Andrew Hale: IT Talk & Other Topics

I've had a cell phone for nearly 8 years and a smartphone 5 years now. For all this time, I've never had a case on any of my phones. After years of working in a grocery store (usually night-stock) and working with a lot of glass jars, I've developed quick reflexes to stop most of the fall before a dropped object hits the ground. In fact, I even do the same thing when I drop food (which is not recommended to stop with your foot, BTW). Back to the point though, I decided to get a case for my iPhone 5 and I chose the Otterbox Commuter case. I've been living with the case for over a year now and it's seen it's fair share of drops. I've dropped it at least 4 times, once trying to catch it only to swat it down to the ground like a football player swatting down a pass. It hit the ground hard but the case took all of it, leaving my phone still looking brand new. When small talk turns to phone cases (which actually happens sometimes), I always talk up the Otte...

I've had a cell phone for nearly 8 years and a smartphone 5 years now. For all this time, I've never had a case on any of my phones. After years of working in a grocery store (usually night-stock) and working with a lot of glass jars, I've developed quick reflexes to stop most of the fall before a dropped object hits the ground. In fact, I even do the same thing when I drop food (which is not recommended to stop with your foot, BTW). Back to the point though, I decided to get a case for my iPhone 5 and I chose the Otterbox Commuter case. I've been living with the case for over a year now and it's seen it's fair share of drops. I've dropped it at least 4 times, once trying to catch it only to swat it down to the ground like a football player swatting down a pass. It hit the ground hard but the case took all of it, leaving my phone still looking brand new. When small talk turns to phone cases (which actually happens sometimes), I always talk up the Otte...

I've talked a lot about file servers lately. I went over what a file server is in general, how to move the data between servers, discussions and walk-thrus of configuring features, the planning and etc. However, this last post on the topic is to discuss the execution, the aftermath and what we didn't see coming. The migration was set to happen Saturday evening. I was told that I could boot everyone off the server at 5pm and we expected the whole thing to take 4-6 hours. I actually got in about 30 minutes before to start collecting reports on the permissions before I started the actual migration.

Have you ever accidentally deleted a file? (And not just accidentally put it in the Recycle Bin.) I mean, really deleted it? Gone forever? It's not fun, right? This is where Volume Shadow Copy comes in. VSC, for short, is a Windows service that makes and maintains snapshots of changes to objects in volumes. It does this not only for your system files like the System Restore feature from your XP days (copying EXEs, DLLs, registry, etc), but it also works with your Documents & Settings. It's worth noting that VSC knows what's changed about items within a volume and that's not to be confused with it actually backing them up, or keeping different versions of the file. With VSC, if your system crashes after a bad Windows Update or bad driver install, you can roll back to a system state prior to the bad install. If you accidentally delete a file (or delete parts of a file), you can right-click on the file, choose the "Previous Versions" tab and see restore poi...