News Blog

Acronis True Image backup software.

(Credit: Dong Ngo/CNET)

After I blogged about how Acronis misinterpreted its survey data, mistakenly reporting an alarming 87 percent of users back up their data only once every two or three months, the company released a revised report on the matter on Thursday.

The new report shows that nearly two-thirds (64 percent, as opposed to the earlier contention of 87 percent) of users back up their computers every two or three months, which is still much less frequently than is recommended to keep data safe.

In addition, the survey found that 80 percent of the some 6,100 participants surveyed in North America have experienced data loss or recovery of some sort.

The survey suggests that most of us need to take backup more seriously, and do it on a much more frequent basis. This is especially important considering the increasing risk of malware to computers, which often store critical data, such as financial and personal information.

The survey also found that 81 percent of users have had to reinstall their computers' operating systems or software applications. According to the survey, data loss cost those affected significant time and effort, with 48 percent of those surveyed reporting that the reinstallation process took more than four hours on average.

Personally, I don't know how credible these numbers are considering the error found in the previous report. Nonetheless, I can't stress how important backing up is. I've seen many friends learn this lesson the hardest and most expensive way.

Apart from Acronis True Image--which is one of my favorite backup programs, because of its capability to automatically create an exact copy of the hard disk and allow you to restore the entire machine--you can also use other free programs, such as GFI Back Up Home Edition. Or just get an external hard drive and simply copying information over.

Think of backing up as automobile insurance: it's a hassle to have and you hope you'll never have to use it, but it's really dangerous and sort of irresponsible to go without it.

The survey section where the percentages were taken out--the numbers just don't justify what Acronis said in its report.

(Credit: Acronis)

Acronis, a major vendor of backup software, released a report earlier this week stating that about 87 percent of computer users back up their data once every two or three months--way less frequently than recommended. This suggests that most of us live dangerously when it comes to backing up.

The survey was widely reported in the press, but it turns out the numbers didn't seem to go well with Acronis' report.

The percentages released to the media were taken from the question "How often do you back up your hard drive or files?" Results include: 48 percent for "once a week (or more)"; 55 percent for "2-3 times a month"; 81.5 percent for "once a month"; 86.8 percent for "every 2-3 months", 91.4 percent for "2-3 times a year", 94.6 percent for "once a year or less"; and 25.5 percent for "never."

It may be that I'm Asian and extra good with math, but I couldn't help but notice that when added up, the numbers total around 500 percent. Other ways to interpret the chart didn't justify the reported 87 percent, either. So maybe you're not as bad at backing up as some media reports told you you were.

1.5TB is the new 1TB.

(Credit: Seagate)

Really, one terabyte isn't enough? If so, you'll be pleased to know that your insatiable need for more digital storage has left Seagate no choice but to announce the world's first 1.5TB hard drive. The half-terabyte jump over previous highest capacity 1TB drives, Seagate is happy to point out, represents the largest jump in capacity in hard-drive history. The 3.5-inch Barracuda 7200.11 uses perpendicular magnetic recording, which squeezes more 1s and 0s per square inch than conventional drives, to pack 1.5TB of storage space over four platters. Seagate isn't sharing pricing details yet. The drive will begin shipping in August.

Also today, Seagate announced a pair of 500GB laptop drives, the Momentus 5400.6 and the Momentus 7200.4. These 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm 2.5-inch drives won't ship until Q4 of this year.

[Press release]

The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B spreads 1TB of capacity over only three platters.

(Credit: Hitachi)

Hitachi was first to hit the terabyte mark when it announced the 1TB Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive in January 2007. Fast forward a year and a half, and the company is back with not a larger version of the drive but a more efficient model in the Deskstar 7K1000.B. Like its predecessor, the 7K1000.B is a 3.5-inch, 7,200rpm hard drive that serves up 1TB of storage space and a 32MB buffer. It hits that magic terabyte mark, however, by using only three disks--down from the five-disk design of the older 1TB drive. It also borrows from Hitachi's 2.5-inch mobile drives and includes Bulk Data Encryption.

Hitachi says the new three-disk design improves idle power consumption up to 43 percent compared with last year's model. Fewer platters should also mean improved reliability, acoustics, and seek times. The Deskstar 7K1000.B also matches Samsung's Spinpoint F1, which was the first three-disk drive to offer 1TB of capacity.

While desktops go missing at a much slower rate than laptops, that didn't deter Hitachi from offering Bulk Data Encryption on the Deskstar 7K1000.B. This feature encrypts data as it is written to the drive and decrypts when it's retrieved. This hard drive-level security is superior to software or system-level security measures, and it has no impact on system performance.

The Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B will sell for $239 when it starts shipping later this month. Hitachi will also ship the Deskstar E7K1000 this month for $279, an enterprise version of the drive designed for low-duty-cycle, 24x7 applications.

Updated 12:00 p.m. Thursday with additional Trusted computing Group comment.

Early this decade, Microsoft weathered unrelenting criticism over a controversial set of technologies known as Palladium, which the company envisioned as creating a kind of secure vault to store passwords or medical records.

Academics warned it could "support remote censorship" and blacklists, likening Palladium to the Soviet Union's efforts to register typewriters and fax machines. Privacy activists predicted it would hand Microsoft "an unprecedented level of control" over the world, and free software doyen Richard Stallman solemnly dubbed it "treacherous computing."

It worked, kind of. Microsoft retreated by doing what any large bureaucracy tends to do in response to such a kerfuffle: it gave its problem a new name. Palladium became the awkwardly-titled Next-Generation Secure Computing Base, or NGSCB, (and the group Microsoft coalesced around the initiative changed its name from Trusted Computing Platform Alliance to Trusted Computing Group) and critics mostly moved on to worry about the recording industry and other threats to digital liberties instead.

Since then, the NGSCB--once derided as "nagscab"--has existed in an odd kind of technological purgatory. One report in 2004 said that Microsoft has "killed" NGSCB, which the company quickly denied later the same day. CNET News.com published a story in 2005 quoting Microsoft as saying NGSCB was "still coming."

After six years, the supposed world-striding colossus of a technology that once sparked so much fuss (one reviewer said it might become "either Santa or Satan") is much diminished. NGSCB never did live up to its early promise--or what critics would have said was its early threat as a digital rights management tool that would restrict how people consume content on their PCs and lock them into one vendor.

"It has changed from something that was very revolutionary and grandiose into something much more modest," said Andrew Jaquith, a senior analyst at Yankee Group.

And then came BitLocker
NGSCB does live on, manifesting itself in a Microsoft technology called BitLocker, a Microsoft spokesman confirmed.

BitLocker, Microsoft's only product to come from the Trusted Computing effort, is a feature in Windows Vista Enterprise, Vista Ultimate, and Windows Server 2008 that encrypts the disk drive to protect against data theft or exposure if the computer is lost or stolen. (Trusted Computing should not be confused with Trustworthy Computing, which is Microsoft's effort to improve the security of its own products and is largely considered to be successful.)

While it is useful, BitLocker hasn't taken the computing world by storm yet, or even been enough to justify upgrades to Vista, said Rob Helm of Directions on Microsoft.

"BitLocker hasn't been the rage anybody expected, although there is a strong case for using that feature on laptops," he said. In addition, plenty of third-party products--many offering whole disk encryption--exist.

Bruce Schneier, crypto researcher, author, and chief security technology officer of BT, was one of the more vocal critics when Microsoft first unveiled its Trusted Computing plans in 2002. In 2005, he was still beating the drum, writing that Microsoft was attempting to stall, and possibly get Vista exempted from a best practices document for the Trusted Computing Group that addressed many of the critics' concerns.

The Best Practices Principles (PDF), which was written in 2003 and eventually published in 2005, gives consumers some control over disabling the functionality, allows devices to support multiple users, adds privacy protections, and calls for interoperability and portability of data.

"We were concerned that users were able to opt in and not be controlled from above," said Susan Landau, a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems who worked on the Best Practices document after Sun joined the Trusted Computing Group. Sun was not a member of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance.

"The public criticism certainly created pressure," especially when it conflicted with consumer privacy guidelines in Europe and elsewhere, she said.

"I think it's interesting that the (Trusted Computing Group) technology is continuing, but the big DRM push, so far, has not happened," Landau said.

Putting trust in a module
The centerpiece of the Trusted Computing Group is the Trusted Platform Module, a microcontroller that stores keys, passwords, and digital certificates in a secure, isolated area. They are widely distributed in computers from Dell, Fujitsu, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lenovo, Toshiba, and others, but most people don't even know they are there. BitLocker makes use of the Trusted Platform Module.

Microsoft has "convinced a lot of hardware manufacturers to put the chips in computers and they're in a lot of computers, but they're not doing anything," Schneier said. "The question is what are they going to do with the chips? How is Dell feeling these days?"

A Dell spokesman did not return a call seeking comment. Even Scott Rotondo, president of the Trusted Computing Group, acknowledges that the Trusted Platform Modules need more applications.

"A lot of them haven't been utilized fully and in some cases not at all," said Rotondo, who works as a senior staff engineer in Solaris Security Technologies at Sun. "The supporting infrastructure has been slow to materialize."

"It stands to reason that there might be frustration on the part of hardware manufacturers," Rotondo said, likening it to a "chicken and egg situation."

"We need to really make use of these things before the hardware manufacturers get tired and take them away," he added.

Trusted Platform Modules "have not yet fulfilled their potential, but Microsoft and other companies are working on it," the Microsoft representative said.

A Trusted Computing Group spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the organization is not focused on DRM and that applications that use the TPM include secure e-mail, multifactor authentication, password management, and single sign-on. The group is also working to extend the concepts of hardware-based security to storage, network security, and mobile devices, she said.

While initial concerns about misuse of the technologies slowed down the group's efforts, people see legitimate uses for the technology, and digital rights management could be among them, Rotondo said. However, any digital rights management systems would have to maintain a proper balance between the rights of the content owner and the rights of the consumer, he said.

Where Microsoft failed in doing that, Apple has succeeded, according to Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley-based technology forecaster.

"The biggest thing that has changed in the last five years is iTunes and the iPhone," he said. "The companies got their protection and the consumers got the right to purchase individual songs at a price that was less than the cost of the album."

Don't discount Microsoft just yet, warns Ross Anderson, a security engineering professor at the University of Cambridge's Computer Lab and an early critic of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance.

Asked if the world has been spared a Microsoft digital rights management machine, Anderson responded in an e-mail: "Wrong--WMP (Windows Media Player) and the surrounding stuff that MS hopes will enable it to do to the HDTV market what Apple did for MP3s."

Saffo joked: "It's like a horror movie; they'll be back."

(CNET News.com's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report.)

A service pack became available Tuesday for CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 illustration and desktop publishing applications.

Corel's updates add support for more than 25 new camera RAW formats. The company also aimed to iron out some graphic design workflows.

"With this service pack for CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4, we have focused on addressing the major feedback provided by our users," said Gerard Metrailler, senior director of Corel's graphics product management.

Users can obtain the updates automatically via the installed software, or by visiting Corel.com. A free trial of the suite is also available.

CorelDRAW Graphics Suite X4 includes CorelDRAW for illustration and page layout, PhotoPaint for photo editing, and PowerTRACE for bitmap-to-vector tracing. The package, considered a competitor to the more expensive Adobe Illustrator and InDesign CS3, works on Windows Vista and XP systems.

Corel also sells the image applications Painter and PaintShop Pro, as well as WordPerfect X4, a competitor to Microsoft Office.

Earlier in June, the Ottawa, Ontario-based company announced an early preview of its Designer Technical Suite X4, which includes CAD 3D and AutoCAD compatibility.

The inventor of the Sugar user interface used in the One Laptop Per Child's XO says his company is developing a version for Intel's own low-cost laptop.

(Credit: Intel)

Walter Bender said in an interview Thursday with PC World that "a community volunteer is working with Intel on Sugar for the Classmate PC. Sugar Labs helped to expedite the relationship."

Bender is the inventor of the kid-friendly interface, which sits on top of a computer's operating system. His company, Sugar Labs, was spun off from OLPC in May. At the time of the announcement, Bender said Sugar Labs was already talking about sharing the UI with at least four other low-cost laptop makers, including Asus.

He described OLPC as the "primary, but not exclusive, downstream project" for Sugar Labs, and confirmed that the two companies continue to work together on further development of the UI.

That Intel will be working tangentially with OLPC again is notable. The chipmaker left its position as board member of OLPC in January, citing "fundamental differences" between the two companies' visions for low-cost computing. Previous to that, OLPC's founder Nicholas Negroponte had asked Intel to stop selling their Classmate PC platform because it was interfering with sales of the XO. Unsurprisingly, Intel declined his request.

Flexing its muscle at online retailers.

(Credit: Nvidia)

If you've gone video card shopping online lately, you may have noticed that you certain retailers are now asking you to click through to your shopping cart to see a price for Nvidia-based 3D graphics cards. As H Enthusiast reported earlier this week, that newly inconvenient shopping experience is part of a calculated effort by Nvidia to regulate the advertised pricing of its 3D cards.

The gist is that Nvidia is conducting a test run of this pricing scheme, and if online retailers like NewEgg, Buy.com, and others don't comply, they will face a series of penalties, and ultimately they will be cut-off from Nvidia-based 3D cards after a certain number of infractions. This strategy, called Manufacturer Advertised Pricing, is not exactly price-fixing, but it's illegal in other countries, and, as H enthusiast reports, it's only recently legal in the U.S.

Compliance thus far seems spotty. Some cards listed at NewEgg obfuscate the price, others with the same chip do not. The same with TigerDirect. Amazon, Buy.com, and ZipZoomFly all list prices as normal.

Nvidia's reasons for implementing this strategy are unclear. H Enthusiast was not able to get anyone on the record, although the going theory seems to indicate that it's a way to regulate non-US certified board partners from undercutting the Nvidia-approved US competition.

With only some vendors complying with Nvidia's request, and only then partially, it seems that Nvidia's plan is only an occasional annoyance. Whether Nvidia makes the plan permanent, cracks down on stray listings, and forces other retailers to go along all remain to be seen.

IBM's Roadrunner supercomputer was named the fastest supercomputer in the world Wednesday after breaking the petaflop barrier earlier this month.

(Credit: IBM)

Good news for green tech: The fastest supercomputer in the world is also one of the most energy efficient. That's according to the Top500 supercomputers list, to be released Wednesday at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany.

Twice yearly, the list measures the 500 most powerful computer systems available commercially. This year, the 31st time the list has been put together, the honor of top supercomputer goes to IBM's Roadrunner, which is housed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Los Alamos National Laboratory. It's the first system to reach 1.026 petaflops (1 petaflop is equal to a quadrillion, or one thousand trillion, calculations per second).

For perspective, last year's most powerful computer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's BlueGene/L--also made by IBM--reached 208.6 teraflops. This year that computer ranked No. 2, reaching a max processing speed of 478.2 teraflops.

Fun fact: the fastest supercomputer in the world--used to monitor the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile--is really just a PlayStation 3 on steroids. Roadrunner is based on the IBM QS22 blades, which are built using advanced versions of the Cell processor in Sony's PS3. It also runs using x86 chips from Advanced Micro Devices, making it the world's first hybrid supercomputer.

In total, Roadrunner takes up 278 refrigerator-size server racks, and connects 6,562 dual-core AMD Opteron and 12,240 Cell chips.

IBM, which continues its dominance of supercomputing, makes 210 of the 500 systems, including 5 of the top 10. Hewlett-Packard is close behind, however. HP makes 183 of the fastest computers, including the No. 8 fastest system known as EKA, located in Computational Research Laboratories' data center in Pune, India.

Rounding out the top 10 is Sun Microsystem's Ranger at No. 4, Cray's Jaguar at No. 5, SGI's Encanto at No. 7, and SGI's Altix at No. 10.

On the processor side, Intel dominates the high-end market with 75 percent of all systems on the list and 90 percent of the quad-core based systems that were ranked.

Supercomputing, which pits the highest-end machines against challenges such as forecasting the global climate in coming decades or finding oil reservoirs underground, is a fast-changing field. The Top500 list once again had the most turnover compared with the preceding list, according to the researchers who compile it.

The main measurement used in compiling the list is the Linpack measurement, which puts each system through its paces by having to solve a dense system of linear equations.

The Top500 acknowledges that Linpack isn't a complete test of system performance, but it's a way to test for performance on a similar problem across each system. The need for a more complete benchmarking system has been under discussion for several years.

Some additional interesting statistics about the June 2008 list:

* Quad-core processors are used in just over half of the systems.

* The bulk of the systems (208 of the 500) contain between 2,049 and 4,096 processors. That's more than double the systems that used that amount just six months ago.

* Four of the top five computers (Nos. 1, 2, 3, and 5) are located in U.S. Department of Energy labs.

* The U.S. continues to be home to the most computing power in the world. Just over half of the systems (257) are located in the U.S. The U.K. is next with 53, followed by Germany with 46, France with 34, Japan with 22, and China with 12.

After "not specified," the most popular application area for these superfast computers is finance (15.2 percent of the list), followed by research (10 percent), geophysics (9.8 percent), information service (6.2 percent), and service (5.2 percent).