Rich’s Random Podcast Generator: Belarc Revisited, Home Raid Perils, WHS File/Folder Restoration, Google+, Podcasting – RRPG009

Mike Howard of jpeg2RAW once again joins us in the Google+ Hangout. This week’s topic include multi-monitor setups, Belarc Advisor, home-user RAID problems, Google+ pluses and minuses, and an extended discussion on podcasting and what it takes to get things rolling.

Belarc – “System Management for the Internet Age” – is a software suite which provides an in-depth assay of IT assets. Sorry, but this is not your typical home-user software. Belarc’s customers include NASA, US Marine Corps, US Army, US Air Force, US Navy, among others. As you may surmise, besides being cost-prohibitive for a home-user, Belarc also provide more information than one can shake a stick at. Information overload, to be more precise. If you’re not an IT professional working in a corporate environment, you could spend a ton of time researching the significance of each of the individual points of an assessment only to come to the conclusion that most do not apply to you and your home situation. Still, Belarc offers a version called Belarc Advisor which anyone, including home-users, can download and use for free. Curious about how your PC stacks up against the Belarc standard? Then check it out. There are components you will find handy such as the ability to recover license keys for installed programs, including your Windows product key.

Mike Howard had a recent RAID snafu in which his RAID 0 array stopped working on his desktop PC. He was none too happy about that, but even less so with WHS 2011 and its failure to give him back his files and folders, his way, right away. Opening a PC backup to grab a couple files or folders works fine when we’re talking about a few. But try restoring something as large as a partition that way and you’ll see what Mike ran into. It’s agonizingly slow. We’re talking days just to restore 1 TB of data. MS is aware, but has no plans to do anything about it. Oh sure, Mike could have worked around it, but why should he? If he had been using the previous WHS version (v1) he’d have been able to do exactly what he was trying to do here.

Mike and Jim get into an extended discussion about what it takes to get a podcast off the ground – everything from coming up with guests to advertising the show. There’s a lot of good, solid info here.

In the show this week: Jim Collison, Rich O’Neil, Mike Howard

Rich’s RPG is a weekly show hosted by Jim Collison and Rich O’Neil in Google+ Hangout. They talk tech with like-minded folks, covering whatever’s interesting – hot or not, current or historical. No outlines, no agenda, no worries. Got a headset? Free time? Join them on the podcast!

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Podcast intro and exit music used by permission from “In the Shadow of the Great Machine” by Fool’s Chaos. Hear more great tunes at Fool’s Chaos!