John Benson dot com

A couple years ago my trusty Dell laptop started to take a turn for the worst. Like many Windows users I could see the telltale signs that things were up. Our old friend, the Blue Screen of Death, reared its ugly head a few times and the system felt unstable in general. This was well outside my reinstall cycle so I quickly ran a full backup to make sure I didn’t lose everything and within an hour there was a lovely clicking noise coming from the hard disc.

I quickly dispensed with a couple first level help desk personnel and eventually found a person with authority to authorize a replacement for me. The drive would arrive in a couple days and as long as I was comfortable with it, I could do the replacement myself. Expecting a long wait without a laptop, I was pretty pleased until I learned the catch. I had to mail the old drive back to Dell for remanufacturing. I wasn’t about to send my drive anywhere, let alone to have my data given to some future participant in a similar process.

I explained that I wasn’t going to have it because there was sensitive information on the drive. Explaining to the support guy that I was obligated to keep the information secret, he put me on hold to find a solution. The only way that Dell would allow me to keep the drive was to sign an affidavit…which was fine with me until I read the affidavit which read that I was a US Government Contractor with classified material on the drive. I had neither.

After some critical thinking by both of us, we came to the conclusion that since Dell was expecting a drive with a mechanical problem that it could be in any form imaginable. This was a great deal because

1. I got my first hands on experience with the inner workings of a laptop hard drive.
2. I found out how hard it is to actually smash platters.
3. Dell got a drive with some mechanical problems to salvage.

Fast forward to a couple months ago when the logic board on my Mac went out. It wouldn’t turn on so the girl at the Genius Bar went right into the paperwork. She explained that if the hard disc had to be replaced I wouldn’t be getting any of my old data back. I asked about receiving the old one for a while so I could try and retrieve the data in that case and she told me that couldn’t happen. I didn’t really sweat that since I had a week old backup at home. Then she brought the house down with this one..

What is your administrator password?

I looked at the other guy working the Genius Bar who knows my background a bit more and we both started to laugh. I needed a new logic board…there’s no reason for them to know any of my passwords…let alone the root. She said it was so they could test it to make sure it would boot. She was sympathetic and we both settled on something random to put on the form.

Is keeping hard drives a security issue as Dave Winer thinks? Not really.

Your machine belongs to the person at the keyboard whether it be you, the Geek Squad kid making $7 an hour and stealing all the porn he can find, or the guy who took your laptop out of the back seat of your Range Rover sporting that trendy Apple sticker.

This is one of the many reasons to use encryption. If I send my Mac to be serviced and the hard disc has to be replaced tomorrow I’m confident that the recipient has access to none of my information. While it’s true that Apple needs to take security more seriously and certainly shouldn’t be asking people for their passwords just keeping the drive is only a vulnerability if you make it so.

Something tells me that Bruce Schneier doesn’t lose sleep over this.

Snow is on the ground, lights adorn houses and trees around the neighborhood.  It’s the holiday season leading to a fresh new year ahead of us.  The new year is a perfect time to do some maintenance on your computer as you tick away the seconds to your holiday break from work or school.  For the GTD crowd, it’s also a great time to do your yearly review and clear your Inbox.
I therefore give you a set of tasks that you should do to make sure that when January 2 rolls around, you’ll be using a stable, fast machine.
Lets start with that Mac you have laying around.  Sure you don’t have to defrag throughout the year, but because you’re not constantly tweaking the machine to make it work, it’s bound to be a little cluttered.
ep 1:  Clean and Backup
Start with your Documents folder.  There are no doubt a number of folders which have old stuff which you don’t need on your internal HDD anymore.  I had a few disc images laying around (Blackhat Briefings Slides, Ubuntu Images) which could be deleted.  Everything which I haven’t opened in a few months gets placed into my 2006 archive folder, which will soon be placed on my external HDD, zipped/encrypted and uploaded to my webserver, and burned and given to friends for off-site backup.
Somewhat in keeping with the GTD methodology, I created a References folder which houses various text files on Joomla development, PHP, and all the other files which I’ve saved but really didn’t have a home.  
Don’t forget to go through your Pictures folder to sort and cull all the pictures which aren’t worthy of being in your iPhoto library.
It’s kind of scary to see such a clean Documents folder, but there is so much less to look at.
Step 2:  Clean up your Apps
You’re going to need an application like AppZapper which will make double-damn sure that all the remnants of your apps are gone once you delete them.  I just start at the top of the list and work my way down, zapping all kinds of shareware as I go along the way.  Do I really need 3 different RSS readers?  I don’t think so.
If you see an app that you don’t even remember downloading…that definitely gets the axe.
Step 3:  Consolidate the iTunes Music Library
If your music collection is epic in size, then you’re probably using an external hard drive to house your library.  Sometimes, though, you may import some new music when you’re away from your drive the music is placed on your internal drive.  Simply select Consolidate Library when your external is connected and you’ll be able to delete the files (through the finder, not iTunes) from your internal HDD.  
Step 4:  Take one more long look
Using a neat little program called Disk Inventory X, scan your HDD for extra files which may have been hiding, stealing valuable space.  The scan takes a while and will slow your Mac down, so go get some coffee while it runs.  Garage band files proved to be taking up a great deal of space, which I could take off.
Step 5:  Update your software
Go beyond Software Update and find out if there are new versions of some of your software and widgets.  Many apps check automatically, but I usually turn that off because the updates aren’t critical.
Step 6:  Full System Backup
Now that your drive is neat and tidy, you can create a backup of your whole system (not just your archives) just in case something catastrophic happens.