Malware and You: Part 3 - Adware

You’re sitting there, surfing along the internet when suddenly a popup comes up, then another, and another. You frantically reboot your computer to get rid of all these popups, but when Windows boots back up, the popups come back too! Congratulations, you’re infected with Adware.

Adware is technically any type of software that automatically displays unsolicited advertisements on your screen. These advertisements can come in different forms; popups, banners or links attached to your programs, and more. Adware on its own, other than being relatively annoying, is harmless for the most part. However it often comes with spyware or viruses and therefore can be a symptom of a much bigger problem. There is also the problem of the advertisements themselves; they can be misleading or at worst lead to sites loaded with other malicious things like viruses.

Of course there are some legitimate uses of adware out there such as developers using it to support their free software and the like. But the type we’re talking about here is the malware version.

Originally, the concept of adware was supposed to be favorable to the people who end up infected with it, the consumers. By using browsing habits and other metrics, the concept was to provide you with advertisements only relevant to what you wanted or needed. By giving you the option to use an “ad supported” version of a program that would normally cost a great deal of money, they could keep their revenue streams strong, while giving you the program for a low price or even free. And on top of it, in theory you’re only seeing advertisements that would interest you.

However, in very little time this semi-annoying but mostly legitimate marketing tool was turned into a new form of malicious software. At first, unscrupulous individuals would create a seemingly legitimate site for an advertisement. Then once their advertisement was approved, they would change that website to send malware and viral payloads to the user. It wasn’t long until flaws and vulnerabilities in Windows XP and it’s web browser Internet Explorer (at the time it was on version 5) were exploited to deliver adware and attached spyware directly to your computer. The adware portion of the packages would display advertisements to sites that were purely scams. Websites would offer things like “Win a free phone” so users would give their personal information freely, hand over their email address, or enter in a credit card. That information would then be harvested for some time before being put to use. Sometimes it would be used to spam your email, or make charges on your personal accounts.

These days, adware is much more rare in a malicious format then it used to be, but it certainly still exists. With improvements to the Windows platform and the newer version of Internet Explorer, many of the ways that used to be used to get adware into your system undetected have been patched. But there is always a chance that an infection of this variety will get in.

The most common source of adware though is programs and free downloads such as games and utilities. The best way to avoid it is simply to avoid anything from sources you don’t recognize. Is a utility promising to make your computer run faster for free? Don’t count on it.

Watch here next week when we’ll continue tackling the myths and facts behind malicious software when we talk about one of the most insidious types: Trojans.

Malware and You: Part 2 - Spyware

As you’ve probably already guessed from the article title, the term Malware is a generalized umbrella term. It means simply Malicious Software and counts among it, many different sub types. Last week we discussed one of the oldest and most malicious forms of that; the virus.

This week, we’ll be discussing another form of these nasties; spyware.

What it is

Spyware is a piece of software that installs onto a computer and gathers information from that computer. It is difficult to detect, because it is designed to stay hidden and gather information. Everything from banking information to browsing habits can be targeted by Spyware.

How it actually works

When spyware is installed onto a machine, it runs in the background and gathers whatever information it has been designed to target. Some spyware will record each and every keystroke you make on your keyboard, even reporting which application or website you were on when you typed them. 

This can give whoever is behind the spyware your usernames, passwords and a plethora of other highly sensitive information to use as they wish. They can also use it to track your browsing habits, and figure out what hobbies you’re into, so you can be targeted with advertising that fits with your interests.

Most spyware masquerades as free utilities or games, browser add-ons, or comes packaged with other so-called free software. There are also security-oriented spyware packages that large companies purposely employ on their networks to monitor their users.

History

Spyware became prevalent much more recently then it’s cousin, the virus. The first recorded program to employ spyware-like behavior was around the turn of the millennia in the form of a game called “Reader Rabbit” by Mattel. It packed a piece of software called Broadcast which was used to send information about a user’s computer back to the company. It was also used to send unsolicited advertisements and discount offers to the customer, making it fall into the category of adware as well, but more on that later.

A study published by AOL and the National Cyber-Security Alliance in 2005, said that 61% of computers were reported as infected with some sort of spyware.  Spyware bloomed over less than 5 years, and had infected over half of all internet users and the biggest reason for this was a security hole in Internet Explorer 6 that allowed many of these spyware applications to install without the user even realizing it.

The security hole was of course long ago patched, but these days spyware simply uses different methods of getting onto your computer.

Vectors of infection

The objective of spyware is to remain functioning and recording for as long as possible on the infected computer, as such their methods for being deployed are usually low key. There are of course security-oriented spyware packages that large companies purposely employ on their networks to monitor their users.  But we’ll focus here on the ones you’ll find “in the wild” so to speak.

Free games and utilities

The best way to get a person to willingly infect themselves with something that spies on them is to convince them it is worth it. This type of spyware offers a service or some sort of entertainment for free, but fails to mention outright that there is a price; your privacy online.

Browser add-ons

Ever install one of those nifty toolbars companies like Google, and Microsoft offer? Yep, that’s spyware. Even the most reputable toolbars are a method of tracking exactly what you search for and where you go on the web. Companies like Google and Microsoft use this as market research, but other toolbars from less-than-reputable sources can and will use that information much more nefariously.

Packaged with other software

Ever download programs like Bear Share, Kazaa, or LimeWire? Then you’ve already fallen for this form of spyware in the past. Many programs like these had a spyware package that would install with them, and if you tried to remove or kill the spyware, the main program would not work. These programs are a legal grey area to begin with, and in fact can get you in trouble depending on how you’re using them, so what better way to track people?

As usual, not everything is going to be brimming with spyware, and there are a lot of publishers and people out there offering spyware free software. You just have to make sure you’re getting your stuff from a reputable website.

Next week we’ll continue our series with a piece of software that often goes hand in hand with spyware, but is its own little nasty package; adware. So stay tuned here.

Malware and You - Part 1: Viruses

Viruses, Malware, Worms, Trojan horses; you’ve heard the names a hundred times but do you actually know what the difference between all these are? Many of these terms get misused on a daily basis, leading to a great deal of misinformation on exactly what each does.

Previously we touched on this subject to give you an idea how these bad guys spread, but in the ever ongoing war, knowledge is power! That’s why over the next few weeks we’re going to break down just what each of these are and what exactly they do. Starting with the word almost everyone knows: Viruses. Despite a lot of the infections you deal with these days being labelled as a virus (even we’re guilty of that for the sake of simplicity); actual computer viruses are not as prevalent as you may think.

What it is

A virus is a piece of software or code that attaches to other programs, and uses them to sneak into a target system and replicate. So every time that program is run, the viruses too run and execute its assigned tasks or reproduce.

How it actually works

Like the common cold or flu, viruses are so named because they transmit and work much like their biological equivalent; instead of attaching to a cell, they attach to a file on your computer so that when that program is run the virus’ code is also run. This allows it to find other files to attach to, replicate, and execute its assigned task.

Some viruses will look for ways off of your computer, such as spreading over a shared drive on a network or attaching itself to USB hard drives and thumb drives. They move fast too; viruses can spread across hundreds or even thousands of computers in minutes or hours, depending on the environment they are in.

As mentioned above, viruses usually aren’t designed just to replicate and spread. Unlike the biological equivalent, they are created by a person behind a keyboard, and as such are designed with a motive in mind. Whether that is stealing personal information or destroying data, there is always a payload involved that achieves a specific goal.

History

One of the earliest instances of a virus was known as the Creeper program, detected on ARPANET (the ancestor of what we now know as the internet) all the way back in 1971. It was an experimental self-replicating program whose primary purpose was to demonstrate a mobile application. Though at the time, the term virus was not explicitly used, it was the first program of its kind. Its capabilities were extraordinarily limited, only infecting a certain kind of computer and offering up a message on it stating “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can.”

The first true computer virus however wouldn’t appear for another ten years. The virus known as “Elk Coner” would be the first of its kind, written in 1981, to get out of a lab and infect personal computers, which were still pretty rare at the time. It was written by a man named Richard Skrenta and attached itself to Apple computers, the precursor to the modern day Mac. Its main method of spreading was good old floppy disks.  What did it do? Not much really, when it was activated it would display a short poem about itself.

This would mark the beginning of the traditional computer virus which started to emerge much more wildly in the 1980s, and of course continuing on to today. They initially spread through things like floppy disks at the time. After all, networking computers together only happened in the military and big businesses, at least until the advent of the Bulletin Board Service.

Bulletin Board Services (or BBS for short) were a computer service that you could connect to via a phone line to share electronic messages, download files, or even play text-based computer games. Essentially, it was a localized version of the internet run by people out of their homes. And it was the primary way that viruses spread globally.

Pirated or shareware software spread like wildfire when BBSes started popping up everywhere, and with them many viruses were able to hitch a ride. This was the beginning of what would bring us into the information age, and require us all to protect ourselves with antivirus software.

Vectors of infection

Viruses in particular, as stated before, are always attached to another program, and as such need something else to spread. Therefore the most common way to get a true virus is downloading pirated software or shareware software from untrustworthy sources, such as bit torrent sites and peer to peer file sharing sites like Limewire.

They can also be spread by other methods, like email, by being hidden in attachments such as documents or archives (also more commonly known as ZIP files).  Most of the time a good antivirus program such as ESET’s NOD32 will catch these kinds of viruses, but there’s always a chance one will slip through.

Stayed tuned for next week when we’ll be talking about another nasty type of malware; Spyware.

Data Recovery: Saving your data

Often times, when you don’t have a proper backup, catastrophe can strike. Your hard drive fails, your flash drive stops responding, and you lose everything. That’s where data recovery comes into play.

Data recovery is the process of salvaging data from unreadable data storage devices like hard drives and USB thumb drives. A recovery may be needed due to several possible causes, such as physical damage or software corruption. But no matter the cause, the key is getting your information back safely.

To this end, there three different types of recovery we do, based on the root problem.

Backup

Though a backup technically isn’t a form of actual data recovery, it is the first step we take to try and retrieve your data. For instance, if your computer is no longer booting, there may not be anything physically wrong with it. In cases where the software that operates your system has become corrupt, we can simply remove your media from the computer and back it up manually to one of our backup servers.

Software Recovery

Of course a backup only works if the data is still present to recover. Sometimes the files may become corrupted or deleted by the computer itself due to a glitch, or even accidentally deleted from the system by the user. In cases like this where data has been erased, though the hardware it was once on is still fine, we can use specialized software to recover the data from ghost traces left behind.

The data recovery software will sweep over every part of the disk, looking for traces of the original file and attempt to rebuild it into what it once was. Of course if the file was overwritten by newer data, or simply became to damaged, there is little chance that the original file can be recovered. Though it most cases it can.

Hardware Recovery/Repair

But if your hard drive has had a mechanical failure, or your USB flash drive has been damaged, then more drastic measures may be required. That’s where we pull out the big guns.

Our partner, CBL Data Recovery, specializes in getting your data back from even the most damaged devices. They can piece together a broken hard drive, or even read a damaged flash chip and try their best to recover any information there once was on it.

They use proprietary techniques involving clean room disassembly and are often able to retrieve data quickly and effectively from a wide array of affected media.

Conclusion

When it comes to catastrophic data loss, you’re not necessarily out of hope. These solutions can often save you when it really counts. But of course, the best solution to keep your data safe is to keep it backed up in the first place, as we discussed last week.

Just some food for thought. Tune in next week for our next article.

Why haven’t you backed up yet?

Just this past month, we in the IT world celebrated World Backup Day. The purpose of which was to raise awareness about just how important it is to backup your data. Most people don’t realize the importance of this simple step until it is too late. Admit it, even now, you probably don’t have a proper backup of all your important data. And why not? Setting up a backup can be extremely cost effective, and requires little effort to maintain.

You’re probably thinking something like”I’ll get to it when I have a chance.” or “it’s on my list to do, I don’t really do anything that risks my data right now anyway.”. That is exactly the type of thought process that we see on a daily basis here at Tech Squad.

At least once a day at our shops we have a computer come in with hard drive failures, data loss due to viral infections, or even full system failures that cost our clients their data. Pictures of their weddings and children, tax and financial information, and more are lost all the time.

Below I have listed some of these causes in a little more detail, to show you just how vulnerable your data really is.

Mechanical failure

Hard drives are one of the few components inside your computer with moving parts. From the reader arm, to the platters there are quite a few potential points of failure. (See our previous article about hard drives here if you would like to know more) As such, they are also the most common component on the system to fail. Anything from physical impacts to your computer, to a nasty electrical surge can utterly destroy a computer’s hard drive in the blink of an eye. And when that happens, it could cost you literally thousands of dollars to get your data back, if its even possible to do so.

More over, newer solid state drives, with no moving parts at all are at risk of physical failures too. For instance, they can only be written to and read from a certain amount of times. Once that limit is hit, they’re no longer usable. As a new technology, they aren’t entirely stable on their own yet either, with their own problems and bugs.

Viral infections

While viruses can’t directly damage your hardware, except in extremely rare cases, they are certainly capable of corrupting and deleting your personal data. Once that data is deleted, there are methods to get it back, but those methods can be costly, extremely time consuming, and not always 100% effective. You could end up spending hundreds of dollars and waiting weeks for your data, only to find that after all that effort some of it is still gone forever.

Environmental disasters

We like to use the example of your house burning down for this around here, but in truth there is a lot more that can put your data a risk. Lightning hitting a power line (your surge protector can only take so much voltage after all), your laptop or mobile device getting stolen during a lunch break in the park, basement floods, and that’s just for starters. The world is an unfriendly place to electronics and technology.

As you can see, from this brief list, data is a very vulnerable and sensitive thing. It’s simple to lose everything you have within the blink of an eye. And it is important for all of us, as users of technology to understand and learn that lesson before we find out first hand what exactly it means to lack a backup.

So what are your options?

Backups are a main course of preparedness, with a side prevention all wrapped up into one. So then, what are the best backup solutions for you? Well there are several that we recommend. As always, a combination of all of these is always going to be the best solution, but if you don’t have at least one of these, you’re putting your personal information at unnecessary risk. So lets go over the options.

External media backups

This is probably the simplest and most widely used form of backup. Simply put, it means using something like an External Hard Drive or USB flash drive to keep a copy of your data on. We never recommend using USB flash drive (also known as USB thumb drives) for this purpose however, as they are not a stable form of media themselves. If possible, use an external hard drive for this method.

For this backup method you can simply just copy the data onto your external drive, or use a backup software program. For Mac computers, we highly recommend using Time Machine as it is not only included with your computer’s software, but it is very effective. For Windows there are many options on the market to do external media backups, and we recommend talking to one of our Techs to find out which method or program would be best for you.

Offsite Backups

The offsite backup is one of the safest methods of keeping your data safe out there. This is the method we recommend above all others. If you only choose one backup method out of this list, this is the one to choose.

Offsite backups (such as the one available from Carbonite) take all the data you specify, and back it up securely in an encrypted format to their servers, which are located in high security data centers. No one but you has access to that data under normal circumstances, and no matter what happens that data can always be recovered. Even in the case of environmental disasters like the ones mentioned before.

Cloud backups

I use the term cloud backup a little different than you’re probably used to here. While most immediately think of things like iCloud and Dropbox, that is only part of this solution. With software like those, not only can you store your data like an offsite backup, but you can have each of your computers linked to the backup as well. So not only is your data safe in a data center as with an Offsite backup, but each of your own personal devices has a copy of that data.

So if only one of your devices fails or goes missing, you have both a local copy and a remote copy of your data to restore it from. Offsite backup restoring can take a great deal of time if you have a lot of information backed up, but using something like this means you only need to do an offsite restore if you have a catastrophic loss of all your devices.

Of course this only applies if you have more than one device (like a desktop and a laptop combination).

So what are you waiting for? Stop putting your data at risk, and give us a call today. We can tailor fit a backup solution for your precise needs, and save you a lot of headache and money down the road.

What Makes a Computer - Part 10: The Other Stuff

(If you missed our previous our previous post click here. Or go back to the beginning of our series here.)

As you’ve seen over the course of our series here, there are quite a few things that make up your computer. But everything we’ve covered is just the basics; the most fundamental parts that make up almost all computers. There are so many things you can add to your computer both internally and externally, that it would take us the rest of our lives to explain them all. We’ve included below just a few of these things, but they are only examples.

These devices are essentially the opposite of your video card. Instead of sending video out, they can receive video from external sources. Most commonly they are used for hooking up your cable TV to your computer so you can watch it there, and record it as you would with a PVR

While most laptops come with this functionality built in, most desktop computers do not. In order to make your desktop computer connect to wireless networks you require either an internal (installed into the inside of your computer), or USB wireless adapter.

The days of dial-up internet, for the most part, are behind us. But that old modem inside your computer still has a couple of uses from time to time. Using it, your computer can become your fax machine. Sending and receiving documents directly from the hard drive.

These examples may not be the most compelling devices on the market, but they do give you a good glimpse at just what you can do with your computer when it is properly equipped. Virtually anything is possible with the right hardware and the right software installed.

Laptops are great for portability and basic day to day functions, but the desktop computer still has, and likely always will have far more room for expansion of its capabilities. And nothing beats a well built, properly configured, custom designed system for performance, reliability, and upgradability. That top of the line laptop you bought just a year ago will be left in the dust in a year or two. But that custom built desktop you had built for you can be kept going for much much longer with the right upgrades.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our series on your desktop computer. With luck we’ve clarified some of the more mysterious portions of your computer, and helped you become a better informed buyer when purchasing your next computer.

As always, we’re here to answer your questions if there is anything you would like to know. Give us a call at 1-866-4BOOTUP or stop on by any one of our locations. And don’t forget to stay tuned here for more articles to help you get to know your technology better.

What Makes a Computer - Part 9: The Video Card

(If you missed our previous our previous post click here. Or go back to the beginning of our series here.)

Video card, display card, graphics card, display adapter are all names for this component of your computer and it is responsible for everything you see on your computer’s display or monitor. Like your sound card it can come integrated with the motherboard of your computer, or as a separate add-in card.

However, unlike the sound card, your video card’s impact on your system’s overall performance can be extreme. Especially these days with operating systems like Windows 7, which does a lot of 3D rendering and special effects on your screen (transparency effects as an example).

Again, just like your sound card, an integrated (built into the motherboard) video card takes a share of your system resources to do its job. Mostly it steals some of your RAM; this can be a small or large amount depending on the video card itself, and the settings of your motherboard.

For gaming and AutoCAD, the video card is one of the most important components of your computer. It affects how well your computer can render everything you see on your screen and how fast that rendering occurs. For instance, your games have what is called a frame rate generally measured in frames per second. Just like your standard theatre film, each frame is a single “still” image that makes up the whole animation. The fps is how many of these frames your computer screen can display per second. For a TV, the average is usually between 24 and 30 fps.

For computer gaming, as an example, that would be considered a relatively low frame rate. A high end video card, with the proper drivers can display hundreds of frames per second. This is also a key reason why PC games are always much more vibrant, smooth, and better looking than games played on devices like an Xbox or PlayStation.

From a professional point of view, the video card plays a slightly different role. With gaming, the video card is fed graphics that have already been created beforehand and just need to be rendered and pushed through to the screen. But when dealing with AutoCAD or designing those very graphics for games, the video card’s role is to render or essentially create those graphics from instructions given to it by the designer or engineer working on it. This takes a great deal more time and calculating from the card itself. To this end, a professional video card is slightly different than a home user’s video card.

While the hardware is very similar, the software (both built into the card and the software that is installed on the computer) access and use the video card quite differently. This simple software engineering difference also increases the video card’s overall price significantly.

But regardless of whether you’re using it for home use or working on a project at work, all video cards have one thing in common beyond their hardware similarities; power usage. In most cases when you’re working with a mid to high end video card, it is going to consume the most power out of any component in your system. In fact, most of the demand for more powerful power supplies (as we discussed in our previous article) is caused by video cards becoming more and more powerful, and as a result needing more and more power.

So while you’re video card isn’t the most important component in your system for everyday use; it is certainly the most demanding.

What Makes a Computer - Part 8: The Sound Card

(If you missed our previous our previous post click here. Or go back to the beginning of our series here.)

Whether it’s notifying you with error beeps that something has gone wrong or playing back your favorite music & movies, your computer’s sound capabilities are a necessary part of how you interact with it. Or, if you’re like us, you may even use your computer as your radio and entertainment system at home or work. This is where your computer’s sound card starts doing its job.

Simply put, the computer’s sound card (also called audio card) is what produces almost all of the audio your computer puts out. In fact on many prebuilt systems these days, the soundcard is integrated with the motherboard. This provides fairly basic, but effective sound support for every day applications and media playback. But the sound quality provided by these integrated sound cards is significantly less impressive than a separate internal sound card.

Like many components of your computer, a sound card can be added into it using one of your internal “slots” as shown below. These add-in sound cards usually have superior sound and performance over the basic audio that your system produces. If you play a lot of games, like to watch HD movies, or listen to high sound quality music, this suddenly becomes very important. Without a good sound card and a nice set of speakers, the sound will be flat, lacking high tones and deep bass.

In some cases having an integrated sound card can cause performance issues as well. Some online games for instance do not perform as well with an integrated sound card due to how the music and sound effects in game are produced. This is due to the fact that your integrated sound card uses a little bit of your CPU and RAM to process sound. But an external sound card has its own memory and processor on it usually, which is dedicated to just dealing with all the sound; leaving your RAM and CPU to deal with other things.

The sound card generally features a DAC (short for Digital Audio Converter) which takes the digitally formatted sound (such as MP3 files) and converts it into an analogue signal for an output device such as an amplifier, a set of speakers, or headphones.

Professional Sound Cards

The home computer of course isn’t the only place that you will see these devices in use. In the recording industry, a computer’s sound card is one of its most important components. Many of these industry computers need to be connected up to high end mixing boards and studio equipment.

They are designed to have low-latency (meaning basically super-fast), to process many sound inputs at once (such as multiple instruments and voices), and have studio level fidelity when recording or playing back. When you are listening to an MP3 for instance, you are listening to a compressed quality version of the song. This means a great deal of the sound quality and fidelity has been lost, which is unacceptable for a studio’s usage.

Professional level sound cards are commonly called “audio interfaces” and can be a fair bit larger than your average sound card. They may even require being mounted outside the computer on a rack or some similar mount.

So whether you’re an audiophile or a casual listener, if you use your computer for music, movies, or gaming; your sound card will determine the quality of audio coming into and out of your computer. And when used in combination with the right speakers, it can make your home entertainment center look like a cheap radio.

What Makes a Computer - Part 7: The RAM

(If you missed our previous our previous post click here. Or go back to the beginning of our series here.)

If you think of your hard drive as your computer’s long term memory, the RAM (an acronym for Random Access Memory) would be your computer’s short term memory.

The computer’s RAM is used to load programs you run, such as Microsoft Word, from the hard drive while it’s running. Taking the program into the RAM allows the CPU to read that program’s instructions much more quickly than it could if it were to read it directly from the hard drive. This is especially necessary for software in current day, which is made up of millions of lines of instructions that need to be read and executed by the CPU more quickly than your average hard drive can be read.

To put this in perspective, think about how quickly Word opens a document from your hard drive. Even large documents with lots of pictures can take only a few seconds to load up after you tell it to open. Even that small amount of time is too long for a CPU to wait. As we discussed in our previous article, the CPU executes millions of instructions every second. That’s a whole lot more information than even the biggest word documents.

Appearance

RAM modules come in a variety of types, but generally speaking they all have a similar appearance, as shown below.

The main distinguishing feature is the amount of pins on the bottom of the stick and where the spaces are placed between those pins. This design is to ensure the wrong type of RAM won’t be installed into a system that does not support it.

Capabilities

Many people consider the overall clock speed of their CPU as the end-all be-all of their computer’s performance capabilities. But in actuality, that is only part of the picture. No matter how fast your CPU is, it can only perform as fast as it can load data from the computer’s RAM.

So if you have the most blazing fast CPU in the world, but the cheapest and slowest RAM you can purchase, you’re computer’s overall performance is only going to be average or mediocre. Interestingly enough, this is indeed a barrier in the development of faster CPUs in our modern age.

Since the home computer first came out, CPUs have been increasing in overall performance at a rate of about 55% per generation up until Intel’s Core 2 Duo generation. Since then, they have had little success in vastly improving CPUs any more. This is because at the same time, RAM has only been increasing in performance at a much lower 10% per generation.

Current day RAM capabilities simply haven’t kept up with their CPU partners, and have become a bottleneck on the system. That’s why, though a vastly improved architecture over the Core 2 family, the Core I family of processors have been a much smaller improvement overall.

Another interesting thing about RAM is, unlike your hard drive, when RAM is no longer receiving electricity, the information on it simply ceases to exist. So everytime you power down your computer, your RAM is completely cleared. This is why programs don’t remain always stored in your RAM if you have a great deal of system memory.

This means that it is questionable if you really need more then 4 to 8 Gigabytes of system memory. There are of course circumstances where more RAM is better. Such as doing a massive amount of multitasking, like programmers or engineers tend to do.

For your average home user, using Microsoft Windows 7, the 4 to 8 Gigabytes mark is usually more than sufficient to run all the programs you need.

What Makes a Computer - Part 6: The Hard Drive

(If you missed our previous our previous post click here. Or go back to the beginning of our series here.)

Those vacation pictures from Cancun, this year’s QuickTax files, that video from your child’s birthday party; all these things have one thing in common. They are stored on the hard drive (short for hard disk drive) of your computer.

Many people mistakenly call the computer itself by that name, but in actuality your hard drive is just another component that makes up your computer. It is where all the information on your computer is stored. This includes all your programs, pictures, music, documents and anything else that you use from day to day.

Your computer’s hard drive is a metal case, no larger than a paperback novel. I should note this is of course for a desktop computer; laptop hard drives are significantly smaller. Inside tihs metal case is two rapidly spinning rigid spinning disks (or more commonly known as “platters” within the industy). These disks can be made of metal themselves, or more commonly, made of another material and coated in a magnetic material. Magnetic heads hover over these platters, much like the needle on a record player and arrange the magnetic fields across the surface into the patterns that make up your data.

Because hard drives is the only internal component in your computer that have moving parts (aside from the fans of course), it is also the most likely to fail. That’s why we always recommend keeping a backup outside of your computer, either on an external hard drive or using an offsite backup solution.

Hard disk drives have been around since the 50s, when IBM introduced its first model. This first drive was around the size of two refrigerators, and stored about 3.75 Megabytes of data. To give you an idea of how much data that is, your average hard drive these days stores 500 Gigabytes or 512,000 Megabytes of information. But that’s just an average drive. We have drives now that can hold 2 Terabytes (2,097,152 Megabytes) or more! That’s over one million times the capacity of that original hard drive.

Solid State Drives

But these are just your standard hard drives. These days we have a new breed of hard drive known as the Solid State Drive. This is a hard drive that has no moving parts, and uses memory chips instead of platters to store your data. Below is a comparison between the two drives. The left one is a disassembled laptop hard disk drive, and the right one is a solid state drive.

Though these drives are generally much smaller in storage space (usually no more than 160 Gigabytes) in size, they have several advantages over their mechanical cousins. The main one being the previously mentioned lack of moving parts. Without reader heads passing over the disks, or spinning metal platters, the chances of drive failure due to the system taking a physical impact are much much lower. Have you ever jarred a record player, or even your XBox while it is in use? The record or CD can get badly scratched, and with the XBox can even render the game completely useless in one bump. Hard drives aren’t quite that fragile of course, but they can still be badly damaged because of the same effect.

But that’s not the only reason these small drives are better. Without the need to spin up or position the reader head, the drive performs much faster. Much like your USB thumb drive, when a solid state drive is powered up the data is immediately accessible. No need for the reader heads to seek out the data on the platter, its just all there. Windows boots up in a fraction of the time off of these drives, games load faster, and files save faster.

These drives aren’t perfect though. Aside from the much smaller amount of space they provide, they’re still vunerable to electrical surges and manufacturer defects like any other component. None the less, they are a great step forward in data storage technology, and as they continue to be developed they just might replace your traditional hard disk drives alltogether.