Protecting your Hard Drive from Unwanted Changes

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By Gene Barlow User Group Relations Copyright July 2005 Your hard drive is the heart of your computer. It contains the operating system that manages your computer's hardware. All of your application programs and settings are stored on your hard drive. Most important of all, the data files that you create using your computer are trusted to your hard drive. If anything should happen to this hard drive, your computer would no longer run. All of your financial records, family photos, genealogical databases, email correspondence, and other data files would be lost and gone forever. You must protect your hard drive from unwanted changes or you risk losing your computer and all of your important data files. Having a good backup of your entire hard drive is the first thing you should do to protect your computer. (See the Perfect Backup Approach at http://www.ugr.com/newsletters.html.) Then, if anything should happen to your computer, you will at least be able to rebuild your hard drive from your backups. However, waiting for a disaster to happen with the knowledge that you can rebuild your hard drive is not enough. You also need to set up a defense around your hard drive to prevent unwanted changes from taking place on your hard drive in the first place. Unwanted changes attack your hard drive in many ways. Three of the most common ways are Internet predators, other users of your computer, and bad software installations. We will look at each of these ways that unwanted changes can damage your hard drive and then look at ways to protect yourself against these changes. Unwanted Changes Attack your Hard Drive Whenever you connect to the Internet to get your email or browse web sites, unwanted items are quietly installing themselves on your hard drive. These include dangerous viruses and worms that can damage your hard drive. Recently, we have seen a great increase in Spyware and Cookies being stored on your hard drive. While less dangerous than viruses and worms, they can still choke up your computer and share your private information with others. Your hard drive also collects hacker tools and other cyber junk as you use the Internet. With a broadband connection, you are constantly connected to the Internet and your hard drive is open and vulnerable all of the time. This is a serious problem that needs your immediate attention. If your computer is ever used by others, then your hard drive is exposed to any changes these others may make on your system. Many of us have children or grandchildren who use our computers. Have you ever noticed how your computer doesn't run the same after these young people finish using it? They probably do not mean to hurt your computer, but in the process of downloading their games, they may cause serious damage to your hard drive. This is especially true in classrooms and computer labs. After a few hours of use by various students, some of the computers no longer work at all and the others have been modified by the students. You need to have your computer protected before you let others use it or you risk losing your hard drive information. Another common source of damage to a working hard drive is software installations. These can be software downloaded from the Internet, software purchase from a computer store, or upgrades to existing software. In most cases, the software has been thoroughly tested and the installation will not cause your computer problems. However, some software will not install cleanly and may damage your hard drive during the installation.  It is often difficult or impossible to remove the changes and get your computer working after a bad installation. Don't install software on your hard drive until you have it adequately protected. Protecting your Hard Drive from Changes There are many ways that have been tried to protect your hard drive from unwanted changes. Unfortunately, many of these approaches may not be very effective. Utilities that protect your hard drive from Internet predators often use the "Hide and Seek" approach. They do a poor job of preventing bad stuff from getting on your hard drive, so they must do frequent scans to try to seek out the changes and remove them. Those of you with other users on your computer rely on doing lengthy restores of your hard drive backups. Protection against bad software installations is left to system undo utilities like GoBack or the System Recovery Facility in Windows XP. None of these approaches do a great job in all of these situations. There has to be a better way! Leave it to a small software company, StorageCraft, to come up with an innovative solution to unwanted changes to your hard drive. Rather than try to undo the damage after the hard drive has been changed, StorageCraft decided to prevent the changes from ever reaching your hard drive in the first place. They developed an excellent product called ShadowSurfer that safely prevents unwanted changes to your hard drive. ShadowSurfer gives you the ability to place your computer in a special ShadowMode state, when your hard drive is locked off from all changes. The changes are safely stored in a temporary area on your hard drive where they won't cause you any harm. While in ShadowMode, your computer will run as a virtual computer, as if all of the changes were actually made to your hard drive. This lets you test out changes that you wanted to make to your hard drive, without actually making them. Later in the day, you can return your computer to its normal operating mode and at that time, all of the changes will be discarded. Preventing all of the serious damage of Internet predators is perhaps the greatest ability of ShadowSurfer. Before you connect to the Internet, you would put your computer into ShadowMode to keep viruses, worms, spyware, and other cyber junk from ever reaching your hard drive. Surf the net without regard, since all of the traces of your use of the Internet will never reach your hard drive. When you disconnect from the Internet, you can discard all of these bad items as you return your computer to normal operating mode. For those of you with continuous broadband connection, you would leave your system in ShadowMode most of the day and only go into normal mode briefly as you shut down your computer for the evening. ShadowSurfer gives you excellent security from Internet predators. When you let others use your computer, place it in ShadowMode before they start to use the system. Then, when they are done, you can simply switch back to normal operating mode and any changes that they made are gone. In a classroom or lab environment, simply reboot the computer back into normal mode after each student and all changes made by the prior student are discarded and never reach the hard drive. This saves a lengthy restore of the hard drive from a backup file after each class or user. ShadowSurfer is also great protection from a bad software installation. Install the software while in ShadowMode and you can test out the software to see if it works and if you like it. If the installation causes your computer problems or you find that you don't like the software, you can simply discard the installation as you return to normal mode. Nothing was changed on your hard drive, even though you could run your computer in virtual mode and test the software as if it were installed on your hard drive. If the software installation goes just fine, then you can install it to your hard drive in normal mode and continue to use it. StorageCraft also offers a more powerful version of ShadowSurfer called ShadowUser Pro. This version gives you the option to selectively save certain things on your hard drive while in ShadowMode, where ShadowSurfer discards all changes when you return to mon-ShadowMode. ShadowUser Pro lists for $70 and is available at our user group discount of just $47. Contact us if you are interested in this expanded product. How to Obtain ShadowSurfer ShadowSurfer is one of the most amazing products I have run across in many years and one that all users should have and use on their computers. It is easy to install, easier to use, and will guard your hard drive from many unwanted changes. ShadowSurfer runs on WinNT, Win2000, and WinXP systems and is licensed for one computer and will only install on one computer. It normally lists for $30, however, user group members and their guests may purchase this excellent product at the user group discount price of just $20. To purchase this product, go to our web site at www.usergroupstore.com and look for the product in the Product section of our web site. To order it, click on the appropriate "buy now" button next to the product and you will be able to place your order. Include the name of your user group and the special product code of UGNL0605. The sooner you get this installed on your computer, the safer your hard drive will be. I hope you have learned about some innovative technology that is now available for your computer system. If you have questions about this article or ShadowSurfer, please email them to gene@ugr.com and I will try to answer them for you. You'll love using this exciting product.