Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
July 11, 2005

Terry's Computer Tips Newsletter
http://www.terryscomputertips.com
A computer tips newsletter for users of PC's.

Volume 1, Number 4 -- Monday, July 11, 2005
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3


2.  Hard drives, partitions and "drives"

Many of today's computers from the big-name manufacturers come with multiple partitions on the computer's hard drive.  Your manual might refer to a "utility partition" or a "recovery partition" or even both, as well as talking about your C: drive.  So, what are these things?

Terminology is part of the problem.  Sometimes, "drive" means the physical piece of equipment.  In Windows terminology, "drive" can also mean a partition that is formatted in a way that Windows can recognise it and read or write to it.  For example, your C: drive is one such formatted partition.  It could take up the whole physical hard drive, but it doesn't have to.

Let's take a simple example, where you have one physical hard drive in your computer.  By "physical hard drive," I mean the piece of hardware that has some magnetic disks inside it and some magnetic reader/writer heads to actually read or make changes to the disk.  Without partitions, this is a piece of useless junk -- it is only valuable to someone who is going to write partitions on it and then "format" it for data.  

The first step in getting a new (or replacement) hard drive ready to be used by your computer is to at least one partition on it.  That is, to magnetize portions of the drive in certain ways that Windows (or Linux, or whatever Operating System you use) will know how to recognize. At this point, all that we have is certain portions of the hard drive allocated into "primary partitions and/or an extended partition.  An extended partition can be divided into one or more logical partitions.  Each of these, once it is formatted can hold programs and data and can be bootable, depending upon the operating system.  

Let's write one partition on it, taking up the whole physical drive.  To be a bootable Windows partition, this partition has to be created as a "primary partition," so we'll make it a primary partition as we create it.

At this point, we still have an unusable piece of hardware.  A primary partition could be used for almost any type of operating system.  Our next step is to "format" the partition -- that's where we write lots of little markers all over the partition.  These magnetic markers are designed so that the drive and the operating system can quickly figure out WHERE the read head is on the drive, synchronize with the formatting marks and the data, so it can actually read the magnetic patterns of data.  Those are what we want -- why we have the drives in the first place.

Why are partitions important?  So you can segregate data and different OS installations from each other.  Computer manufacturers use hidden partitions, that are not normally visible from Windows, to keep their recovery utilities and recovery data.  If you use the recovery utility (or recovery CDs), you will usually replace the entire partition that has Windows on it with a factory-fresh installation.

Another reason for multiple partitions is so that you can install multiple operating systems.  If you wanted to install Windows and Linux, for example ,you set them up in different partitions.  Similarly, you could set up multiple versions of Windows or multiple versions of Linux and boot whichever one you wanted to boot.


3.  I hate spam

spam -- the bane of email.  First, please notice that I did not capitalize "spam."  "Spam" is a
spam.com">Hormel Foods Corporation trademark for its chipped ham luncheon meat.  "spam" is a term for unsolicited, commercial email.  Unsolicited -- you didn't ask for it.   Commercial -- it is selling something.  Email -- you know, letters from the Internet.

I used to hate junk mail.  Seems like I got 2 or 3 different envelopes in the mail each day wanting to get me to buy this, subscribe to that, win this free car, or whatever.  Now, I almost like junk mail -- at least it cost someone to print and mail the stuff.

spam, on the other hand, is tremendously cheap to send.  spammers make their money by volume.  A spammer might send a couple million emails advertising mortgages.  If one recipient in ten thousand uses the spam to get a mortgage, the spammer may make 200 times a $50 referral fee ($10,000) or more.  What did it cost him?  A temporary email account at any of a number of ISP's, perhaps even "charged" on a fake credit card.  Or, he might be using some of the thousands of subverted home computers, whose innocent owners know nothing of this, to send it for him.

[Moral:  Keep your antivirus installed and up to date.  Run Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy and/or Microsoft Antispyware to keep your computer clean -- all those are free!  For more information.]

spam -- whether it is selling pills, mortgages, plane tickets, or personal body enhancers -- whatever it is selling, it makes up the majority of the email on the Internet and we're getting tired of it.

What's the most effective thing we can do to stop spam?  As individuals, simply, we must not open spam emails, preferably not even look at them in a preview panel.  As a community of Internet users, the most effective thing we can do is to drive these folks out of business by not even looking at their offers, certainly we should not accept their offers.

The Feds tried last year with the "CAN-SPAM" act.  Guess what?  "CAN" has two meanings.  Hopefully, they meant "CAN" as in trash can.  Unfortunately, they put in too many holes (let's not even discuss why those holes were added), so "CAN" means "are able to."  

Holes? Yes, holes.  There is one big critical one.  Anyone can legally send spam to anyone else once as long as they put in some particular required information and provide an ability to un-subscribe from subsequent emails, preferably by a link in the email.  The law requires you to "opt-out" of future spams from that sender.  But, if the spammer has any business relationship with the spamee, the spammee is fair game.

Of course, what's the first thing you were told about spam?  You were told "NEVER CLICK on the unsubscribe" link.  That's because, if you confirm that there really is a person at that email, that simple knowledge makes the address more valuable to a spammer.  spammers sell email lists to each other, and "confirmed addresses" get higher prices.

The second big hole is that the act pre-empted any State law that attempts to control spam.  As a result, states like Virginia, who took a lead in anti-spam legislation, are out of the anti-spam enforcement game again.

If you want to give Congress a little push, write your favorite Congressman and tell him you want a "JAIL-SPAMMERS" act instead of the "CAN-SPAM" act.  Maybe Congress will understand this time. It is really up to us, the Internet email users, to put spammers out of business.  If you don't like spam, do not ever buy a product advertised by spam.  Don't respond to the ad, don't go to the website, just delete the email and ignore it.

If you want to contact your Senator or Congressman on any other issue, the easiest way to find them is via house.gov and senate.gov.  For the House of Representatives, the directory of members is http://clerk.house.gov/members/index.html.  For the Senate, it is http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.  How did I find these web pages?  Google, of course.

Continued in Part 3



Volume 1, Number 4 -- Monday, July 11, 2005
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Copyright © 2005 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.

 

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