> From: Chad Cooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Kevin Tarr [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> > I have two seperate questions, the first may relate to Ronn's > > problems. > > 1. Over the last year my niece and nephew have gone through four hard > > drives. These were name brand, WD, store bought hard drives. > > Two of the > > failures were instantanious, two built up over weeks until it > > was obvious > > that something was wrong. Is there any notices about hard > > drive failures? > > The real question: what do you experts do to look ahead for > > problems? I know > > I can't get teenagers to do any weekly checks, but could > > these problems been > > avoided? > > Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology or S.M.A.R.T. This is > supposed to predict a crash. This feature is built into most new > motherboards. Each drive manufacturer may have a set of utilities that can > run in the background, silently monitoring the health of the drives. Norton Utilities. Operative Word: New. Excluding what, 99% of motherboards? > > 2. From Alberto's message, I was wondering about something. > > From the little > > work I did with NT, it seemed like passwords were hidden. If > > a user lost or > > forgot his password, the only thing a sysadmin could do is > > reset the users > > system, the user had to input a new password. The sysadmin > > couldn't see what > > the actual password was. I take it that this is not true accross all > > systems? Obviously if I lost my password for Amazon.com, it could be > > e-mailed to me, but I just figured that some hidden mechanism > > was involved > > in this. My password was kept on the system but no person > > other than me > > could see it. Just wondering. > > Most passwords are hidden, meaning that it is protected either by a hashing > routine or encryption - but it depends on the vendor. Some web sites may > store this info in cookies, others use a hashing or encryption to hide the > password. > NT is very secure in this respect, and can be set to extremely high levels > of security. > > It is true that a sys admin can only reset a password to something else, not > see what it is. > Amazon stores your password on its server in a database, but since the > transmission is encrypted this takes the place of hiding the password. > > BTW - At work here, one of the developers created a input/output box, where > you type in a password, and it give you a hash of the password. I cracked it Ok nerd-lupa crack this: �9�+u~�Pc&� > within an hour with a calculator and paper and pencil, and handed it back to > him. The point is that vendors may say your password is safe, but there is > no mechanism to enforce good practices.
