Subject: Weekend Announcements 08/27/1999

From: Erols Internet
Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 03:51:52 -0400

THIS WEEK'S ANNOUNCEMENTS

-- TIP OF THE WEEK - ROUTINE MAINTENANCE
-- SITE(S) OF THE WEEK - STORAGE SITES

You can always find our previous announcements by DATE here:
http://www.erols.com/erols/news/index.html

and by SUBJECT here:

http://www.erols.com/erols/news/news_by_subject.htm 

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TIP OF THE WEEK: ROUTINE MAINTENANCE
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These tips focus mainly on your Internet software and what you can do on the 
Web.  However, some customers have asked us to talk about small, routine 
computer maintenance steps to avoid trouble and help your machine work faster.

Some of you may be familiar with these steps, others may not be.

For most users, these boil down to four procedures:

1) Scanning the hard disk for errors (ScanDisk).
2) Defragmenting (optimizing) the hard disk.
3) Clearing the cache.
4) Adding memory.  (Not quite "routine." More about this shortly.)

Before we begin, though, we should talk a bit about hard disks (and drives).

Open your kitchen cabinet and look at a stack of plates.  This will help you 
visualize roughly what the inside of a hard drive looks like.  Imagine the 
plates as being small, flat, very thin, and made out of metal ("platters").

(That's why they are called "hard" drives.  Floppy disks and diskettes are 
"soft," that is, made out of plastic-like material.)

Let's go back a bit.  Imagine the stack of platters as a pile of old 33rpm or 
Long Playing (LP) music records. Picture a hole in the middle for a spindle.  
See also dozens of concentric rings, grooves cut into the black vinyl.  Call 
these tracks. In your mind's eye, look down on the rings of tracks, and cut them 
into eight or 10 wedge-shaped pieces like a pie.  Call these sectors. Now we are 
quite close to the way a modern hard drive works.

Just like an old record player, an arm ("read-write head") sweeps across the 
tracks and sectors of the platters in a hard drive. Obviously this "arm" is 
rather tiny to fit between the magnetized platters of a hard drive.

Instead riding in grooves like the needle of a record player, the read-write 
head skims at high speed over invisible tracks without actually touching the 
platter.  Data is written (and read) magnetically in "clusters" of "bytes" set 
down one after another wherever there is free space.  Ideally, files of say, 
500 kilobytes, will be laid down along one track in one or two sectors.  The 
file's location is recorded elsewhere, in the File Allocation Table (FAT).

Now we are ready to talk about what happens when things go wrong.

1)	Scanning the hard disk (ScanDisk).  As noted above, the "FAT" knows where 
the clusters are.  Sometimes, however, clusters get "lost."  This happens if you 
use your hard drive a lot, as in surfing the Internet.  It might happen if you 
fail to shut down your computer properly, without waiting for the hard drive to 
finish "reading and writing."

Clusters get lost when programs stop or "lock up" unexpectedly. A big file might 
be loading smoothly into your computer's memory when suddenly the drive can't 
find the clusters it needs or it runs into lost clusters because there is no 
record of where they should be or what they contain.  A result is "corrupted" 
programs or files that won't load properly.  This explains some (but not all) 
computer crashes.

Other problems arise when a platter's surface is actually physically damaged. 
Perhaps the drive got banged around a bit as it was installed.  Those little 
read-write arms could actually touch the smooth surface instead of gliding over 
it, damaging a bit of track and making it unable to record data.

Both the Microsoft (Windows) and Macintosh operating systems have devised 
software "utilities" to find and fix these kinds of problems.  Both skim the 
surface of hard disks looking for lost clusters and patchy spots.  Microsoft's  
"Scandisk" utility offers the option of fixing problems automatically, or 
notifying you of each lost cluster and asking if you want to save it (in case it 
may have valuable data) or just delete it.  The Macintosh "Disk First Aid" 
program fixes problems automatically.

The first step in any routine maintenance program is to run these scan programs 
at least once a month or even more frequently.

In Windows 3.1 you can run "Scandisk" by typing SCANDISK at the C:> prompt and 
pressing the Enter key.

In Windows 95 and 98, you can run ScanDisk by selecting Start | Programs | 
Accessories | System Tools | ScanDisk.  Choose the "Thorough" option.  Although 
this takes as long as an hour to run, it will not only check for errors but will 
also skim the surface for physical defects.

(In Windows 98, the "System Tools" menu offers a "Maintenance Wizard" which will 
run ScanDisk and other fixit programs on a regular schedule it recommends, or 
you choose.)

Macintosh operating systems use a two-step process to fix problems.

First, to run the Mac equivalent of Scandisk, open Hard Drive | Utilities | and 
double-click on "Disk First Aid."  It will be able to find problems, but not fix 
them.  If it does report problems:

Second, put the system disk in the CD-ROM drive.  In the Special menu, click on 
Restart.  Hold down the "C" key.  The Mac will boot from the CD.  Eventually, 
the CD icon will appear in the top right corner of the screen, just above the 
Hard Drive symbol.  Open the CD Icon, then open Utilities.  Click on "Disk First 
Aid."  It will repair problems as necessary.

[In Mac OS's 8.5 and higher, Disk First Aid will run automatically if the system 
crashes.]

Another Mac procedure that should be run on a monthly basis is "Rebuild 
Desktop." This restores a special file that keeps track of where things are on 
the hard drive, similar to the FAT in a Windows system.

To start "Rebuild Desktop," go to Special | Restart.  As the Mac reboots, hold 
down the option key and the Open Apple key (on either side of the space bar). As 
the desktop reappears but before the icons load, you will be asked if you want 
to "Rebuild Desktop?" Release the buttons and click "OK" to start the process.

2.	Defragmenting (optimizing) the hard drive.  Disk scanning programs find 
and re-label "lost" clusters, but they do not fix another problem that arises 
from heavy use of hard drives.  This is "fragmentation."

The second step in routine maintenance is running a defragmentation program at 
least once a month.

We talked about the concentric rings (tracks) and sectors on a hard drive.

A well-kept hard drive is like a well-kept garden.  Ideally, new information is 
"written" onto free space on a track in a neat pattern, one track after another, 
one sector after another, like a bed of flowers in a garden or rows of corn.

But hard drives tend to plant information in the first open cluster or two they 
find, thus creating "fragments" of information scattered all over the place.

After a while, the garden looks like it is full of weeds.  Those little arms, 
the read-write heads, have to skip all over, platter to platter, track to track, 
to pull together all the fragmented clusters that make up a program or file.

This slows things down.  A hard drive with 10 percent or more of the data
fragmented will work noticeably more slowly than one that is at zero percent.

Defragmenters or "optimizers" pull fragmented data back into contiguous tracks 
and sectors, or "optimum" order.

These programs show you a screen with multiple rows and little boxes in 
different colors, each symbolizing a cluster.  It's mildly entertaining to watch 
a defragmenter pull together scattered clusters and clean up the garden.

The various Microsoft Windows versions have a built-in "Disk Defragmenter" and 
they all work basically the same way.  Mac OS's do not; more about that shortly. 

In Windows 3.1, run the defragmenter by typing DEFRAG at the C:> prompt and 
pressing the Enter key.
 
DEFRAG will ask you to select a drive to defragment, usually the C: drive.

It will then say what percentage of the disk is fragmented, and will recommend 
whether to optimize. Select Configure and the Optimize menu will appear. It may 
say "100% of drive X is not fragmented. No optimization necessary." If 
optimization is suggested, select Optimization method. A window will pop up.

Select Full optimization. This will rearrange the data on the entire drive, 
putting full clusters first, then empty clusters. This method takes longer, (up 
to an hour or more on a badly fragmented drive) but arranges the empty space 
cleanly and makes the hard disk work faster.

Selecting "unfragment files only" puts elements of fragmented files next to each 
other but does not rearrange the whole drive for optimum operation. 

In Windows 95 and 98, you can run Disk Defragmenter by selecting Start | 
Programs | Accessories | System Tools | Defragmenter.

The program offers essentially the same choices as DEFRAG for Windows 3.1 
described above.  Choose Full Optimization for best performance. 

Macintosh operating systems do not have a built-in disk optimizer, but you can 
buy good ones that will do the same thing.  Some examples are Symantec's Norton 
Utilities (the optimizer is called "Speed Disk") and Tech Tools Pro.

3.	Clearing the cache.  A cache is a place to hide stuff.  In a computer, the 
cache is the place on the hard drive that stores files from sites that you visit 
on the Web.  (You may not be aware this is happening.)

In a Tip of the Week earlier this year-11 June 1999-we wrote at length why it 
may worthwhile to "clear" the cache and how to do it.

Please click here to go to the Weekend Announcement with that Tip:

http://www.erols.com/erols/news/0699/06-11-99.html

4.	Adding memory.  This section is intended mainly for owners of 486DX 
computers or early Pentium I machines that may have come from the factory with 
only 16 or 32 megabytes (MB) of memory.  Adding memory is not "routine" 
maintenance in the sense of a software program you can run to improve 
performance.

However, if you are unhappy with how slowly your machine behaves while surfing 
the Internet it IS routine to add memory.  Because the price of RAM (Random 
Access Memory) has dropped so sharply, it is also the quickest and cheapest 
shortcut you can take to significantly improve your computer's performance.

Think of "memory" as a dark cave where a program hides out while running on your 
computer.  If the cave is large, the entire program is able to rush 
instantly from there to your "processor" chip.  If the cave is small, the 
program fills every nook and cranny, and whatever doesn't fit has to live on the 
hard drive and be loaded each time it is needed.  This slows things down.

Nowadays, the programs you use to browse the Net take up a lot of memory and so 
does the content of Web sites you visit.  It is much better to have a big, huge 
cave of memory. 

Memory comes in multiples of four: 4 megabytes, 8MB, 16MB, 32MB and so on. In 
older computers, the memory comes in blocks of chips called SIMMs (Single In-
Line Memory Modules).  If you have only 16MB of memory, you can buy 16 more for 
$30 to $50, depending on the manufacturer, and 32MB for $60 to $80. A total of 
64MB should be enough for most users, but the more, the better.

Memory is relatively easy to install, but if you are uncomfortable opening up 
your computer, have it done at the store.  

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SITE(S) OF THE WEEK - STORAGE SITES
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This week we are noting a relatively new development on the Internet: sites 
where you can store your files.  The idea is to upload your large files to a 
safe spot on the Net where you can access them from anywhere in the world, swap 
them with someone else, or just save space on your hard drive. 

If you have ever been unable to receive an e-mail attachment or left a file at 
the office, this solution may come in handy.

You can ask a person sending you a file too big to travel as an e-mail 
attachment to upload it to a site where you can get at it.

http://www.swapdrive.com/ The site says this about itself:

"SwapDrive.com represents a new generation of online file management and 
collaboration.  Now, you have a whole new way of sharing files and making 
important items to find no matter where you are or which computer you are using.

"With SwapDrive.com you can use your browser to quickly and easily transfer 
files from any computer into your private folder on our Web site. Best of all, 
the service is FREE!"

http://www.xdrive.com/ This site offers 25 megabytes of free storage space.  The
service is intended mainly for users with high-speed Internet access, so people
with 56K modems might find it a little slow, especially with large files.

Unlike previous storage services on the Web, "Xdrive" offers a special 
application that creates a "hard drive" desktop icon to represent the virtual
drive.  You can save documents directly to the drive, or drag and drop them to 
it.  If you outgrow the free space, you can buy 25MB more for $4.99 per month.

http://www.freedrive.com/ The site describes itself thusly:

"Here at FreeDrive you can upload, store, retrieve, and share 20 Megabytes of 
any type of data for FREE -- Documents, Spreadsheets, Zip Files, Databases, 
Image Files, MP3's -- whether it's for school, work, personal use, or just for 
fun. 

What's the catch? Well, in exchange for the 20MB of storage we ask just two 
things: 

1- that you put up with one banner ad per page. 

2- that you receive just one - no more...no less - promotional email per week 
from us that contains a message from one of our sponsors (we protect your 
privacy and NEVER give out your email, or any information, to anyone!)." 

===========================================================================
(PLEASE NOTE: We have an address to contact "Weekend Announcements." 
[email-masked]  Please use it to give us your ideas about what might 
go into the "Announcements." For example, your thoughts on what might be a 
useful "Tip of the Week," or your nominations for "Site of the Week."

We cannot promise to adopt every suggestion, or to answer each and every e-
mail. We DO promise, however, to read all your suggestions. Thanks!)

To contact us about problems you might be having with your Erols, RCN, or 
Starpower account, please use: [email-masked]

To contact us for help with a specific problem you might be having in using 
your software, please use: [email-masked]

The phone number for around-the-clock Tech Support, is 1 888 376 5638.

(DISCLAIMER: The Tip of the Week or Site of the Week do not necessarily 
reflect official Erols/RCN policy. We do not endorse these or any other 
external sites; we offer this for your information only. The Weekend 
Announcement is governed by our Internet Access Agreement, which you can 
find here:

http://www.erols.com/erols/index/agreement.htm)

We wish you a pleasant weekend!