CIW Database Design Specialist

Great news! As of Tuesday, October 30, 2012 I am certified as a CIW Database Design Specialist. Databases have always been a foreign concept to me in regards to designing them. The concept of tables I understood well enough, but with my past experience with Microsoft Access 2007, creating a database for tracking duplicate files on different drives always ended up a waste of eight hours. After learning SQL using mySQL database server I understand why. Microsoft Access is not a well-implemented database application. The process of creating tables with Access is not straight-forward or logical. I therefore have uninstalled Access from all of my computers as I deem it a "waste of space." I have successfully created a database schema for my duplicate file dilemma. A few years back I purchased a Hitachi 400 GB hard drive that started to go bad and so I then purchased a Maxtor 500 GB hard drive to replace it. Starting with a drive cloning operation I backed up my personal files to the Maxtor. Following this act, I ran SpinRite on the Hitachi and relocated (remapped) the bad sectors to the reserved area and regained the use of the drive. I started to consolidate my personal files to one drive and in the process I experienced a power outage. As both drives were using FAT32 file systems, chaos ensued. Remembering my favorite duplicate file manager DFL, I went to my archives only to discover that it only works with FAT16 file systems (it was a DOS program). This was when I was running Windows ME with Acronis OS Selector and between OS's (ME & XP). Other duplicate file management software I tried always required a rescan of the drives when the software is launched. While I would be selecting which files to keep and which files to delete, the application would crash after I had selected a few hundred individual files, causing me to lose three hours of time and the pain of rescanning both drives, which took roughly four hours. So this process I had to complete in little steps and hope that my computer and/or software would not crash. I needed to view each file to make sure it was intact (pictures were not chopped, documents were not corrupt, and music was unblemished) before I deleted any files from either drive. A few years later the mess had become a discombobulated disaster. I had three directories of pictures with different subsets of the original directory, for instance. Now the task is to re-assemble the subsets into one complete set--for which no commercial or shareware application seemed to handle at all. The ones I tried with a modicum of success are Vistanita Duplicate Finder, Beyond Compare, Duplicate File Finder, and PCMagazine's Dupeless. Others, such as jv16 PowerTools, TuneUp Utilities, Glary Utilities, and others I can't recall at the moment either took too long to scan (jv16 PowerTools spent three days scanning and then a few hours to display the results and then it crashed while making the file selections) or didn't have multiple directory selection options. And none of them allowed me to save the session except for Vistanita (which crashed too often) and Duplicate File Finder (which took forever to compute checksums or do binary comparisons). In the end, I decided I needed to create my own tracking software because I would forget which directory I was keeping the good files in and which directory I was deleting files from between the sessions. A human can only do so much file selection before fingers become tired and eyes start to hurt. Now I need to create an automated method of adding file names and locations (where I place the files I want to keep, and which directories I'm moving the files from). This way, I can take a break for a month and not forget where I left off. The files aren't moving unless I'm moving them manually after comparing, so why shouldn't duplicate file detecting software be able to resume where it left off, right? Bedtime is approaching (I did get an extra hour because Daylight Savings Time just ended an hour ago, so it's 2:00 AM again).
And my certificate:

That's all until next time! Thanks for reading.

 Clint Menzies
 CIW Web Design Specialist
 CIW JavaScript Specialist
 CIW Database Design Specialist
 CompTIA Security+