98-349 Microsoft Windows Operating System Fundamentals – Managing Devices and Backups

1. Storage and RAID

Managing devices. We’ll start with Bluetooth and we’ll talk a little more about drivers on how to connect, let’s say Bluetooth speaker to your Windows Ten device. I will show you this on my local PC because I want to make sure Bluetooth is in place. We go to to start and type Bluetooth. This is the easiest way to access any option that you’re after. We have to enable Bluetooth and now we can say I want to add a new device. I have a Bluetooth speaker, JBM Bluetooth speaker. You have to turn it on and then in most cases there is a Bluetooth button that you have to press and hold to make sure that this device can be identified by, in this case, my PC. Yeah. I want Bluetooth.

Here we go. JBA JBL go connecting and we should hear it in a moment. Here we go. Did you hear it? Okay, awesome. Okay, now when I go to sound settings, just let me open it. Here we go. Yeah, it’s working. I’m pretty sure you’ve used a Bluetooth device before, so that’s pretty obvious and easy to use. We can go here and remove disconnect. That’s pretty obvious. Please remember that in some cases you have to type a special pin. It might be 1234 or 40. Sometimes you have to figure it out using a website or create a pen. It all depends how it’s been configured. When it comes to mice, keywords, Bluetooth speakers, it’s pretty easy. You just turn it on, go to connect and you’re ready to go.

When you’re over here, we can see some additional options when it comes to printers, mouse typing, pen, autoplay, USB so I recommend you play with all these additional options when it comes to devices that are available in Windows Ten. Of course, Bluetooth is not the only option that we can use. I will assume you know what USB is. That’s pretty obvious.

You can see a nice picture on your screen. At the moment, the easiest way is to show you a system board because a lot of ports are available over there and we can identify some storage devices straight away. When it comes to USB, you know, it’s plug and play and something that allows you to connect a lot of devices to your laptop, to your desktop, PC and so on. USB is not the only storage type we have. eSATA SATA is the main standard that we’ve been using for years when it comes to computer hardware. SATA stands for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment and it is an interface for connecting storage devices like hard drives, DVD drives and so on. And we have a lot of SATA versions.

The idea for eSATA is it is external SATA. It was designed to allow you to transfer data from, let’s say, a hard disk or a device that you’re after FireWire as well. Or II E 1394, which used to be very popular as well many years ago. And we have better systems now. And a lot of these device types have been changed, have involved and have been replaced in many cases. Now, when it comes to USB, I’m pretty sure, you know, we have USBC.

Now, we started with USB one, two, three, the Blue one here. But now we have USBC. IEEA and all other companies and organizations keep working on new standards to make sure that they’re up to date. They allow you to transfer data if you want to check what has been connected to your Windows Ten device when it comes to storage, we go to this PC and over here we click on Manage. We go for storage and disk management. You will see a list of devices and storage options that are available for you. In my case, I have my C drive, reserved partition and a virtual DVD. Please remember this is a virtual machine.

Actually, I’ll show you the same option on my local PC to make sure that you can see the difference and more options. So let’s check it here. Okay? Please note NTFS Recovery Disk first of all, you have to memorize that there are two main types of disks basic and Dynamic.

Well, Basic, yeah, it just uses partitions to manage your data. When it comes to a dynamic disk, it is better because it allows you to use more features. One of them is Software Raid. This means that you can connect two hard disks and create a software array, something that will be reliable and fast. Or if you have more than two disks, it can be fast and reliable at the same time. How can you play with it? Well, the main advantage of a virtual machine is that we can add a hard disk and we can play with it.

So over here, we go for settings. And here in storage, we can actually add a new hard disk. It’s not a problem. Let’s shut down our virtual machine now. Shut it down. Go for settings, storage and please note we have SATA type and now we can add a new disk. We can add an optical drive or here we go. Here we can add a hard disk. This is what we’re after. We want to create a new disk. It’s fine. Let’s just use 15. Here we go. And we’ll see a new hard disk. The same applies to a DVD drive, USB esat and so on. The idea is to play with a virtual machine.

And this is the main advantage of a virtual machine. We can keep adding disks and play with options that are available. And if we’re lucky, we’ll see something over here. Here we go. Windows is really smart and is going to tell you, oh, by the way, by the way, you’ve just connected a new thing. Do you want to initiate it? I say, sure, why not? Please note we have two types of partition styles that we can use. It’s MBR, which is in a way, the old version of partition style, or GPT, which is the new flavor, you can say, but please note it says it cannot be recognized by all previous versions of Windows.

This is why, if you want to be backwards compatible, go for MBR. If you have the latest hardware and software, go for the second option. I’m okay with the first one. And now I have this one. Did I 15 megabytes. Oh, okay. I thought it was 15GB. Was it 15 megabytes? Okay, well, we have a tiny hard disk now, but we right click and we can create a new simple volume. Please note, this is the only option because we have one disk only, we can’t do anything. For instance, we can’t mirror it because, well, it’s just one. If you want to mirror a disk, well, you need two disks. If you want to use rate five, which in a way combines security and speed, you need at least three disks here. You say a new one, that’s fine. A new letter. Please note we can assign a folder. That’s fine. We go for a quick format option because we want to make sure we can start straight away. And we finish. Here we go. And please note, we have a new volume here. Now, when I right click, I can shrink this volume and I can mark partition as active if that was my main operating system.

And I can play with some more options when I right click over here, and I can convert to dynamic disk. Let’s do it. And you will see that we will have more options when we finish it. Please note the color changes as well. And now we will have more options. We can mirror, we can create Raid and so on. So actually, let’s shut down the system, create another 15 megabyte disk, and we’ll try and create a mirror. The idea for a mirror is to make sure that one file, in a way, is going to be stored on two hard disks. We have two dynamic disks in place. Now, when I right click, I can go for a new mirrored volume. So now I want to add disk one and disk two, and you will see what’s going to happen. Here we go. Now, when I open my file Explorer, you will see that I have one, one volume only, m even though I have two hard disks, I have one volume only. But Windows in a way, will save a file on disk one and on disk two at the same time. If disk one fails, disk two takes over.

You have more options. Let’s go. For this option, what will happen? And that’s really great, because you can play with a virtual machine. You can do whatever you want. Well, no issues. And now, please note, I have 26 megabytes of space, because for this array, Windows is going to use disk one and disk two at the same time. The main problem with this solution is that if disk one fails, I am done. Everything that I’ve copied, I stored on the M volume is gone. This is why it’s not recommended. If you want to go for rate five well, you need three disks. I will not show you this because it’s again new and you create it. I recommend you play with it and you can see virtual machine is great. You can just keep adding hard disks, volumes, partitions and so on.

2. Printers in Action

Printers and printing devices. We’ve talked about printers already, and here I want to mention a couple of additional things and give you some tips how to troubleshoot printing issues. We go to our virtual machines straight away. We know we can use the printers and scanners option to add the new printer. We’ve seen this option already. Just in case, I will show you how you can add a new printer. It’s going to ask, okay, can I see any printers in this area? Do I have any USB printers and network printers? It’s just trying to figure it out. And here I want to spend a couple of minutes and talk you through all these options in detail. You can go and specify a shared printer by name.

It is very similar to sharing a folder. You can share a printer as well, and then you can provide its name. You can browse. This is possible especially if you are in an active directory environment. Enterprise Networks you can add a printer using a TCP IP address. I show you here you can auto, detect or specify a host name and a port name. You just specify an IP address of a printer that you’re after. Next option is to add a Bluetooth wireless or a network printer when you click Next.

Here, Windows is trying to figure it out and find a network printer. The last option is to add a local printer. If you have a printer that is connected using a USB cable, this is what you can do. As I’ve mentioned a few times already throughout this course, in most cases we go for a driver that has arrived with your printer. It makes sense to go for a driver from HP, Epson and so on because it is much easier and fast. Please note we have some predefined options over here. I can say Microsoft Print to PDF. You can open and see the queue.

Now. When you think about managing a printer, we have one printer that has been added. You can open the queue and see what has been happening with this printer. When you go for Printer and Properties, you can for instance, printed a test page to make sure that the printer is okay and up and running. Please note this is a default driver from Windows. This is why it has a really limited list of options. If you go for a driver from HP and so on, you will get a lot of additional options. Please note I’m using a local port, but I can add a new port. I can add a TCP IP port and make this a network print in advance. Nothing really special. I hope you’re okay with this. I want to show you one more option which is really important. You have to memorize that.

The most important service for your printer is called Print spoiler. This is the service that manages your print jobs and handles communication with your printer. If something goes wrong, please note it says you won’t be able to print or see your printer if something goes wrong. You can go and restart this process. The service when we go back to our printer, one tip I want to give you is please make sure that this option is not use Printer Offline. Sometimes Windows takes this option if it faces a problem with a printer and then you try and print something and it gets stuck here, it doesn’t want to go through. You go to services, you restart the print spur, you say, what’s going on? Well, please make sure that you go to Printer and make sure that this is not ticked, because it means I will use Printer Offline.

And this is not what you want to have if you want to keep using your printer, if you want to have your printer online for yourself and for your users as well.