TAXMAN Posted May 8, 2013 Report Share Posted May 8, 2013 Hey, I read somewhere on this post that I could put in a SSD and clone my HD so I would not have to reinput all my programs and files again. I think ther was a mention of a particular program. Has anybody tried this trick with sucess. I am leaning on a 250 g ssd but some are telling me to go up to the 500 SSD. What comments do you'all have? Many thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Taxed Posted May 8, 2013 Report Share Posted May 8, 2013 I have not used a SSD but I think if will work. Use any HD cloning software (several are shareware) and make sure you make a mirror copy with the operating system option checked. The new drive will be a mirror copy of the old and will work hopefully. I have done this once or twice but lately i reinstall the op system and software backups to do a clean install and get rid of all the windows junk files that accumulate over the years. It does make a difference in speed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maribeth Posted May 8, 2013 Report Share Posted May 8, 2013 We did that during this tax season. We went with 250G. Used EaseUS to backup (or whatever he did) the original drive; restored it to the SSD. Took a few hours to do the backup but he did it overnight. Slicker than snot. Kept the original (non SSD) drive and now have a full system backup done every day at 12:30 to augment our other backup procedures. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Taxed Posted May 9, 2013 Report Share Posted May 9, 2013 Maribeth have you noticed any appreciable difference in speed with the SSD drive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcb39 Posted May 9, 2013 Report Share Posted May 9, 2013 We did that during this tax season. We went with 250G. Used EaseUS to backup (or whatever he did) the original drive; restored it to the SSD. Took a few hours to do the backup but he did it overnight. Slicker than snot. Kept the original (non SSD) drive and now have a full system backup done every day at 12:30 to augment our other backup procedures. I use EaseUS for backups at least once a month. The neat thing about it is that you can set it back up to an external drive and set it to shut off the computer when done. I do it just before retiring for the night or my IT pal can do it remotely. This is the best backup software that I have used in a long time. "Ghost" was wonderful until you had to get the new version for Win 7. We forgot about that in a hurry. I alternate external drives and do it much more often during peak tax season. Not only does it copy and restore your drive, but IT tells me that you can actually open and read files from the backup. He trusts it and I trust him so "Life is Good!" 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Taxed Posted May 9, 2013 Report Share Posted May 9, 2013 EaseUS is a good product and it is free! If you use Norton Security Suite, it includes a good backup program too. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maribeth Posted May 9, 2013 Report Share Posted May 9, 2013 Maribeth have you noticed any appreciable difference in speed with the SSD drive? Yes and no. Installing software goes much faster. Opening QB data files across the network, still really slow. ATX is working much faster. We have some human time savings because we no longer have to do the weekly housekeeping that we used to do with the old drives -- defragging, error checking. So that gave us a little lift because those items came off of the to do list. Other than that, really not much change. But I have to give a caveat on that. I fired my IT guy in April 2012 for several reasons and went to a new IT guy. It seems like the old IT guy has set the firewalls up on each workstation. Consequently, our entire network was slow, slow, slow, especially ATX 2011. The new IT guy got rid of the network firewalls and fine-tuned the system even more, so that this tax season was much faster than any of our previous tax seasons. Some of that increased speed was because of that fine-tuning and some of it was because of the SSD's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maribeth Posted May 9, 2013 Report Share Posted May 9, 2013 I use EaseUS for backups at least once a month. The neat thing about it is that you can set it back up to an external drive and set it to shut off the computer when done. I do it just before retiring for the night or my IT pal can do it remotely. This is the best backup software that I have used in a long time. "Ghost" was wonderful until you had to get the new version for Win 7. We forgot about that in a hurry. I alternate external drives and do it much more often during peak tax season. Not only does it copy and restore your drive, but IT tells me that you can actually open and read files from the backup. He trusts it and I trust him so "Life is Good!" My IT guy really loves the EaseUS also. Had Ghost before and this certainly is more user friendly, works all by itself with little human attention. Had the other Norton applications in the past and will never use Norton again. I do not believe that there are any human beings at Norton; it is just one big computer in the sky that ignores humans and does what it wants. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Taxed Posted May 9, 2013 Report Share Posted May 9, 2013 My IT guy says the preferred method of Firewall is at the router? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack from Ohio Posted May 9, 2013 Report Share Posted May 9, 2013 My IT guy says the preferred method of Firewall is at the router? He is correct. Get strong hardware firewalls at the router (the conection out to the intenet) and turn off ALL software firewalls on all computers in the system. Things will work much better. 1st hand experience here. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maribeth Posted May 9, 2013 Report Share Posted May 9, 2013 My IT guy says the preferred method of Firewall is at the router? Yes, that is right. But my prior IT guy, who I fired for other reasons than this, had Windows Firewall installed on all 3 computers -- the "server" and the two workstations. So everything was slow, slow, slow. Now, the network is free and the router does the firewall. My goodness, it was h&#l. I fired him for other reasons and then afterwards discovered the issue about the firewall. Only confirmed my decision to use another IT person. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Taxed Posted May 9, 2013 Report Share Posted May 9, 2013 I guess I should hang on to my IT guy (my son)! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kcjenkins Posted May 10, 2013 Report Share Posted May 10, 2013 Sons are the best, you can pay them with a home-cooked meal! Or even just a hug and a kiss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcb39 Posted May 10, 2013 Report Share Posted May 10, 2013 Sons are the best, you can pay them with a home-cooked meal! Or even just a hug and a kiss. It's called LOVE My two full grown (men) sons are my biggest supporters and sometimes my greatest dependents. Just sent a big bowl of home made chili home with one of them tonight. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Taxed Posted May 10, 2013 Report Share Posted May 10, 2013 In addition to being the IT guy they also mow the lawn, snowblow in the winter and do the oil change! Now try to get that type of talent from the Geek Squad! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack from Ohio Posted May 11, 2013 Report Share Posted May 11, 2013 In addition to being the IT guy they also mow the lawn, snowblow in the winter and do the oil change! Now try to get that type of talent from the Geek Squad! What happens when they graduate, and move away? I have an ultra-intelligent software engineer for a son. He is at least 20 IQ points smarter than his Dad. I am proud to tell that. (I also exploit it at every opportunity) He was part of the group that saved the firm I work for in late Feb. Big problem is that he moved away from home a few years ago. Almost 50 miles away. Good thing the internet and cell phones work!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Taxed Posted May 11, 2013 Report Share Posted May 11, 2013 You always want your children to do better than you did! Think about the days when we moved out of our parent's home. There was just snail mail then and Ma Bell! When was the last time your kids wrote you a letter? It is all IM now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lion EA Posted May 11, 2013 Report Share Posted May 11, 2013 I need a teenage son again to help with tech !! Mine is now 30-something and living between two mountains with limited communication, so his tech skills have been slipping. One of his friends was a big help for awhile, but is now busy with career and family. Maybe I could adopt. Be a godmother. Do any of you have a loaner? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Taxed Posted May 11, 2013 Report Share Posted May 11, 2013 Adoption credits are not refundable! And those teenage boys eat a lot! Are you sure you want to do this!!!! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lion EA Posted May 11, 2013 Report Share Posted May 11, 2013 Oh, I do remember those days. Maybe a teenage girl who's always dieting?! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kcjenkins Posted May 11, 2013 Report Share Posted May 11, 2013 There you go. Geek status is not truly gender related, you know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric Posted May 13, 2013 Report Share Posted May 13, 2013 On SSDs: I've got SSDs (Samsung seems to be the top rated brand) in three of our desktop computers. The boot time is amazing, which is further improved by Windows 8. It's less than 8 seconds from the time I push the power button to the desktop, cold boot. I've installed all of my heavy software on it--I love not hearing the hard drive churn away to load large applications. I use Acronis utilities for all of my data migration / cloning / backup / partition editing, but EaseUs is great software for simple drive migration. On Routers: The consumer grade routers sold at Walmart are garbage. There's a lady I work with who pays me to help her with their computer/network issues, and they've gone through two Linksys routers from Walmart and a Netgear router from Staples in less than a year. That's not to say that those companies don't make decent hardware -- they do, they just don't sell it super cheap at retail stores. I gave her my 4 year old Linksys WRT54GL router, and so far it's been the longest running, most stable router she's had so far. Figure on a new router costing between $90 and $160. If you've got a geek you can count on, have them find a Linux-based router with a thriving development community behind it, distributing third party open source firmware. The Asus RT-N16 is a pretty popular choice right now. This brings me to my next point: Update your routers. Routers run on software just like your computer does. People often neglect updating it because a router is one of those set-and-forget devices, but security vulnerabilities are found in router firmware, and updates are released to patch them. An advantage of the third party router firmware (DD-WRT and Tomato USB are popular choices) is that these projects release updates long after the device manufacturer abandons them to support the latest models they release every year. Not only that, but the features in this 3rd party firmware can rival what you find in $600 commercial routers. Still, it's pretty unlikely for someone to target security vulnerabilities in your router's firmware in order to watch your network traffic, but why not apply the updates anyway? I buckle my seatbelt regardless of the probability of getting into a car accident, computer security should be looked at the same way. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Taxed Posted May 13, 2013 Report Share Posted May 13, 2013 You are absolutely right about those cheap routers. They are on 24x7 and unless you have a good quality router it will fail you at the worst possible time. Also those free router's that verizon was giving away was junk! I have had good luck with Linksys routers (5th year so far)! You would think the price of SSD drives would have already come down comparable to mechanical drives by now?? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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