You, me...and the weather

It is becoming very clear that nothing in life is simple. You can create something to do almost anything for anyone at anytime. You can create (wait for it...) software to monitor disk space such as Disk Monitor ( http://www.diskmonitor.net/ ). You can also create software to make it look like your at work when your actually at home. Now ask yourself one question.....what in the world can we NOT control or create anything to control it?.......Yes.....the weather. So, I woke up, showered, took the dog out..........in the SNOW. Yes overnight the heavens had opened and dropped a whole load of the white stuff. I was subsequently snowed in and driving would have been a nightmare and also extremely dangerous. So a home day was called for and I was quite happy as I had set Disk Monitor on my work PC to email me if anything needed sorting out. Low and behold I got an email at 9:30am informing me that the mailserver had crossed its space threshold. I jumped on the VPN connection to the office and deleted some pretty large log files to clear some space. So in short......I saved the day without even leaving the house.

Todays life NEEDS software

In todays society it is an accepted fact that people need a computer, a connection to the internet and 'Life Software'. Ok, perhaps not everyone actually needs ALL of these things but for anyone under the age of 101 its is becoming a necessity. We need software to share our photos, listen to our music, create our webpage, write our blog and talk to our Auntie in Australia. Software is the key to todays busy, lightening paced life and I'm going to let you into a little secret.........its going to get worse, if of course 'worse' is actually the correct word to use. 'Life Software' is helping many people in many different ways, from staying in contact with others thousands of miles away, sharing thoughts and managing projects to helping to stay alive. Ok the last is a little far fetched but its coming and it not that far away. Imagine your crossing the road and you get hit by a car, your mobile/PDA will contact the emergency services which will in turn check your health insurance and tell the ambulance where to take you to be treated. The hospital will know all of your details before you arrive. Your mobile will already have contacted your work and next of kin through some huge civilian database which is being updated a million times a second with data from around the world. And of course, finally, you will leave hospital a few days later with the bill for you care already on the door mat.

It is a fact of life that data is taking over the world and will always be faster than anything we will ever invent. The key to keeping it in check is to know where, when and how to use it to make our life easier and not to use it as a weapon against each other.

Disk Space - A way of life

In today's society data plays a huge role in the day to day running of most companies, education establishments, government buildings and our own homes. This data can be in the form of family photos, financial data, assignments and reports right the way through to secret national documents. Whichever way we look at it data plays an important role in the way the modern world works. As data is important, so is the space that we use to house it. Home users store documents and photos on their hard drives or usb memory sticks or even an external hard drive, where companies use massive data servers which can cope with many Terabytes of data storage. The weak point to all of these methods of data storage is the amount of space we use. As time goes by and users save their work to servers and hard drives and backup documents to storage locations the space which we have becomes smaller and smaller without us really noticing it. Then the worst thing in the world (to the person its happening to) happens and we lose data or don't have enough or we rely on something that we thought had been backed up but hadn't.....disaster. Of course in the grand scheme of things it isn't actually a disaster but more of a very annoying, troublesome setback.......wrong!
In many many cases if you run out of disk space and don't find out about it for a while then there is going to be real trouble, ranging from lost work to missed backups. I agree that people should keep a closer eye on storage space but in many cases this just isn't practical on a time and personnel level. This is where we bring in automatic disk monitoring tools. These software tools can be setup to monitor servers and desktops and storage devices and alert people in many different ways when a shortage of disk space is imminent. Software such as Disk Monitor Pro (http://www.diskmonitor.net/) allows the user to monitor any number of storage locations, set thresholds individually and then setup different ways of getting attention - whether it be an email, a popup on the desktop, audible alert or even running a specified program. The data and storage space saga will go on for many years and will always play a hugely important part in the way we work and play. Data loss is and will always be a major concern for many people in many different types of work, but in using automatic disk monitoring perhaps we can at least be warned before we get the dreaded phone call.

http://www.diskmonitor.net/

When people are using Disk Monitor they ask me whether the disk market will every really change to solid state and will this have a knock-on effect when using disk monitoring software. 

It has been said that, within the next ten years, SSD (Solid State Drives) will replace the standard hard drive, and in the interim HDD / SSD hybrids are likely to increase in popularity as the storage technology of choice.  

I am pretty sure that in years to come the solid state hard disk market will boom with more and more companies using solid state in laptops, small computers, PDA's etc. The reason why the technology will become even more popular will be down to a handful of main advantages :

1. Length of battery life on laptops, etc will be greatly increased.

2. Cost will continue to fall

3. Reliability will increase due to zero moving parts.

As far as software goes (if its any good), it will just carry on working exactly how it would normally as the process will still be the same.

New Disk Monitor Trial Launch

It appeared that people who had used Disk Monitor Standard and Pro wanted to share their experiences of it with other people. We hadn't really felt the need to have a trial version of the software as it pretty much did everything it said on the tin........but what do we know :) So by popular(as it appears) demand we have launched 'Disk Monitor Pro - Trial'. This version will allow users to monitor up to 3 drives.

Watch those exchange logs

As many of you will know Microsoft Exchange creates a lot of logs, if you couple that with any backup software which backs up right the way down to mailbox level then you end up with quite a few log files. Many of these files will be quite small but when you get a few thousand of them then it can start to become a problem. Its well worth keeping an eye on the locations of these logs to make sure that one night your server doesn't fill up and fall over.

Bring out all the bells and whistles

We all know that running out of disk space on any device is annoying, especially when the device in question is critical to a number of peoples everyday work flow. So what's the main thing that needs to occur when something like this is about to happen ? ............Tell everyone.....Well, perhaps not everyone but most definitely YOU. Within all versions of disk monitor there are a number of ways to attract the attention of the administrator....email, popup's, program launching and sound. If there's a problem round the corner, you'll be the first to know.