Click the image above, or on the Documents link up top, to get to the presentation materials. I also got to take some photos and put them on Flickr. See y’all next year!

I went Googling on this topic and found a few software recommendations. The top hits included Paragon Backup & Recovery Free, Macrium Reflect Free, and EaseUS Todo Backup. Based upon positive reviews, I tried them one-by-one.

At first, I tried Backup & Recovery Free, but it wouldn’t install on Windows 7. Then I tried Macrium Reflect Free and it said the clone completed successfully. When the disks were swapped, Windows 7 would not boot. I used the Windows backup image (made by Dell Backup and Recovery Manager software) to repair that cloned image, but when it finally did boot properly, the fingerprint reader software wasn’t working and the OS gave several errors while running.

Getting desperate, I did another build directly from the Windows 7 backup/restore media. This worked, but again the fingerprint reader software was not present. Annoying!

Choose "Disk clone" from the Home menu

So I downloaded EaseUS Todo Backup 3.5 software and ran a Sector by sector clone with the source disk in the laptop and destination disk in an external bay. This completed successfully, but then the disk wouldn’t boot when it was installed into the laptop. The Sector by sector option also did not allow me to expand to the full usage of the newer, larger disk.

Select source & destination disks, uncheck Sector by sector clone

As an absolute last attempt before going to Linux, I left the 500 GB drive in the laptop, and used the EaseUS Todo Backup software to clone from the smaller hard drive in an external drive cage. This time I did not select Sector by sector clone and it allowed me to grow the final partition on the newer drive to use all the disk space. This clone completed successfully and the system booted. It seems this final approach worked the best.

Verify settings, drag slider to use full disk, and click Proceed

After several days of testing, everything appears to be working fine. No Windows OS errors, system updates have been successful and system restore point snapshotting is working properly. So I’m finally happy with this end result. This process took way too long and involved too many mistakes. Hope this write up helps you!

If you have advice on ways to improve this process, such as newer/better software to use or other tips, then please leave a comment.

“What’s a GIAC?” you may be asking. I wasn’t sure so I had to go look it up myself. Just kidding! If I learned one thing from my GSEC class (and I did) it was what GIAC stands for.

GIAC (pronounced Gee-ACK) = Global Information Assurance Certification
GSEC (pronounced Gee-SEC) = GIAC Security Essentials Certification

I guess they would call that second one a recursive acronym. If you have any idea what ‘recursive’ means. Anyway, this is all good news for SANS (Steven Northcutt) and GIAC (Jeff Frisk). It is good news for me, too, because in 100 years, employers in the technology realm will know what GIAC stands for.

You see, there is this other “certification” (if you can call it that) named CISSP. I have no idea what that stands for either, but it has one more letter in it. This obviously means something really really good to hiring managers because everyone I’ve ever known who got a really awesome job has “CISSP” after their name. I’m sure a simple Google search could unearth this mystery, but honestly who has that kind of time?

Anyway, there are a lot of CISSPs out there. Droves. Like a bazillion or so. And they hog all the headlines when it comes to those slick technology magazines that you all want to be seen reading in the coffee shop. So GIAC wants to dethrone CISSP. Or at least give it a huge black eye. But the playing field is, like, way unfair and stuff. So think back to that incredible theatric release of 2006, 300. It is like that! Dramatic, huh? Except we (the GIACs) are like the Spartans. So now envision me (and a bunch of other pot-bellied dudes) waving GSEC certificates over our heads whilst screaming “THIS IS SPARTAAAA!!!!!” and charging a bazillion nerds wielding CISSP certs.

Whoa. That would rock. And much blood would be shed. But it is all for a good cause. We just want to protect your computers, like, man. And thus was the tale of GIAC Rising.

That’s right, people. My week of buckled down studying has paid off and on Monday I took the two big exams. As Mark phrased it, I “gave those tests the smack-down.” Somehow I was able to pull a 96 on the Networking and Internet Security Technologies exam and a 94 on the Secure Communications and Windows/Unix Security exam. Woo-haa!! (You can verify that by going to the GIAC website and searching for my name.)

By Tuesday my name and scores were posted to the website and I had to go back to check it every hour or so just so the gravity of this accomplishment would set in. I am still surprised that I did so well considering how much material is covered. As you can imagine, I am totally on Geek Cloud 9. Many thanks to my excellent local mentor Doug Brown and to all the friends and family who were so supportive of me all Summer while I had my nose in the books. Yay! I can be social again!!

(Please note that my use of the GSEC Silver logo in no way implies an endorsement from nor a partnership with SANS Institute or GIAC. The logo is used only to indicate that I have passed the GSEC exams and obtained GIAC Silver certification. Proper permission for logo use has been explicitly obtained.)

THIS IS JUST A TEST. IF THIS WERE AN ACTUAL EMERGENCY YOU WOULD HEAR A LONG ANNOYING SUSTAINED TONE AND NOTICE THAT PEOPLE ARE RUNNING AROUND SCREAMING.

Altho Make magazine (from O’Reilly) has been out for a few months now, not many people seem to have heard of it. At least, not many of the people whom I think should have heard of it, or who might enjoy it.

Anyway, I could have checked just about all my categories (computers, automotive, scientifics, etc) in relation to Make because the range of topics they cover is astounding. If it is nerdy, it is in Make. If it can be hacked, it is in Make. If you know something cool that hasn’t been in Make already, then you should get on to writing the article and submitting it. In short, this magazine is amazing.

The folks I know who have subscribed are mostly doing so for “archival purposes.” (i.e. they think “Well, I may not need to know how to make Bio-Diesel now, but I’d like to have a step-by-step guide for future reference.”) This is an excellent idea because the magazine is so packed each month that it might take you the better half of a year to implement all the projects.

Make Magazine: A++ with Two Thumbs Up. Check it out!

PS – from the O’Reilly page I see they are offering a limited time 50% discount on subscriptions.

Of course, I immediately went and bought a fresh eBook copy of Joe Kissell’s Take Control of Upgrading to Tiger and spent about 2 hours poring over it before issuing any commands (because doing this has prevented me from suffering major upgrade headaches in the past). By 3:00 AM, I had backed up my data in three different places, cleansed and purged the main drive of excess, and let the upgrade roll. So far, so good.

I wanted to mention here that the OS X Panther-to-Tiger upgrade went smoothly. Every time Apple comes out with a new OS product, I am subjected to oodles of stories from people wanting to complain that “The upgrade trashed my system.” I love how they cannot get more specific than that, instead slandering the software with language of the grossly misinformed. (These are also usually the same people who never perform a backup of critical data and then whine when it disappears).

Partially because of the prevalence of such horror stories and partially because of my neurotic Sys Admin nature, I always wipe my hard drive clean and perform a “Fresh Install.” This has always produced spectacular results in terms of stability and OS integrity. However, this has also come with a tax — a time tax — in returning your system to its normal state of end user customization. This year I reckoned I had paid enough tax to Uncle Sam and I wanted to avoid paying the time tax again. This is why I opted to test out the Upgrade option for Tiger.

Well, the prep time was around three hours, but not everyone moves as slowly as I do. Once I began the installer and selected which software bits I wanted it to install, the upgrade process took less than 20 minutes (dual 1.42Ghz G4 tower with 2GB of RAM). A few seconds later I was rebooted into the new OS X (Tiger or 10.4) and began checking out my files and applications to make sure things went as planned. I have noticed no major problems with the upgrade as of this writing.

Dashboard is a relatively cool new widget thingy meant to save all us busy people a fuckload of time by placing commonly used applets in one viewer screen. While I definitely like the look and feel of Dashboard, I have noticed that it can really put a hurtin’ on CPU performance. And if you remember the system stats from the above paragraph, you might wonder too at just how processor-intensive this tiny little application actually is. In fact, I want to see it operate on a system with a “more normal” amount of RAM. I imagine on the stock systems Apple ships (usually 256MB of memory) that Dashboard would bring everything to a cool-looking grinding halt. Hmmm… Did they test this before shipping?

First impressions? Well, Tiger is exactly like Panther, but with a slight increment in the version number (and it cost me over $70). Over time, I hope to publish more helpful feedback on the product, but for now everything looks status quo — which, if you’re one of the Mac faithful, is a very good thing. I’m primarily interested in ever-increasing stability and speed improvements. The benefit or advantage of all the little changes/applications has yet to be seen. Just don’t charge me 70 bucks for something that slows down my fancy computer, please.

The sheer volume of info (good, bad, both combined, whatever) put on the Internet each day is staggering. The link aggregators (such as MetaFilter, Google News, Plastic, bordom .oO!@#;,., del.icio.us and perhaps a zillion others) alone can batter your reality and blunt your sensibilities. Then you get into the whole world of blogs and the links they’re posting and re-posting, well, mind-boggling sounds like a good term for it. Here is a wacky sampling of this info tsunami.

• First things first. Screw you Sorny Records! Thanks for sitting on a great record for two years while waiting to find a radio single. They are probably trying to artistically stifle Fiona Apple the same way they tried with Mariah Carey years ago. Jump ship, Fiona! Find a better record distributor. I wish there were a combined hit counter on the zillion Extraordinary Machine download sites to show how many fans would have been happy to buy the cd. Lame industry bullshit.
• Indie labels seem to be figuring this whole fiasco out. It seems that most of them understand that pervasive global exposure for their artists would be a good thing.
• Glastonbury will turn the headphone rave culture on its ear this year when it debuts their “silent disco” idea. I thought it was cool when the Flaming Lips did it for The Soft Bulletin tour, but many others didn’t like the rather remote karaoke feel of the whole thing. I just wished the headphones they gave out were closed ear headphones. Twas impossible to wear earplugs with the cheapies they were handing out. IMHO, this drastically reduced the effectiveness of having the headphone content enhance the show.
• The Jr.-Sr. High School in Proctor, Vermont just decided to ban access from school computers to blogging applications and social networking sites like myspace.com. The primary decision cited was that “blogging is not an educational use of school computers.” I would have to disagree on this point. It may not be an educational use now, with zero interaction from teachers. However, this could be an excellent way for teachers to get across important ideas such as not giving out too much personal information on the net or an early introduction to journalism and information science. This could teach kids computer skills, including hardware, software and Internet aspects. One major added bonus for anyone going to college — enhanced keyboarding skills. And it seems strange to me that they would want to discourage kids from reading and writing. Now limiting how much school time can be devoted to such efforts is important, but cutting off this aspect of adolescence and our techno-culture influx won’t do much to help these kids. What is significant about Proctor, Vermont? That is the town where I was raised for nine years (ages 2-11). My brother and sisters went to this High School. C’mon Vermont. I know you’re more liberal than that.
• My Raleigh-based homie S. Dawg Champeon was at SXSW to talk about the web cruft — namely spam, trolls, stalkers, Oh My! I’m sorry I missed it. As we all know, that is my favorite topic when it comes to bitching about weblogs.
• There is so much cool stuff on the web. alexking WP 1.5 Theme Browser and ColorWhore. Amazing. Thanks to geeksmakemehot and nothing fancy.

Well, I think thats enough for now. Must… go.. to.. sleeeeeeeppp…