In today’s world of computerizing everything, we all find ourselves with lots of files on our computers. Everything from instruction manuals, to music, to financial software is ending up on our hard drives. Inevitably we find out that some of those files ended up in a location we really don’t want them. Maybe a hard drive is full and you need to move files to a new larger hard drive. Maybe you need to move old items to an external drive for archiving. Moving files from one location to another is fairly easy in small amounts, but the larger the number of files involved, the longer the process takes, and the trickier it gets.

Naturally, the more files you need to copy, and the larger the total size, the longer it will take to copy them. Sometimes a file might be in use and can’t be copied, halting a copy job in the middle, leaving you lost as to what’s been copied and what hasn’t. Also, the more files you have, the longer it takes to copy them; what if you need to edit one while you are copying them? Microsoft’s built in file copying utility doesn’t address these issues, and they long ago recognized they needed a utitlity with a little more umph to it. After a couple of rounds of trial and error, one of Microsoft’s techs came up with “Rich Copy”.

Rich Copy is available as a free download from this link to Microsoft’s website. For some reason it is labeled “HoffmanUtilitySpotlight”, so you will see the program referred to as this cryptic name once in a while. After you download and install it, you’re ready to start copying massive amounts of files.

Below the menu’s, you will see three entry boxes. You can graphically browse to the location you want to files from and to, in order to fill in the first two boxes. These selections will include all files and folders below the selected location. The third box, Options”, can be filled in by clicking on the button on the far right-side. Before getting overwhelmed by the many checkboxes, the default options work in 90% of situations, so you can leave almost everything as it is in most situations. The major factor in speeding up the copies and taking full advantage of the program is to adjust the “Thread number”.

“Threads” in computers refers to the number of actions a program can handle at the same time, in this case it means the number of files that can be copied. For reference, a standard file copy is single threaded and copies one file at a time. RichCopy is multi-threaded and can be configured to handle 3, 5, 10 or even more file copies at a time. The only limit will be how fast your computer process information. The three thread options detail how many different folders/directories to scan for files to copy, how many directories to copy from at the same time, and how many files to copy at the same time. Even more significant, if you have separate folders, you can open Rich Copy a second (third, fourth, …) time to copy those files and folders at the same time. Keep in mind that the more files you ask your computer to copy, the more work you are asking your computer to do.

As an added bonus, this software can remember what files it has copied from one location to another. If you go back and ask it to repeat a file copy, it is configured to scan for what files are already in the destination location and only copy those that don’t exist or haven’t changed. This is great if you get interrupted in the middle of a copy, or want to update an archive every few weeks.

In terms of power, the only limit to this software is the speed of the computer you are running. Once you are familiar with the basics, you can start working with some of the methods RichCopy uses for comparing files that have changed, and how it handles the results of those scans while it is copying. If you are going to be repeating a folder copy several times, you can even write scripts that will allow you to run a folder copy without having to reconfigure RichCopy each time.

If you have any questions about where and how to use this utility, you can always contacts through InfoStream’s website.

We’ve all been there, yes, even us IT guys… the dreaded moment where your hard drive is full and you no longer have any more space to store your data. But is that really the case? You could swear just the other day you had a ton of space left! Well, one of the toughest things to find on your hard drive with the built in tools Windows provides you is finding the space hog on your PC. Sure, you could go folder by folder doing folder size counts, but it takes forever and sometimes it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.

The nice folks over at JAM software have made a great little freebie utility called Treesize Free which will help you find those space hogs on your PC. To find the free version of the software, head to the following link: http://www.jam-software.com/treesize_free/ and click on the free Download link on the page. Once installed, open TreeSize and review the menu bars. If you only have a “C” drive on your PC, TreeSize will immediately begin scanning your directory structure and give you breakdowns of the size of each root folder. Give the scanning process a few minutes to complete. Once you see the sizes have stopped growing, you can feel free to break down each folder and you will see the sizes broken down all the way to the file level if you dig far enough. This should help you uncover tons of missing space! Keep in mind, don’t go delete crazy… make sure what you are deleting is truly safe to delete. Unless you know what you are doing, we highly recommend against going into the Windows or Program Files folders and randomly deleting files as this can have detrimental (or catastrophic!) effects on your system.

For those power users who wish to have advanced search and reporting capabilities, check out the paid version of Treesize Professional, which has robust features that allow you to search by file size and type.

We hope you enjoy this cool utility, and as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us @ www.infostream.cc

“Go clean your room!”

Whoops, I mean ‘Go clean your computer!’

Just like every other piece of equipment, computers get dirty. Now, dirty can mean a couple of different things. Some dirt is physical, and can be cleaned out with a damp rag. The more complicated dirt is the messy files that fill up a computer over time and never get cleaned out. Files like temporary internet files, deleted files in the recycle bin, and old applications that are no longer needed. While it is possible to manually go through and clean out all of these items, there is a tool that will allow you to take care of most of this through one easy interface. CCleaner does all of the hard work for you, once you tell it what to do.

The first step, of course, is to download and install it. You can get a copy by opening a browser and going to www.cleaner.com. It will redirect you to www.piriform.com/ccleaner, so don’t freak out that you’ve been infected. From there you can download the free version. The website will promote their more robust full version, which adds some nice features. You can take a look and decide if you want to upgrade, but that version isn’t free. You can also look at some of the other products they are promoting at the same time. Once you’ve downloaded CCleaner and installed it, you can open the software and start cleaning.

CCleaner divides it’s tools up into 3 categories. The Cleaner section erases unnecessary and unwanted files all over the hard drive. It will clear items from Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Mozilla Firefox. It will also clean out old, no longer necessary Windows files. Finally, it will look into a long list of other programs to clean out temporary files they have created as well, such as Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office, Quicktime, and Skype just to name a few.

The Registry section reviews all of the entries in the registry, finds “orphaned” items and removes them. It offers to make a backup of the registry before it deletes them, which I highly recommend. Remember, the registry manages everything about the computer, so if it makes a mistake it could stop something from working. Backups are necessary to recovery from that. After it has backed up the registry, you can have it remove the recommended files.

The Tools section cleans up everything else, with options for uninstalling unnecessary software, disabling unwanted items from startup, removing old system restore points, and cleaning the empty spaces on your hard drive. A word of warning when uninstalling software: if you uninstall something you later find out you need, you will need to reinstall it from scratch, so make sure you have the original disks or the downloaded install files if you aren’t absolutely sure you won’t want it back. If you aren’t sure about a particular program, do some researching before you uninstall it! The Startup section shows all of the programs that open when you start the computer or open Internet Explorer. It hides all of the critical Windows programs, so you can disable or delete items here without worrying about breaking the system. The System Restore section allows you to remove old restore points of your computer, but these files aren’t very large so I would not work with this too often. The drive wiper cleans up all of the “empty” areas of the drive. In general they aren’t truly empty, just identified by the computer as unimportant and available for overwriting.

CCleaner provides many options for cleaning your computer. Some of them will improve organization and allow you to find what you need more effectively as well as providing a minor improvement in the speed of your computer. The uninstall tools and the Startup cleaners will allow you to drastically improve the performance of your system by eliminating software you don’t need it to run anymore. By spending a little time with this software, you can save a lot of time down the road.

If you have any additional questions you can reach us by heading to our website at www.InfoStream.cc.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can be a real lifesaver, especially for small businesses that have IT needs just like everyone else but are hard pressed to find the manpower and resources to support a dedicated tech department. As with all business relationships, it's important to establish good rapport with your MSP to ensure that everything flows and goes as planned.

Business relationships are cultivated. Grown. That's what you do – at least if you want your business to flourish. The healthier your business relationships, the more productive and efficient your operations become.

Naturally, this applies to your relationship with your Managed Service Provider (MSP). Your IT is an important part of your day-to-day operations, and contributes greatly to how productive your business can become – so establishing good working rapport with your MSP is especially essential. Here are a few pointers for building and maintaining a great relationship with your current or prospective MSP partner.

Assess what your MSP can provide for you Sit down with your MSP to learn their ideas for your business, then carefully assess whether the services they offer support and augment your operations – current and planned. Look closely at contracts and make sure you understand the fine print, and carefully evaluate whether the service agreement meets your needs. Do some research about prospective MSPs (which is easy to do through the Internet) to verify their claims. Making sure you have the right fit is an important first step in getting the most out of an MSP.

Define roles and manage expectations Make sure that roles and responsibilities are clearly defined and understood early in the process, especially if your MSP is integrated with or augmenting an existing IT operation. This will help minimize overlapping job roles (which is ultimately unproductive for the both of you), as well as territorial disputes and misunderstandings.

Communicate constantly While your MSP will essentially manage your IT, it's still YOUR IT department. Make sure that you open healthy channels of feedback and communication. It's also recommended that you keep your MSP informed of any new directions or strategies that you feel will affect the IT operations that your MSP partner handles. It's a good idea to schedule regular planning sessions and meetings with them so that they will be able to anticipate what you need – and provide it – in line with your own goals and timetables.

Establish trust and respect your MSP's decisions Treat your MSP like you would your IT manager. Give them general direction, and then let them do what they do best: manage IT. Entrusting your IT to an outside contractor can be a difficult decision, but as long as your MSP is reliable and secure, it may very well be one of the best business decisions you've ever made.