Backup solution using free components

This is documentation for a mostly secure backup mechanism that takes advantage of:
7 zip
Autoit/autohotkey
WinDirStat
WMIC/ powershell
Sysinternals
Winscp
Microsoft System Center Management Pack for Windows Server Operating System
Winmerge
Barracuda copy.com cloud storage


The purpose of WinDirStats is to select the folders you want backed up. The information is them passed to winmerge that scans the current folder with the backup folders and scan for differences. By adding winscp to winmerge using opening winscp and going to
2. Fill In Description and Custom Command
3. Click Local Command Choice
4. Select Apply to Directories Check Box & Click OK
To Use:
1. Left-click on a Local Directory
2. Right-click on the corresponding Remote Directory & select the name of the custom command you just added.
3. WinSCP will make a temp copy of the Remote Directory on your local machine and present a directory diff in the WinMerge format. commands and adding the path to winmerge.

The advantage of this is that SMB can be turned off at the backup location NAS and winscp can use FTPS but Winscp handles the specifics.

I am currently working on making WinDirStats work with an autoit or autohotkey script. I am also working on code that uses powershell to query folders on remote machines as if they are local. Unfortunately to increase reliability the autoit and autohotkey scripts must be compiled to exe forms. The Microsoft System Center Management makes it possible to convert the process into a service using the sc command and using Microsoft System Center Management to monitor this service.

To store the destination, use an encrypted 7 zip archive. To do so use the command line extension to hide the header. This extension is -mhe extention. The backup scripts can be taken from http://www.ntwind.com/tutorials/perform-automatic-backups.html The main difference is that we substituted Microsoft's System Center Management with Hstart for better logging.

How to run sc to make service https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/251192
http://www.ntwind.com/tutorials/perform-automatic-backups.html

To produce a backup of the servers that are backed up, should a full image be wanted, see Sysinternal's disk to VHD found here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee656415.aspx

One possible idea of a backup location besides a NAS is to use Barracuda's copy.com cloud storage for remote backup. Barracuda has been servicing enterprise networks for a while.

Microsoft System Center Management tools
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=44231
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx%3Fid%3D9296

What to look for in a laptop

I have many friends ask me what to look for in  a laptop? How should the ram be configured? How should power settings be configured?

Considerations I've looked into when buying a student laptop:
Do the tech people seem responsive. The Book "Is This Thing On? A Computer Handbook for Late Bloomers, Technophobes, and the Kicking and Screaming by Abby Stokes Gives some excellent advice." call up tech support and see how many IVR or computer menu systems are involved. See how long it takes them to answer. Once you got a hold of someone say that you are considering buying a laptop. Ask them if they know of any promotions which are going on. If you are not at a large company to make warehouse like negations then check out the website http://www.techbargains.com Should online shopping make you feel uncomfortable and you would like to see the machine so you can see if the screen resolution looks right, Google has shopping.google.com

Some of my favorite places to recommend that people buy electronics are through Sam's Club and Costco. In the old days Costco offered a generous 1 year service warranty no questions asked. People took advantage of this system and some would get a laptop every single year through the program. They shortened the warranty to a couple months which people install and try things out on their computer but not to the point that they are essentially getting free computers every year.

Two of the things that companies try to impress on you are how much RAM is included. While it is important to know how much RAM is the maximum RAM in the device, RAM is upgradeable from places such as Newegg, Amazon, Tigerdirect. The best way to find out if your computer would take more RAM is to run the utility at the crucial website. Make sure that the big RAM is for big computers (desktops). Little SODIMM is for laptops. At this time there has been an entry by DDR4 SODIMM RAM. I'm looking forward to seeing the prices fall, which inevitably they would. Perhaps the most important piece of a computer is the processor. This determines what capacities the computer has for installing things. ARM processors are good and cheap, however with the falling prices of AMD A series and Intel celeron N. Remember there is a tradeoff between energy consumption meaning power consumed by making applications work with this processor, having a long battery life in balance with performance and how responsive the applications would be.

Some laptops have easy to access removable battery containers. This is highly recommended for two reasons. Beside the obvious ability to add another perhaps larger supply of power and switching the two as necessary, there is the benefit of being able to do a built in reset. This could be done by removing the detachable battery and the power cord all at once. Then try to turn on the computer without a power source. This clears some settings which make the computer more sensitive to events such as corruption through lightening

When a battery goes bad, do not remove it, it has a good chance of overheating the laptop. The battery acts as a transistor.

The most important aspect of a computer is how fast is the hard drive, first of all the newer operating system Windows 10 has file compression turned on so it automatically compresses the files on a drive. Once upon a time it was needed to defragment a disk every week. This has changed in a world of solid state drives of SSD. The common advice is that you should not defragment a SSD because it would wear out the sectors so they can no longer store data and would  have to reallocate the data. There are 3 different types of harddrives the first two depending on spinning rotation speeds or RPM
(rotations per minute). These are the 54000 and the 72000 and although there is a 100000 it is not often used with laptops because of heat related limitations. The other type of hard drive is SSD and the best bet is to get them separately as they do add considerable cost to machine. The best place is to go to tomshardware.com and search for a hard drive you feel comfortable with pricewise for what you want to do. Remember if you have an AMD or Intel processor the next limiting factor is the speed of the hard drive. A gigabyte is not a gigabyte. On a music CD an hours worth of CD can take the entire drive but only take up a few megabytes on a MP3 player. The reason for this is that the MP3 player has a processor able to decompress in real time. This makes the CD sampling or dropping packets of information unnecessary to get the CD player information quick enough that it does a song. Someone asked me if they can put a 72000 hard drive in a machine that came with a 54000 RPM. There are a couple reasons why this is not advised, the first being the obvious additional friction that the faster harddrive would generate. The second being the varying speed of the SATA connections themselves. We are up to SATA 3 at the time of this writing.

Another bit of advice, http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/1349-ram-how-dual-channel-works-vs-single-channel recounts of a survey which found a little bit of fast ram was faster than lots of slow ram. This makes sense while playing around with Microsoft Sysinternals RAMMap and VMRAMMap on an Exchange 2010 which needed constant work due to a misconfiguration. The client found that while shutting down the virtualized server guest that the machine would act fast and have a low memory footprint. Then as it was used more and more it used more memory. This makes sense from a practical standpoint. The night before getting ready for work, it is useful to set out a few items to make them easier to grab. The small amount of RAM forces the system to be well organized. However excessive RAM provided an opportunity for a dumpload of items and in RAM it is worse because of pointer nodes. This means that there are either duplicate items in RAM or a succession of pointer nodes.

Windows 10 timing

I'm worried about people from nonprofits being able to do user education on the new Windows 10 that is coming out. Some nonprofits are running Windows 7 professional. I know that win 7 enterprise users are probably not getting the free right away and Windows 7 enterprise by definition has more business features beyond Windows 7 professional, the business equivalent to Ultimate. However machines from a mass producer come with OEM Win 7 professional which connects to a domain just fine so why bother spending money to put enterprise on it if it already came with Windows 7 pro.

Information Week reports that
"The upgrade will be free of charge to consumers and small businesses running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 starting July 29. They will download one of two editions. The first is Windows 10 Home, which has all the new OS features except those limited to the Pro edition. Windows 10 Pro is for higher-quality devices, like those used in business, and has features including the ability to set up a PC as a remote desktop server, Hyper-V virtualization, and BitLocker encryption." http://www.informationweek.com/software/operating-systems/windows-10-5-key-features-for-business/d/d-id/1320674

I have additional concerns that ad hock users would see a banner saying Windows 10 come and get it across their screens and since there has been an rumor going around that since some organizations authorized users other than administrators to install updates, then it would not require administrative privileges. 
In the past people have talked about removing specific patches to stop Windows 10 from coming. They are described here: http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/367377-how-remove-windows-10-upgrade-updates-windows-7-8-a.html There was a Register cites people on Reddit joking if this is a form of malware because it just seems to repopulate. Since then the GWX folder has gotten bigger and bigger, I wonder if they are downloading it in sections. 

Microsoft FAQ reports that after July 29th, those with incomplete updates as well as those connected to a domain would get the "update now icon"

Why don’t I have the Get Windows 10 app?
If you don’t see the Get Windows 10 app on your PC, it might be because:
Your device isn’t up-to-date with at least Windows 7 SP1 or Windows 8.1 Update.
Windows Update is turned off or is not set to received updates automatically.
You’ve blocked or uninstalled the necessary Windows Update functionality.
Your device is not running genuine Windows.
Your computer is part of a Windows Domain
Microsoft has not determined your device capable of running Windows 10 even though it meets the minimum system requirements.
You are running a volume license client: Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Enterprise, Windows 8.1 Pro, Windows 8.1 Enterprise (only retail store bought or preinstalled OEM licenses) get the upgrade offer.
Running Windows Update and installing any available updates will fix the first three issues...

PCs that we determine cannot run Windows 10 will not see the Get Windows 10 app before July 29, 2015. After July 29, 2015, we’ll enable the icon in the system tray. This is to help ensure that you can easily check your PC’s compatibility if you choose.
If your device is managed as part of a school or business network, please check with your IT administrator about upgrading to Windows 10. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-win_upgrade/i-want-to-reserve-my-free-copy-of-windows-10-but-i/848b5cce-958b-49ae-a132-a999a883265b?auth=1and I also hear reports that Microsoft is releasing it to other users in this order:

1) The people who signed up for the fast lane beta tests
2) The people who signed up for Windows 10 reservations
3) MSDN
4) Educational and enterprise customers with volume licensing.

I hate to start speculation but not only did NASDAQ have issues but United Airlines and Wall Street Journal and US Department of Immigration had issues on a Wednesday June 9th (after patch Tuesday) as well as late in the day on patch Tuesday itself on the 8th. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/08/us-ual-flights-idUSKCN0PI1IX20150708 Was this patch related to Windows 10 coming out. What I believe happened was that they tried to revert a patch Microsoft pushed out causing Windows 10 to happen because they wanted to remain at their current platform without interruption. http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/08/nyse-trading-idUSL1N0ZO1EA20150708

I'm not trying to bash a product but this requires serious thought and training effort and this takes time in the nonprofit world.