TrueCrypt 6.0 was released on the 4th, and includes some great new features, including the ability to encrypt and hide the entire operating system for Windows users. It is also optimized for multiple-core processors.

TrueCrypt 6.0 is available for Windows, Apple OSX, and Linux. Get it here.

For first-time encrypters, last year I posted a tutorial on creating encrypted file containers with TrueCrypt. It is a bit old, since I was using TrueCrypt 4 for Windows, but it appears it is still accurate for the new version.

TrueCrypt 6.0 Released | TrueCrypt.org (via Lifehacker)

Imagine any of the following scenarios:

• You returned to your office this morning to find it had burned to the ground overnight. You cannot salvage anything but a few crispy bits of your pencil sharpener.
• Someone swiped your laptop on the train this morning while you were on your way to work. Nobody seems to have seen the person who did it.
• While working on a brief, you are just putting on the finishing touches when your computer’s hard drive stutters a few times, then dies completely.
• Last night, someone broke into your office and, realizing your clients’ personal information would sell for far more than your computer hardware, rifled through your files, making off with your client information sheets.

Now, ask yourself a few questions.

• Will you ever be able to recover your physical data? Unless it was protected in a fire-proof safe, few attorneys keep spare client files.
• How long will it take to recover your electronic data, and what will you have lost? In other words, how solid is your backup system, and do you have off-site backup?
• How much will it cost to purchase credit-monitoring for all of your past and present clients? If your laptop is stolen and your data is not encrypted, or a thief makes off with part of your paper files it seems only fair.
• How will you (a) prevent, or (b) mitigate the effects of each of these scenarios?

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A fair amount of the people I talk to about backup say they forget to do it, or they can’t figure out–or never get around to setting up–the built-in backup options. If that sounds like you, check out IdleBackup, a utility for backing up your computer when it is sitting idle.

I still recommend making a daily backup of your important files. The downside to IdleBackup is that it only makes a one-to-one copy of your files. If you deleted something yesterday, it will soon disappear from your backup, as well. But if you are not backing up regularly, IdleBackup sounds like a good first step.

[via Lifehacker]

PING (Partimage is Not Ghost) is a Linux-based LiveCD for backing up your system by making an image of the hard drive (or smaller partitions, if you have them). In other words, you boot a simplified version of Linux (it doesn’t matter what operating system you normally use on the computer–just pop the CD in the drive and turn the computer on) from the CD drive. It allows you to make an exact copy of any drive or partition on the computer without booting up the operating system on the computer (which can alter the data). It just copies everything to a file that you can store anywhere and that should adequately preserve electronic evidence on a small scale.

Most importantly, it is easy enough to use that you should be able to burn a copy to CD and send it home with your client (with an external hard drive for the image file) so that they can make the hard drive image themselves, which keeps you out of the chain of evidence. (Don’t make this decision without carefully considering the issues and the disadvantages of doing it yourself.)

PING is also a fantastic backup tool. Unlike a regular backup, PING makes a copy of the drive. If you just back up your files and your computer dies, you have to re-install Windows, update it, install all your software, and then restore your files once you are back up and running. With PING, just restore the image to the new hard drive, re-activate Windows, and go. You’ll save hours (or days) of recovery time.

[photo: Chance Agrella]

E-discovery has existed since computers have existed, but it has only become a hot (if dry) topic in recent years. For the solosmall practitioner, e-discovery can be an extra-large headache, since capturing and preserving electronic data in compliance with the rules and case law can be confusing, time-consuming, and, most importantly, expensive.

However, Law.com’s Legal Technology just ran an article on e-discovery in which Seattle litigation support consultant Tom O’Connor said that divorce cases are the busiest when it comes to e-discovery. This means that family law practitioners, who are usually solosmall, as well, may be dealing with e-discovery more than anyone else.

Once you have identified that your client may have electronic evidence, the article gives two important cautionary bits of advice:

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My office was burglarized over the weekend, a valuable reminder of the need to backup and secure your files, both paper and digital.

All the jerks stole was a few rolls of stamps and my video camera. Expensive for me, to be sure, but nothing particularly disturbing. They didn’t touch my external hard drive that I use for backup (and to store movies for lazy Friday afternoons). Apparently stamps are hot items. The building management may have been negligent, and I hope they will buy me a shiny new video camera before my next depositions.

I was irritated, but largely unfazed due to the fact that my files are well-protected and I have multiple backups. I back up my files daily to my external drive, and my laptop comes with me every night. I backup weekly (or so) to a second, portable external hard drive, so I had a backup just a few days old. All my backups are encrypted, so I wasn’t worried about losing client information.

The only paper files in my office are public information like original pleadings. So although I am quite irritated at having to blow a few hundred dollars on a new video camera when the one I had was perfectly good, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been.

But it is a reminder to back up diligently and make sure your client files are protected, whether paper or digital. You don’t want to have to send a letter to your clients notifying them to look out for identity theft, since you never encrypted your files.

This is why you need to encrypt your client files.

If the data on that hard drive was encrypted, rather than sitting out there for anyone to see, the headline might have been entirely different. All the thief would be able to see would be a file, partition, or drive full of gobbledygook (that’s a technical term). Encrypt your data.

At the same time, reconsider carefully the data you do hold onto. Do you really need your client’s social security number or driver’s license number? If you do, you had better encrypt that information and keep any paper copies under lock and key. It will take more than a simple log-in password to escape liability in a case like this, I think.

Everyone needs backup. Hard drives fail. Period. So backup your data.

The problem is that your data is hiding in a bunch of different places on your hard drive. One of the best ways to make backup easier is to centralize it. Pick a folder where you want to store all the data you want to back up, and centralize it to make your life easier.

I use a folder named “sjg,” my initials. In there I have my “My Documents” folder My business files are in there (My Documents\Business Files), as are my Time Matters documents (Business Files\TM7) and my Outlook .pst files (Business Files\Outlook Files). You can change all these settings in the relevant programs. Here’s how:

• My Documents - Just right-click the folder and select “Properties,” then click the “Move” button and select the directory you want to use
• Outlook - Go to File > Data File Management. This will tell you where all your data files are located. Click “Open Folder” for each of them. Leave those folders open and close Outlook. Now copy each file into the folder where you want to centralize your data. Open Outlook again and go back to File > Data File Management. Use the “Add” button to add each of the files you moved. Then delete the old ones. This is difficult if you are moving an IMAP file. I am still working on that one.
• IE favorites - If you are still using Internet Explorer (dear God, why?), you can change the location of your Favorites folder, but not simply. Go to Start > Run, and type “regedit.” Then hit “Okay.” Navigate to

  HKEY CURRENT USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders

  In the right pane, right click Favorites > Modify, and change the path to the folder where you want to store your IE favorites.

• Firefox bookmarks - The easiest way to backup your Firefox bookmarks is to use the Foxmarks add-on. This has the added advantage of allowing you to keep your Firefox bookmarks synchronized between multiple computers, including portable Firefox on a USB drive.
• Time Matters - It is best to do this when installing Time Matters. Once you are up and running, though, it isn’t difficult to change. Go to File > Utilities > File Locations. Click on the “change record” button for the file that appears in the window. Note the current locations, which is probably c:\TMx\Data (where x is your Time Matters version). Copy the \Data directory to the location where you want to store your TM data, and go back to TM and change those locations to reflect the new location.

I think that covers the main things. You should be able to apply this to other programs, as well. It is easier because you just have to backup the one folder now, rather than navigating around to find all the files and folders you need to backup. You may want to subtract your music and/or videos, however, since they will really slow down your backup.

Even better, use a separate partition instead of just a separate folder. That way you can even just create a disk image of your data partition once in a while to make restoration even easier.

Now go forth and backup!

Today I spent two hours drafting a complaint. Tonight, I was getting the complaint ready to go, so I copied my summons form into the complaint document and saved the file without thinking about it. As my finger clicked the mouse button, I realized I had selected “Save,” not “Save as.” Oh shit.

Yes, that’s two hours down the drain. I back up my files every morning to an external drive, but I drafted the complaint this afternoon. I also have an online backup service, Carbonite. Carbonite is great and all, but it also has a tendency to go into “Recover Mode” (i.e., it stops backing up) whenever I put my system in standby, which I did shortly after I finished drafting the complaint. So no backup.

So now I am stuck re-writing my complaint from scratch, and I am extremely angry with myself. Tonight I will probably send an angry note to the makers of Carbonite asking them to (1) give me an option to accelerate the upload, as it is almost too slow to be useful sometimes, and (2) more importantly, to fix the stupid glitch that makes it go into Recover Mode when I put my laptop on standby.

And then, tomorrow morning, I will set up my backups to happen automatically in the morning and in the evening, so that I always have two options. In the meantime, I will painstakingly attempt to reconstruct my complaint while cursing intermittently.