How To Back Up Windows 7

The book I read to research this post was How To Backup Windows 7 by John Mann which is a very good book that I downloaded from kindle. I’m not sure if this book was free or not but think it probably was. The book is only around 15 pages so is quite short. There are 2 major types of back up an image back up where everything on the drive is backed up which you can do with in Windows 7 and an incremental back up where only what has been changed is backed which you will normally do with a 3rd party tool like Drive Image. To get to the back up program click the windows icon and enter backup into the search box and then the back up option when it appears. You can then create a system disk useful if the computer crashes or back up your drive. Many new computers are backed up in this way at the factory by a technician and you will often be aware there are 2 images of windows on your hard drive with one being used to restore windows. You do need a decent sized hard drive for all this. Also you might want to do a back up when you install new software and certainly should set a restore point which can be done with in the backup program. I did quite enjoy this book and do recommend as long as you have Windows 7 on your computer. Prior to Windows 7 this process had to be done with 3rd party software.

 

Big Data – Opportunities and Challenges

The book I read to research this post was Big Data – Opportunities and Challenges by the British Computing Society which is a very good book that I bought from kindle. This book is around 70 pages so is quite short. This book is about big data which taking large amounts of like people’s comments on social media sites like facebook, e-mails and even video of people at trade shows and their actions. These represent huge amounts of data when taken en mass and the biggest problem is finding relevant information in among all of it quickly. The amount of unstructured data is growing much more than the amount of structured data which of represents problems is finding meaningful data. There are heavy duty databases like SQL Server and Azure and also subscription based ones like SAS & SASS. A relevantly new development is the growth of NoSQL databases where the acronym stands for Not Only SQL and SQL has quite a limited structure and can often only be used to find information with in huge amounts with limitations. It also requires someone skilled In the SQL database language to do it. There are currently more than 150 NoSQL database products that try to remove these limitations. The total amount of data worldwide grows at about 31 % per year and at any one time over 90 % of data was created with in the last 2 years. A lot of companies are going to need specialists to handle big data and there currently is a shortage of skilled people which is going to get worse. It’s worth mentioning most companies with the amount of data they must handle can probably fit in on a single server so strictly it isn’t big data. There is also a growing internet of things devices market that was started by Nike + where they developed trainers that stored information about your fitness regime that could be uploaded to a computer or website. There is a rapidly growing number of devices on the market like these. There is even things like CCTV cameras that can be accessed via smartphone or tablet online. I did quite enjoy this book and would recommend it.

Enterprise Storage

The book I read to research this post was Rethinking Enterprise Storage by Marc Farley which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. Note I think this book was free. It is also around 150 pages so is a reasonable length and Marc works for Microsoft so the book tends to be about Windows Azure Storage. Legally a company has to store things like e-mails in case of litigation and until recently many companies thought they were better off not using the cloud for this purpose and used either off-site servers or tape drives. A fairly recent development has been CiS or cloud integrated storage which is where storage software is provided as well as a cloud storage service and with broadband going forward with leaps and bounds with access speed it makes it a viable option. Cloud Computing is where instead of using a server and maybe software etc it is all provided over the internet so you have a virtual machine maintained and regularly upgraded by the cloud provider and merely have to access it on a machine at your company or home. Hybrid Company is even newer and is where maybe software is provided and you can run that your machine in your workplace and that works in conjunction with the cloud service so the might provide storage etc. It’s worth noting often versions of these cloud services are provided in a basic version free of charge with a premium version you can upgrade to and pay for. So you can save a lot of money. This book tells you all about the Microsoft products although I think it’s a shame it doesn’t give you some idea how it compares to Amazon Web Services and what they offer. Also some like healthcare providers might find this kind of service unsuitable as they have to follow more stringent guidelines about things like information disclosure and could be sued if they use a cloud service that might not have to follow the same strict rules. The rules aren’t as strict for companies. I did really enjoy this book and think it is well written. Finally the book does delve a little into all the data collected on social media sites like Facebook and how that is potentially providing companies with huge amounts of data about there products which is still in its infancy but the marketing opportunities for companies are huge.