Log files are useful but annoying

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ON SECURITY By Susan Bradley Laboring over the Labor Day weekend, I spent a few hours rebuilding a computer at the office. It had suddenly stopped res
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Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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ibe98765, abbodi86, teuhasn2, Norio, TechTango, Casey S, rc primak, DLivesInTexas, lmacri, fisher75, Alex5723

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Log files: What are they, why do they matter and how to protect them?

Log files come with many challenges. Firstly, they exist as enormous volumes of data. Almost everything that a user does is recorded, meaning that they quickly pile up, and not all of them are useful.

Secondly, they aren’t all uniform as they come in various shapes and sizes, serving various purposes. Event logs, system logs, access logs and server logs are just some of the various types that are collected and stored. This large volume of data means that processing and analyzing logs for use can be time-consuming and complex…

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Doesn’t give a lot of concrete details and not very specific. Was there a reason for the link?

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Mark, TechTango, satrow

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I check SMART codes for drives (through hddscan.exe app) each month when updating computer and apps. I know that SMART codes aren’t the most detailed, but I figure it is better than not checking anything. .

I image entire computer at least once a month, and keep data on a different partition (which may get backed up weekly,) on a different drive, then the operating system.  Plus data is being synced to another computer weekly.

Yes, I have tried using the various MS computer logs for solving problems.  I can’t remember a time when they have helped.

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I just checked. It seems I did have my backup software set to do this already, but I’ll share how to go about setting this in v8 of Macrium Reflect Home edition, for those who also want to check or enable it there.

Click on the Create Backups tab. Then Definition Files tab. Then the Advanced button in the toolbar under Definition Files (the icon that looks like a wrench). Then click the Email button at the top of the window that pops when you open Advanced Options. You can set up an Email Warning notice, ticking the three boxes, entering your email address, an email subject line like Macrium Reflect Warning Notice, and a message to warn yourself that there’s a potential problem such as the one that warned of Susan’s impending SSD doom.

You can do the same to set up an Email Failure when a backup job aborts. It will give you an idea of what to search to see what went wrong. Otherwise you can blithely believe you’re regularly backing up your hard drive, when you’re not.

You have to set these email messages for each different definition file you use. For backups that you don’t initiate manually but rather run on a regular schedule, Macrium doesn’t warn you that you’re having a problem unless you set it to send yourself an email or are regularly opening the program and looking in the log file area. I haven’t gotten burned with hard drive failure, but until I set up Email Failure notices, I have gotten burned with backups not executing when scheduled and not realizing it. Now I do occasionally get heads-up messages that a backup failed, such as when a backup drive got disconnected.

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Jaquin757

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Office C2R logs are very bloated indeed and difficult to understand

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You might want to look at the Event logs occasionally also.

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