Manage Passwords, on the Web and in Applications

Is there a program that keeps track of passwords online and in apps? 

THE SAFEST PASSWORDS are long, seemingly random strings of letters, numbers, and punc­tuation marks-and you need a different one for each site you log in to and each application that requires it. Unless you have a photographic memory, you need a program where you can securely store your pass­words. That way, you simply need to remember the one password that will give you access to all the others.
You need a password manager, which is essentially an encrypted password database. A good password manager should work for both websites and applications. I use Pass­word Safe. It’s free, open source, and available on multiple plat­forms. I run it on my PC, Android phone, and iPad.


Password Safe doesn’t directly integrate with your browser, but it’s reasonably browser-friendly. When you’re at a site’s log-on page, open Password Safe, right-click the appro­priate item, and select Perform Auto Type. To enter a password into an application, simply double-click the corresponding item in Password Safe.
This action puts the password in your clipboard; from there you can easily paste it into the application. Pass­word Safe clears the clipboard within a few minutes, or when you close it.
KeePass is another free password manager. Many peo­ple find it easier to use than Password Safe. You may want to try both before you commit to one.

1.Back Up Your Entire Drive: Cloning vs. Imaging

Both cloning and imaging create an exact record of your drive or partition—not just the files, but also the master boot record, the allocation table, and everything else required to boot and run your operating system.
You needn’t back up your whole drive to protect your data—a simple file backup will handle that job. But if your hard drive crashes or Windows becomes hopelessly corrupt, a clone or image backup can save the day.
When you clone a drive, you copy everything on it onto another drive, so that the two are effectively identical. Normally, you’d clone to an internal drive made external via a USB-to-SATA adapter (see page 93) or enclosure.
But imaging a drive is like creating a great big .zip file (without the .zip extension). Everything on the drive is copied into a single, compressed, but still very large file. You then save the image on an external hard drive.
So what are the advantages of each method? The advan­tage of a clone is that if your primary hard drive crashes, the clone will get you up and running quickly—all you have to do is swap the drives. If you had backed up the drive to an image, you'd have to buy and install a new internal hard drive, boot from your backup program’s emergency boot disc, and restore the drive's contents from the backup.
An image backup has its advantages, however. You can save several images onto one sufficiently large external hard drive, making it easier and more economical to save multiple versions of the same disk or to back up multiple PCs.
You can find several programs that handle these chores, including the backup tools in Windows 7 and 8. But I recom­mend Macrium Reflect Free, which is free for personal use. It’s easy to use, very reliable, and capable of both cloning and imaging.

Manage Passwords, on the Web and in Applications