Kibbles & Bytes Blog

  • In From the Cold

    It has been very cold here recently (sub zero) in the past week. Usually, we get several questions a week about whether or not one should leave a computer in the car when it’s so cold out. The bottom line is: don’t do it.

    The operating range for Apple computers is 50-95 degrees (F). Most of us have used our machines outside this range, but what are the real dangers of leaving a machine in the cold?

    The cold can drastically affect its functionality until it warms up, and in some cases, permanently damage your battery or shorten its lifespan. __Really__ cold temperatures may even cause the machine not to start. The display could be affected until it warms up. The optical drive may not work until its internal lubrication melts. Of course, these are just minor irritations compared to the big issue.

    Anyone who wears glasses knows what happens when you come in from the cold — condensation. The real danger isn’t condensation on circuit boards; plenty of electronic devices live in the cold with no ill effects. The real issue is the hard drive. Even the slightest amount of water on the platters can cause serious damage to the heads and thus, catastrophic data loss.

    So even though none of us tends to wait long enough (just like we don’t wait before swimming after a meal), bring that computer in from the cold altogether, or at the very least, wait an hour or so before turning it on.

  • From the Archives: Doesn't Your Drive Need a Genius?

    __Originally featured in__ “*Tech Tails issue #711*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/techtails/tt711/

    One of the most popular questions I’m asked as a service technician is, “Should I have a utility to check up on my Mac?” The short answer is, yes, you probably should. While there are hundreds of utilities out there, I’m going to focus on the one I use the most, Drive Genius 2 by ProSoft. That’s not to say there are not alternatives that may be just as great, but Drive Genius has been a solid utility that I’ve used since it was first released.

    Drive Genius is a nice solid tool because it incorporates utilities to check the hardware of the hard drive as well as the software. As with all utilities, it’s certainly possible to get false-negatives, but this could definitely help when trying to decide if the issue you’re experiencing is hard drive failure or software corruption. It gives you tools for surface scans, software verification and repair, integrity checks and even defragmentation (which is rarely necessary on a Mac).

    Generally, if we get a machine in the shop and we suspect the hard drive is failing but it’s not as obvious as a drive that’s clicking repeatedly and won’t mount, we start running a surface scan on the drive. A surface scan checks for bad blocks. Some technicians believe that all drives have bad blocks; I respectfully disagree with that assertion. While it’s true that all drives may physically have some bad blocks, those blocks should be identified by software while formatting the drive and they are not used in the volume structure and should not show up in a surface scan.

    To demonstrate that theory, if you run surface scans on 10 “healthy” formatted drives, there should be no bad blocks identified; that’s what we see in the shop. If bad blocks do show up that means something has gone wrong since formatting the drive and that is usually that the hard drive is physically failing. If you only end up with one or two bad blocks you can take the risk and reformat the drive and continue on with your day.

    However, it’s recommended to check up on the drive from time to time because if more bad blocks show up, the drive should be replaced. If a surface scan is run and several bad blocks appear, don’t hesitate to replace the drive.

    A drive displaying bad blocks is not the only type of hard drive failure. I’ve written before about a great tool by DriveSavers that demonstrates several ways a drive can fail. That means that a surface scan is not the end-all-be-all hard drive test.

    If a drive that we suspect is failing passes a surface scan, the next step is usually to run an integrity check. The integrity check measures read/write speeds of the drive and compares it to a “normal” range. If the drive is performing drastically out of the normal range, it’s indicative that it’s time to replace the drive.

    Aside from physical hard drive failure, often times drives that display symptoms of failure (like slowness and constant spinning beach balls) are actually a result of software corruption and not physical drive failure. While you can certainly verify and repair your hard drive’s volume structure by using Disk Utility, Drive Genius includes a “rebuild” function along with verify and repair.

    Rebuild is particularly useful when the repair function is not up to snuff. I would say this is the #1 tool most home users would use. It is important to point out that not all rebuild utilities are made equal. While I love that Drive Genius includes that feature, and I use it regularly, Disk Warrior still wins in my book for its phenomenal ability to rebuild corrupt volumes.

    The final feature you may wish to play with is defragmentation. Basically, when the drive head writes data to a hard disk it rarely puts things in the same physical place on the drive. Since data is constantly being erased and overridden there are pockets of space all over the drive so the drive head finds these pockets and splits the data up among them; this is called “fragmentation.” Over time, if files are badly fragmented it could take longer for the files to be retrieved so you might notice your machine is slowing down.

    On a Mac, some defragmentation happens automatically as part of the boot up process, so most Mac users find they need to defrag much less often than PC users. Some Apple technicians say it’s not necessary to defrag at all, and I’m honestly close to that train of thought. However, I have found it’s helped in some situations; especially if it’s a large drive and has had very large chunks of data erased and re-written. I will say that I would not jump right to this step.

    It’s also incredibly important to back up your data before defragmentation. While that should be an obvious step before running any major utility, I find it’s particularly imperative when defragmenting as I can vouch from personal experience that occasionally defragmentation can end up erasing or misplacing files and if those are system files you might end up with a machine that boots to a flashing question mark or to a kernel panic. That’s no fun!

    If you don’t own a drive utility for your Mac, I encourage you to invest in one. While Drive Genius is my personal favorite, there are certainly others out there (including Onyx , a favorite of our readers) that you can try. Just do yourself a favor and be sure to back up your data first! Enjoy!

  • Hello all,

    The cold persists, and at the time of writing this, the snow has pretty much all sublimated away, though we are expecting some precipitation today.

    For now, everything is covered in the friendly, familiar sheen of road salt and mud and my kids look at me sadly as I drag them in their sled across the pavement from scrap of snow to scrap of snow. So goes January in Burlington.

    Anyway, this week’s fare covers a new storage method and a couple of old friends, so I hope you enjoy and keep warm.

    Thanks for reading.

    Liam
    “*liam@smalldog.com*”:mailto:liam@smalldog.com

  • Looking for a dependable notebook? How about one well under $1,000? We got our paws on some white MacBooks (pre-unibody, circa 2009), and…

  • It’s hard to believe that the month of January is almost coming to a close. Did you make any resolutions this year? Many of us who did are still hanging in, though it helps that we kept them generally realistic!

    Thanks for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes! ‘Til next week.

    _Kali, Mike & Steph_

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  • Cleaning Up Your Mac: Detection

    After some time of owning any type of computer, you might begin to collect large amounts of files. Just like in real life, it is important to regularly do some spring cleaning with your machine in order to keep things running smoothly.

    In computer life, when you run out of space, you run the risk of the computer accidentally overwriting very important system files — such as the ones that make your computer run. It is always a good idea to be proactive with storage management because once those files are overwritten, they are gone forever — only a clean install will guarantee their recovery. Therefore, first I want to talk about a few ways to monitor the amount of free space you have on your Mac.

    If you are using a Mac running OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) or earlier, you can easily check the amount of free space you have by selecting the hard drive icon on your desktop and hitting Command + I. This will open a new window with a section called General containing two lines labeled Capacity and Available. They will respectively tell you the total capacity of the drive and the total amount you have taken up of that drive.

    If you are using a Mac running OS X Lion (10.7) or newer, Apple improved the ability to discern what it taking up space on your machine a little bit better. To find this information open the *Apple Menu* by clicking the apple icon in the top left of your screen and select the *About This Mac* option. In the new window that pops up, click the *More Info…* button. Doing so will open up a different view of the About This Mac window. Clicking on the *Storage* tab will show a visual breakdown of a few predetermined types of files you have on your machine and how much space each is taking up.

    Now you may notice that there is a catch-all category called *Other* and wonder what that is and why it is so big. The short and sweet version is that it is a bunch of important system files that the average person shouldn’t really mess with. However, if you are still interested in figuring out what exactly the “other” category is, comprised of there is a free app called “*Disk Inventory X*”:http://www.derlien.com/index.html that I use to see a complete break down of every thing on my drive. It is sort of like the About This Mac utility on steroids and isn’t for the faint of heart. It even gives you the ability to delete things right from the app. However, I don’t recommend using it for much more than investigating what is taking up space so you don’t accidentally delete something important.

    So you’ve got all this information, now what does it mean? Well, Our IT department suggests that you have 10-20% of your total capacity free on your drive regardless of the type of drive (hard drive or solid state drive). This will ensure that no files are accidentally overwritten. By using these tools you can proactively monitor how close you are getting to that mark and adjust how you are saving or begin moving files.

    In the next installment of Cleaning Up Your Mac, I will detail my best practices for deleting and managing your files to maximize your storage space. Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion.

  • Meet the Small Dogger: Kerry Westhelle

    Hello! Welcome back for another edition of Meet the Small Dogger. This week we are featuring…wait for it…Kerry Westhelle! Kerry is Don’s Executive Assistant, responsible for HR, and is also the girl to beat in Just Dance 3, currently holding the company record for highest score on LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem (Matt is runner up, followed closely by Hapy).

    Kerry started work at Small Dog in September 2008 and has lived in Vermont for 20 years and in the Valley for 10. Although she finds the Valley a little claustrophobic sometimes, it’s a great place to raise kids. Speaking of kids, she has 3 of her very own: Two girls and a boy, ages 19, 15 and 7.

    Kerry is actually one of six kids and when she was little decided that when she got married she would keep her maiden name. She didn’t think her older brother would have kids and wanted to carry on the family name. Luckily, her younger brother was born when she was 8! Kerry also desperately wanted a pet raccoon and although now she’s a voracious reader, she didn’t learn to read until she was in the third grade. The first books she read were the Little House series and still has her old copies.

    Growing up Kerry lived within a couple of hours from the ocean but never really appreciated it until she moved to Vermont. Kerry is also determined to learn how to surf (well) by the time she turns 40 this year. Although tough to do with no ocean and the current temps of -19, I’m fairly confident Kerry can pull this off!

    Kerry is a sucker for vintage clothes, specifically 1940s-50s. She recommends only wearing them in the summer, because “you just automatically feel more ladylike”. She also has psychic abilities when it comes to hair. Whenever she gets her hair highlighted her BFF Mel (who lives in Chicago) will be walking out of a salon at that very moment as well. Every few years they will make the “bangs mistake” and will then talk each other through the growing-them-out stages. Someday they hope to get matching bobby pin tattoos. I think that’s an awesome idea.

    When Kerry is not busy showcasing her sweet moves, reading Little House, dreaming of surfing and cutting her bangs she’s pretty awesome at making people laugh and being an all-around positive gal…We’re all glad she’s around!