Newsletter Archives

• Log files are useful but annoying

  Posted on September 9, 2024 at 02:42 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  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 responding.

  I attempted to reboot it, to no avail — its SSD hard drive had failed.

  The major disadvantage of solid-state drives (SSDs) is that when they fail, they fail suddenly. But mea culpa: I missed a big hint that failure might be imminent. For several days before the failure, it was throwing off Volume Shadow Copy errors that were logged by my backup software. I didn’t notice those errors.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (21.37.0, 2024-09-09).

  On Security Activity logs, Apple, DCOM, Error logs, macOS, Newsletters, Patch Lady Posts, SSDs

• How USB booting leaves a digital trail

  Posted on May 18, 2020 at 01:10 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  LANGALIST

  By Fred Langa

  In all but the most extraordinary circumstances, every PC boot — even one that’s using an operating system installed on a USB flash drive — leaves some digital footprints behind.

  Here are the factors involved … and some of the unexpected places where booting activity might be recorded.

  Plus: Good and not-so-good duplicate file–finding software.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.19.0 (2020-05-18).

  LangaList Activity logs, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Digital footprint, Duplicate file finders, No-trace bootup