Forums > Living in Kunming > Windows help? DISASTER RECOVERY AND CONTINUATION OF OPERATIONS
PC RISK MANAGEMENT
Regardless of whether you run WinOS or MacOS, always maintain the following safety precautions, to recover from catastrophic failures, funds notwithstanding.
1. EMERGENCY BOOT PARTITION
ALWAYS maintain or install a safety partition on your primary boot disk. This is a boot partition used to boot and install a clean version of your OS. MOST PC's come with emergency boot partitions to wipe your current OS (do NOT wipe your drive as this will erase the Emergency Boot Partition).
2. BOOTABLE USB FLASH DRIVE
Create a Flash Drive (an 8GB Flash drive should be sufficient) with a bootable image of your OS, in case of a catastrophic hard drive failure. This will enable you to boot from the USB and MAYBE even retrieve unbacked up files from your soon to die hard drive. I created a boot OS partition AND a bootable partition, so I can use my flash drive to both install clean OS or repair a damaged OS and boot up a dead laptop/computer, caused by a hard drive failure.
I also keep the basic productivity software install images on it - MS Office and other core apps (and if I have room to spare, some music, photos, and videos).
3. CLOUD BACKUP
There are a plethora of free cloud storage sites, to include the much maligned Microsoft OneDrive. Unless you have MORE than 3GB of storage - configure your cloud storage to ONLY backup your critical documents folder.
4. BACKUP HARD DRIVE
If your critical folder(s) is(are) approaching 3GB, then you need to invest in an external hard drive, for manual physical backups. I partitioned my external drive with items 1 and 2 above, which consists of an emergency boot partition, a normal clean sanitary booting OS with NO MS bloatware or other apps, and my DATA partition to backup files. I also use the built-in MacOS feature Time Machine, which backs up images of my main hard drive, whenever the backup hard drive in installed. It backs files up roughly hourly - which is space intensive, so get a HUGE backup hard drive. I both a 4TB 2.5" external drive for about CNY 900 on taobao last year. Time Machine automatically deletes the oldest backup(s) to make room for the newest backups. If you use WinOS - I'm sure there's similar software floating around.
5. HARD DISK LIFETIME
If you have a mechanical hard drive - be aware the typical rated lifespan is 3-5 years. Anything you get after that is pure luck. I recently upgraded to a solid state drive, so am not sure about the lifecycle of these electronic devices - but they absolutely can withstand shocks better than my old mechanical hard disk drives (no moving parts).
In the mission critical IT industry, we replace the drives at end-of-life. And yes, depending on what was on the drives, we 3DES wipe the RAID drives and then disassemble and scrape the media to ensure zero data recovery. This is rare, as it only occurs every FIVE (5) years.
Many high-end cloud / data centers are migrating to SSD's for debatable speed, dubious reliability, and lower overall energy requirements, not to mention the fact they run quiet, but that's another thread.
6. CLOUD COLLABORATION
Regardless of whether you're collaborating with a team or just working by yourself, there are many cloud collaboration platforms out there that are free of charge up to a roughly 3-5gb of storage (then it's pay as you go aka PAYGO). This isn't quite a fully blow, full-featured document versioning system, but it's good enough for most non-mission-critical professional work.
On that note - I recently fragged my backup hard drive - I was trying to re-format my USB stick and the MacOS got confused. Rare bug but that's the way it rolls. Fortunately, I have an ancient set of backups from the previous 750GB backup drive.
The last thing you need is a hard drive or OS failure while on the road.
7. ANTIVIRUS SOFTWARE
I can't stress this enough - especially in China - install the AV software. There are many RELIABLE free packages out there that do NOT spam you every 10 minutes with reminders to upgrade to some paid version. For MacOS and PC-OS, we use AVG. It's bare bones although be forewarned, sometimes AV software can cause kernel panics, which will make your OS run into 100%+ utilization (requiring a reboot, which "usually" does the trick).
Pay now, or pay later (in time and pain).
Interview: Brian Eyler on Baihetan, China's second largest dam
发布者First - excellent and informative article. Although I absolutely must concur with some of the views of the expert - the facts are always not so obvious, when one chooses to micro-focus on subsystems as opposed to expanding one's view to a larger system. This is a popular management trend called decision-based data as opposed to data-driven decisions. So agreement, disagreement, or no opinion - depends on one's perspective.
Most westerners, especially those with hidden or obvious political agendas, look at China as they look at the west - a free market based economy.
China is a planned economy and certain infrastructures are built looking forwards decades.
China's energy consumption trajectory is not considered by the author, so let's take a look at that subjectively or qualitatively, since I'm too lazy to do the research numbers.
ENERGY CONSUMPTION IN KUNMING
Our hot water heaters used to be gas powered - but we had to replace the "damned" thing every two years because of the buildup of ash (aka toxins - seriously...green flecks in the ash - what is that? Chromium?) from the dirty gas. We switched to a combination of solar and electric (which do NOT work in tandem).
The prolific construction of new high-rises do not permit the effective use of solar in high density residential communities (e.g. most real estate development mega projects in Kunming are around the 2k residence level. So on demand electric systems make more sense.
COOKING
We haven't switched to electric because the power grid where we live simply won't handle the load (much less our ancient wiring). New high rise developments come with the option of gas or electric - with most choosing electric. It's fast, clean, and doesn't expose the stove components to cooking spillage. We've replaced our gas stove twice in the last 8 years - but to be fair - the last replacement was required because we switched to a new "cleaner" gas.
E-BIKES
Prolific.
MASS TRANSIT
The subway - electric powered. Buses moving towards electric power. And automobiles - e-powered vehicles are an emerging phenomenon with incredibly central government support and subsidies. Occasionally, you'll spot that rare BYD electric powered taxi (the SUV). China is migrating as much as its domestic infrastructure off fossil fuel dependence as possible.
So just from our own personal experiences and observations - consumer-based consumption of electric services is increasing at a steady pace.
ENVIRONMENTAL
There is no argument about the destruction of surrounding habitats and the migration of valley dwellers. This is a management issue for the government as they strive for poverty elimination. A large part of China's poverty elimination program is focused on attracting rural workers to cities, with jobs, education, and the ever upwardly mobile opportunities that education can provide - hence that insane construction pace. Kunming is planned to grow to a size of 10 million (but don't know the date on that plan).
Last time I checked - the city is at about 6.6 million, so we have another 3.4 million to go - so those 2000 unit mega developments (assume a family size of 4) housing up to 4 people, not including grandparents, in-laws, and others - 8k per development. That means ROUGHLY we'll need another 425 real estate development projects to house those 3.4 million additional residents.
That's another 850k families (3.4 mil/4,assuming a family unit of 4) consuming energy, services, infrastructure, e-bikes, cooking, water, toilet flushing, etc etc etc.
And that's JUST Kunming - there are 15 other prefectural level cities with supposed urban sprawl magnet program requirements as part of the nation's poverty elimination strategies.
So the author points out the displacement of a few thousand to a few hundred thousand people. Cast that against 3.4 million and things perhaps aren't quite as obvious - and again, that is ONLY based on Kunming plans. As we all noticed with the formerly famous and internationally maligned Chenggong ghost city (not so ghostly anymore), planned economies can be sustainably successful. And we didn't even discuss all the government (schools, 2 fly toilets, etc) and commercial infrastructures (restaurants, businesses, etc ad infinitum) that spawn from those residential communities. And we haven't even begun to address the energy sucking behavior of the internet and all its derivative industries - data centers, cloud computing centers, distributed corporate IT migration strategies.
Easy to criticize a microscopic spot than to manage the mega complicated system that is China.
However - that said - the author's points ARE valid and we do need alternate perspectives, so we understand the cost/benefit trade-off more responsibly.
And...I'll just get off that soapbox now...
Film Review: Paths of the Soul
发布者I'm thinking that's a pretty aerobic pilgrimage...
Editorial: Hydro expansion will fail without energy market reform
发布者um...yes - I actually meant central Asia - neighboring countries closer than say Shanghai, that would appreciate energy and be willing (maybe) to pay competitive rates for it (as opposed to just dumping the power potential).
Editorial: Hydro expansion will fail without energy market reform
发布者China is ramping up the use of e-vehhicles - which should take some of the capacity. I'm also wondering about whether we're exporting power to SE asia, which would seem to be an excellent market, and to the middle east where they DEFINITELY need power along the OBOR (one belt, one road).
1920s China through the lens of Joseph Rock: Simao
发布者I'm thinking his romanizations can be forgiven, given that putonghua was not standard and he's probably hearing a variety of dialectic Kunming hua and the incredibly diverse minority languages and dialects, when the locals or guides provide descriptions of various names and places, not to mention the various linguistic eccentricities of the various european missionaries.