accounts or 'Live' or whatever they call them now come with
5GB of online storage.

Graham

Keith M

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 9:24 am

Guest

John Tserkezis wrote:

Quote:

More importantly, does he get unlimited uploads from his ISP?

What do you mean? Of course. While I understand you are in Australia,
in the US, anyone on Cable, DSL, or FIOS gets unlimited uploads.

Quote:

At a
reasonable speed?

2mbps up. Mozy.com actually throttles the $5/month accts to 1mbps.
It's really not bad at all.

My internet access is 2mbps/15mbps for about $45 month. They are
upgrading us to 5mbps/20mbps for free soon.

Quote:

How practical is it unless you have some real secure encryption,

448-bit Blowfish.

Quote:

perhaps more time than money? (or more money than sense?)

I'm sorry??

Quote:

I have 400+
gig to go through...

While I have about a terabyte on my main PC, I only backup roughly
100+/- gigs. Mozy performs complete and incremental backups, and all of
it happens transparently in the background on my PC. Relatively little
CPU time is taken up, and the bandwidth usage is unnoticeable unless I'm
doing another large upload to someplace else.

You can define file types and/or directories to protect, and those
directories are automatically checked for changes, and those changes
uploaded to mozy.com.

This isn't a bare metal backup. You don't backup Program Files and
Windows directories. I backup anything user-created/original and not
easily replaceable.

Quote:

Online storage, the media-reputed "next big thing" is dead in the water
for anyone that matters.

Hrrrmm.. I matter. My data matters to me. Media coverage or not,
mozy.com works extremely well. Performs automatic background backups
multiple times per day, stored off-site -- easy access to the data,
including any revision of the data, often times going back 6 months. I
can retrieve any version of any file that's backed up.

Mozy is one part of my backup strategy. I also burn DVD's, and
cross-store copies of data on different machines.

Quote:

Might be viable to Joe Average if you can convince them that storing
all his porn^H^H^H^Hdata offsite at some cost is worthwhile.

Especially difficult once you tell them that anything on the internet
is effectively "public" information. Even if they just have family
photos and other data they consider non-critical data.

Effectively public? Are you familiar with how encryption works?

(Yes, I am familiar with the early implementations of Blowfish where
there existed some weak keys. While the chance of actually choosing a
weak key is slim anyways, keys are now tested prior to being used in any
modern blowfish implementation to ensure they don't fall in the class.)

Does your current backup strategy allow you to retrieve a few versions
of any file across any day over a 6 month period?

Keith

John Tserkezis

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 10:18 am

Guest

Keith M wrote:

Quote:

More importantly, does he get unlimited uploads from his ISP?

What do you mean? Of course. While I understand you are in Australia,
in the US, anyone on Cable, DSL, or FIOS gets unlimited uploads.

Ah, and that's where the crunch is. Australia is not the United States.
Some say that's a good thing, but we'll leave that discussion for another time.
Today we're talking about speeds and internet accessibility that is taken
for granted in the US, is a special case here. Bang for buck wise at least.

Quote:

At a reasonable speed?

2mbps up. Mozy.com actually throttles the $5/month accts to 1mbps. It's
really not bad at all.

You have $5 cable accounts? Best you can generally get here is hopelessly
knobbled accounts with over-quota costs that will kill you. You only see
speed limited accounts where the user is paying for a useful service to start
with. And even then, some ISPs charge over-quota even on AU$80+ accounts.

Quote:

My internet access is 2mbps/15mbps for about $45 month. They are
upgrading us to 5mbps/20mbps for free soon.

"Free*" is treated with suspicion here. Note the asterisk.

Quote:

How practical is it unless you have some real secure encryption,

448-bit Blowfish.

I have a pessimistic view of useful encryption keys verses practicality of
using them on a regular basis and keeping the keys secure at the same time.

Quote:

perhaps more time than money? (or more money than sense?)

I'm sorry??

Many here like to spend money the 'latest and greatest'. They're actually
buying crap that was sold by marketing people who talk the guff.

What can I say, some are monumentally stupid here in this regard. I suppose
it happens around the world, but when all the ISPs say it's going to cost a
million bucks, many are pleased to bend over and say thank you.

Quote:

I have 400+ gig to go through...

While I have about a terabyte on my main PC, I only backup roughly
100+/- gigs. Mozy performs complete and incremental backups, and all of
it happens transparently in the background on my PC. Relatively little
CPU time is taken up, and the bandwidth usage is unnoticeable unless I'm
doing another large upload to someplace else.

Same here, but it's all local. I get instant (fast) access to files too.
Important when I'm doing map image processing work. My bandwidth would get
eaten up quite quickly with the larger files and the frequency they get updated.

Quote:

You can define file types and/or directories to protect, and those
directories are automatically checked for changes, and those changes
uploaded to mozy.com.

I backup everything. There's little difference to me between some and all,
so I do all.

Quote:

This isn't a bare metal backup. You don't backup Program Files and
Windows directories. I backup anything user-created/original and not
easily replaceable.

Nearly there. I have bootable recovery disks that restore the running
software, another drive that restores data and the updated files within the
Program Files hierarchy.

Quote:

Online storage, the media-reputed "next big thing" is dead in the
water for anyone that matters.

Hrrrmm.. I matter. My data matters to me. Media coverage or not,
mozy.com works extremely well. Performs automatic background backups
multiple times per day, stored off-site -- easy access to the data,
including any revision of the data, often times going back 6 months. I
can retrieve any version of any file that's backed up.

Short of the offsite storage, mine's the same.

Quote:

Mozy is one part of my backup strategy. I also burn DVD's, and
cross-store copies of data on different machines.

I found that too messy (distributing data across several machines).
I don't trust DVDs for critical storage (they're only good for a few years),
and it's too temping to not repeatedly burn the same data over and over, thus
risking data loss due to disk errors.
And at about AU$0.75c per 5G DVD, how often does one backup to disk that's a
good compromise between updates, disk reliability redundancy and cost?

And I need to dispose of all those redundant disks too. And at AU$200-300
for a shredder, I'm not exactly made of money, so snapping disks (and risk
taking an eye out with flying shards) will have to do.

Quote:

Especially difficult once you tell them that anything on the internet
is effectively "public" information. Even if they just have family
photos and other data they consider non-critical data.

Effectively public? Are you familiar with how encryption works?

Joe average doesn't know about encryption, or if he does, doesn't know about
secure encryption. Or if he thinks he does, uses weak keys anyway because
they're easier to type every time he wants to access his data.

Quote:

(Yes, I am familiar with the early implementations of Blowfish where
there existed some weak keys. While the chance of actually choosing a
weak key is slim anyways, keys are now tested prior to being used in any
modern blowfish implementation to ensure they don't fall in the class.)

I had a discussion with a colleague some time back about encryption.

His point was existing algorithms are useless, because GovCo (or whoever you
perceive as the bad guys) can setup software or hardware solutions to decrypt
existing known algorithms. A proprietary algorithm will take longer.
My point was if encryption was not already your primary game, don't bother
because it'll be weaker than what's already existing now anyway.

I've come to the conclusion that both sides have enough merit not to trust
either. So I don't.

I use whatever is convenient for stuff that I travel with (to protect
against idiots incorporated during loss or theft), and don't let go of data I
don't want to be "let go" of, that is, don't let it travel over channels that
others might have access to.

Quote:

Does your current backup strategy allow you to retrieve a few versions
of any file across any day over a 6 month period?

Depending on the free space locally, yes. I likely don't want to go back
six months anyway, I would have made MANY changes to files that would change
in that time anyway. Sometimes, any more than a week, the data's so out of
date it's nearly useless.
--
Linux Registered User # 302622
<http://counter.li.org>

Keith M

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 11:46 am

Guest

John Tserkezis wrote:

Quote:

Ah, and that's where the crunch is. <snip
Today we're talking about speeds and internet accessibility that is
taken for granted in the US, is a special case here. Bang for buck wise
at least.

My real point was that you can't ignore a class of 300+ million people
and claim that online backup is useless to them because other places
don't have fast/unlimited internet access. I think the UK also has
reasonably priced all-you-can-eat. This is a more recent development.
As far as China/India/Japan -- I have no idea.

Quote:

You have $5 cable accounts?

Actually the mozy.com backup account is $5, my internet account is $45.

Quote:

My internet access is 2mbps/15mbps for about $45 month. They are
upgrading us to 5mbps/20mbps for free soon.

"Free*" is treated with suspicion here. Note the asterisk.

Well sure. No such thing as a free lunch (I actually get a free lunch
every day at work..... so hrrm..) Anyways, let me put it this way: there
is no additional charge for an upgrade in bandwidth.

Quote:

I have a pessimistic view of useful encryption keys verses practicality
of using them on a regular basis and keeping the keys secure at the same
time.

Good encryption is hard. Long keys are hard to remember. However, I'm
particularly anal about using good keys.

Quote:

Same here, but it's all local. I get instant (fast) access to files
too. Important when I'm doing map image processing work. My bandwidth
would get eaten up quite quickly with the larger files and the frequency
they get updated.

Well sure. I actually rarely access my files on mozy. Although I've
tested it to make sure it works properly, mozy for me, is a $5/month
worst case insurance program. So if my hard drive fails, I don't lose
anything important. Mozy encourages good backup habits because its
automatic. If my hard drive failed this afternoon, changes I made this
morning would already have been backed up.

With 1mbps of upload bandwidth, it really is sufficient for most things
I do. My only real storage-intensive tasks are storing digital photos
(large 20mb RAW files), and then the subsequent editing of them. Even I
offload a flash card to the PC, mozy can have those files uploaded to
their servers in at most a few hours.

Incidentally, mozy tops out at about 10gb/day uploads (that's 1mbit/s *
seconds in a day). It's really sufficient because I rarely cause 10gb
of change per day to my system --- so the system is almost always fully
backed up. (excluding warez/movies/downloads that can just be
re-downloaded)

Note that downloads are much faster than 1mbps. And mozy has multiple
interfaces to get the data. The most convenient are the network-drives
which allow you to copy files directly from their servers to your
machine. They mimic your drive/drive structure, so it's as easy as
accessing local files (but of course slower)

Quote:

Without questioning your source, the modern, existing algorithms are
secure enough against a brute-force attack. The people over at
sci.crypt would probably have a field day with this conversation, and
I'm trying not to incite violence here. :)

1> The bigger the adversary, the better your encryption had better be.

2> No one is brute forcing any modern key sizes. The search space is
too large and dedicated computers/processors/boards don't even come
CLOSE. There's the whole discussion of the amount of memory, cpu time,
number of atoms in the universe, etc.....Except for maybe 56/64-bit DES,
brute force attacks are useless unless you can reduce the search space
CONSIDERABLY (and thereby break the algorithm)

3> If your data is important enough, the people will use rubber-hose
cryptanalysis, and that usually works. No high-level math required.

4> It's impossible to put a metric on how secure something is, peer
review and time are the only things that help.

5> Your friend has it backwards. Proprietary algorithms are almost
always _less_ secure than peer reviewed publically released algorithms.
It's the number of smart eyes on the algorithm that can help determine
ways of attacking it.

6> A keylogger physically or electronically installed will defeat the
best encryption. As will a small camera surreptitiously placed....

Normally, you've really got to piss someone off before anyone is going
to throw the kinds of resources needed to attack your encrypted data.

There are some really really scary ways of getting passphrases. Like
the research where someone can record the SOUND of the keystrokes and
determine which key was pressed. Or the EMI/RFI off the equipment. Or
rebooting a secured computer with a usb->key that extracts the contents
of memory, and getting the encryption key from memory, and so on. Often
times there are back/side doors to achieve the same result. Like say
the IMPLEMENTATION of the algorithm is broken. The famous example, I
think, is WEP security for wireless. IIRC, they re-used the
Initialization Vector, or the IV was easily guessable.

Good encryption is hard.

Keith

D from BC

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 11:55 am

Guest

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:39:37 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard@aol.com>
wrote:

Quote:

On Apr 25, 4:13?pm, D from BC <myrealaddr...@comic.com> wrote:

What can I do to protect my PC from a house fire?

Uh, stop smoking in bed?
Stop storing the Propane BBQ grille indoors?
Use only one candle per decade on the Birthday Cake?

Or failing that...
Live in an igloo? :)

Hey Mike,
You're giving the Donkey WAAAY too much credit.
Do you think he'd even leave the house if it were on fire?

I think a fire resistant computer (or drive) might be an attractive
product for the worrysome people.
Some industries might be interested where there is a greater chance of
disaster.
Example: Chemical fire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqCNuwJyyHM
Chevron refinery fire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwK-PBdZKFg
McBride factory chemical factory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoE-NylMHFU
Aztec chemical fire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzPzPZgBkFE&feature=related

Perhaps jet 'black box' technology can be used to protect a drive.
If those things can survive a jet fuel fire, it should survive a house
fire.

D from BC
British Columbia
Canada

Michael A. Terrell

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 12:07 pm

Guest

mpm wrote:

Quote:

On Apr 25, 4:13ï¿½pm, D from BC <myrealaddr...@comic.com> wrote:

What can I do to protect my PC from a house fire?

Uh, stop smoking in bed?
Stop storing the Propane BBQ grille indoors?
Use only one candle per decade on the Birthday Cake?

Or failing that...
Live in an igloo? :)

Hey Mike,
You're giving the Donkey WAAAY too much credit.
Do you think he'd even leave the house if it were on fire?

We can only hope that his donkey instincts kick in.

Can donkeys bray "You light up my life" or "Burning ring of fire"?

--
http://improve-usenet.org/index.html

Use any search engine other than Google till they stop polluting USENET
with porn and junk commercial SPAM

If you have broadband, your ISP may have a NNTP news server included in
your account: http://www.usenettools.net/ISP.htm

D from BC

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 12:33 pm

Guest

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:55:47 -0700, D from BC
<myrealaddress@comic.com> wrote:

Quote:

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 08:39:37 -0700 (PDT), mpm <mpmillard@aol.com
wrote:

On Apr 25, 4:13?pm, D from BC <myrealaddr...@comic.com> wrote:

What can I do to protect my PC from a house fire?

Uh, stop smoking in bed?
Stop storing the Propane BBQ grille indoors?
Use only one candle per decade on the Birthday Cake?

Or failing that...
Live in an igloo? :)

Hey Mike,
You're giving the Donkey WAAAY too much credit.
Do you think he'd even leave the house if it were on fire?

I think a fire resistant computer (or drive) might be an attractive
product for the worrysome people.
Some industries might be interested where there is a greater chance of
disaster.
Example: Chemical fire.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqCNuwJyyHM
Chevron refinery fire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwK-PBdZKFg
McBride factory chemical factory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoE-NylMHFU
Aztec chemical fire
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzPzPZgBkFE&feature=related

Perhaps jet 'black box' technology can be used to protect a drive.
If those things can survive a jet fuel fire, it should survive a house
fire.

D from BC
British Columbia
Canada

Oops.. I think I recall seeing that 'black box' recorders record on a
spool of wire. That's probably why it's fire resistant.
Dunno if there's a flight data recorder ( black box) that uses
something like a PC hard drive.
The materials in a typical PC drive will just melt or decompose.

D from BC
British Columbia
Canada

Eeyore

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 1:35 pm

Guest

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote:

Quote:

mpm wrote:
D from BC <myrealaddr...@comic.com> wrote:

What can I do to protect my PC from a house fire?

Uh, stop smoking in bed?
Stop storing the Propane BBQ grille indoors?
Use only one candle per decade on the Birthday Cake?

Or failing that...
Live in an igloo? :)

Hey Mike,
You're giving the Donkey WAAAY too much credit.
Do you think he'd even leave the house if it were on fire?

We can only hope that his donkey instincts kick in.

Can donkeys bray "You light up my life" or "Burning ring of fire"?

Eey-ore Eey-ore Ee-yore.

Eeyore

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 1:41 pm

Guest

D from BC wrote:

Quote:

I think a fire resistant computer (or drive) might be an attractive
product for the worrysome people.

Regardless of whether your computer is combustible or not, magetic media
will be erased if it reaches the Curie temperature and there lies a
fundamental problem.

Quote:

Perhaps jet 'black box' technology can be used to protect a drive.
If those things can survive a jet fuel fire, it should survive a house
fire.

They are incredibly well insulated but even so are only rated to survive
something like half an hour or so IIRC in a fire.

If it's the data you're worried about, simply store it offsire either
physically or using online storage. I've started 'backing up' important
stuff to my hotmail account since it offer 5GB of storage now.

Graham

Michael A. Terrell

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 2:19 pm

Guest

D from BC wrote:

Quote:

Modern 'Black Box' recorders are digital.

--
http://improve-usenet.org/index.html

Use any search engine other than Google till they stop polluting USENET
with porn and junk commercial SPAM

If you have broadband, your ISP may have a NNTP news server included in
your account: http://www.usenettools.net/ISP.htm

D from BC

Posted: Sat Apr 26, 2008 2:19 pm

Guest

On Sat, 26 Apr 2008 19:41:58 +0100, Eeyore
<rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote:

Quote:

D from BC wrote:

I think a fire resistant computer (or drive) might be an attractive
product for the worrysome people.

Regardless of whether your computer is combustible or not, magetic media
will be erased if it reaches the Curie temperature and there lies a
fundamental problem.

Perhaps jet 'black box' technology can be used to protect a drive.
If those things can survive a jet fuel fire, it should survive a house
fire.

They are incredibly well insulated but even so are only rated to survive
something like half an hour or so IIRC in a fire.

If it's the data you're worried about, simply store it offsire either
physically or using online storage. I've started 'backing up' important
stuff to my hotmail account since it offer 5GB of storage now.

Graham

How about this as an idea...
An external drive in a steel drum of water.

Not only does the drive get liquid cooling during normal operation
(could extent the drive lifetime) but during a fire it could take a
long time for the water to boil. Even boiling water should be ok.
IIRC boiling water is below the Curie point..
More fire energy is needed to boil all the water away. Hopefully the
fire is under control by then otherwise the drive becomes dry and gets
heat damaged.

I have to go back in this thread ... I think somebody mentioned a
water resistant drive for down to 300 meters.

But I'd rather upload data than have a steel drum full of water in my
home office. :)

Perhaps a 'wet drive' might of interest in industrial settings where
there's critical data and a high fire probability.
But, in those settings, they probably just upload frequently.
For example, I've read the space shuttle has no flight recorder. Data
is transmitted.

D from BC
British Columbia
Canada

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