OWC ANNOUNCES SMART ALEC
ESSENTIAL UTILITY FOR YOUR MAC DRIVES
PREDICTS DRIVE FAILURES
DON’T LOSE IMPORTANT DATA, PHOTOS,
VIDEOS, & OTHER FILES TO DISK FAILURE AGAIN
Release: http://www.thomas-pr.com/smartalec/owcsmartalecrelease.html
–Available in Beta Now – Shipping July
“A Check Engine Light for Your Disks” -- Constantly Monitors Drives with Predictive Failure Analysis
For Mac Hard Drives, SSDs, Firewire Disks, & USB Drives
Checks for Errors & Warns in Advance if Disks Have Failed or are About to Fail
Free Download from the iTunes App Store -- $9.99 Upgrade Available
Mill Valley, CA, June 14, 2017 – OWC, a leading zero emissions Mac and PC technology company, announced today SMART Alec https://www.smartalec.biz/, an essential Mac utility that constantly monitors and checks your Mac hard drives, SSDs, Firewire disks, and USB drives, warning you in advance if drives are failing or about to fail, so you’ll have plenty of time to back up and replace a bad drive. SMART Alec can help you avoid losing years of sensitive, irreplaceable data from databases, word processing, Excel, PowerPoint and other business files, precious photos and videos, music compositions, and more. SMART Alec is currently available in beta at: smartalec.biz/beta_test. The free final version of SMART Alec and $9.99 upgrade with additional features will be available in July.
“A check engine light for your disks,” Smart Alec’s Advanced Warning System employs Disk Data Analysis and Predictive Failure Analysis, quietly working in the background to alert you if your drives currently have, or are developing problems -- before it’s too late and you experience catastrophic disk failure. SMART AlecTM is available in July as a free download from the iTunes App Store, with a $9.99 paid upgrade with additional features, including USB/Firewire disk monitoring, email alerts, and more.
Drives Frequently Fail -- Why Wait Until a Disk Drive Fails to Take Action?
Although users expect hard drives to last forever, drives can frequently fail for numerous reasons, including overheating, power failures, surges from lightning strikes, water damage, and more. Once a drive fails, it can be virtually impossible or cost hundreds to thousands of dollars to reconstruct sensitive data through a computer technician or data recovery forensics company. Daily back-ups to a secondary drive are also risky, since unknowingly you may be backing up data from an already corrupted drive or to another drive with problems. Instead of waiting for the drive to fail or just hoping it won’t happen, users rely on SMART Alec’s continual background disk monitoring to protect sensitive data --Why wait until a disk drive fails to take action?
SMART Alec Free Version - Basic Features:
SMART Alec $9.99 Upgrade - Additional Features:
• “SMART Over USB”: the free version is for SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) drives only, not USB/FireWire drives. The upgrade adds failure prediction for most USB or FireWire connected drives, including most USB 3 devices.
• Email Notifications: in addition to desktop alerts, notifications are also emailed to you about failing or predicted-to-fail disks in case you are away from your disks.
Available through iTunes App Store
The free SMART Alec essential drive utility and $9.99 SMART Alec upgrade with USB/FireWire disk monitoring and other additional features will ship July 2017, with the free version available through the iTunes App store. A Windows version is in development. For more information, see https://www.smartalec.biz/ or Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SMARTAlec.biz/.
Free Beta Version Available Now
SMART Alec is currently in its final beta testing stage. To sign up as a beta tester, go to smartalec.biz/beta_test. In future releases of SMART Alec, users will be able to opt-in to share data about disk reliability and performance with SMART Alec’s self-learning disk failure prediction system, an algorithm which will analyze disk data from users to more accurately predict likely disk failure. Once opted in, users will get access to the most up-to-date statistics about the safest—and least safe—disks available and the reliability of the disks they are using. The latest beta, SMART Alec 1.0 b26, offers support for OS X 10.9 (Mavericks).
About OWC & OWC Holdings, Inc. (formerly SoftRAID)
Based in Mill Valley, California, SoftRAID was founded in 1996 by a small team of Mac software engineers. SoftRAID provides high quality storage solutions for Mac OS, including SoftRAID and SMART Alec. The company’s founders have worked with disk drives on Mac OS since the Mac Plus shipped in 1986. In 2014, SoftRAID was acquired by OWC, the leading manufacturer and upgrade provider for Apple and PC enthusiasts, and renamed OWC Holdings, Inc. SoftRAID is included with all preconfigured OWC ThunderBay RAID enclosures and will power the upcoming OWC Mercury Viper SSD that offers read speeds of 4.6 GB/s and write speeds of 4.0 GB/s. SoftRAID is available from the online store at: SoftRAID.com/store or as a 30-day free trial from SoftRAID.com/freetrial. For more information, see http://www.SoftRAID.com, http://www.smartalec.biz, and http://www.macsales.com.
Photos:
SMART Alec Photo - in office: http://www.thomas-pr.com/136/photos/owcsmartalecinoffice.html
SMART Alec Logo: http://www.thomas-pr.com/136/photos/smartaleclogo.html
SMART Alec Logo 2: http://www.thomas-pr.com/136/photos/smartaleclogo2.html
SMART Alec Screen Shot - Drive Fail: http://www.thomas-pr.com/136/photos/smartalecscreenfail.html
SMART Alec Screen Shot - Drive Scan: http://www.thomas-pr.com/136/photos/smartalecscreendrive.html
SMART Alec Screen Shot - No Failure: http://www.thomas-pr.com/136/photos/smartalecscreennofailure.html
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DENVER—Interior Secretary Zinke has recommended President Trump eliminate portions of Bears Ears National Monument. The Center for Western Priorities released the following statement from Executive Director Jennifer Rokala:
“This is an undeniable attack on our national monuments and America's public lands. The decision should be an easy one—more than 1 million Americans, including Utahns by a 9 to 1 margin, have asked President Trump to leave Bears Ears National Monument alone. Instead of reinforcing America’s conservation heritage, Secretary Zinke is recommending President Trump take actions that are both unprecedented and illegal.
"The law is clear: only Congress can modify or erase a national monument. This report, while disappointing, is not a surprise. President Trump made it clear the fix was in from the moment he signed the executive order, despite overwhelming public support for national monuments."
Background
The text of the Antiquities Act, signed by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1906, plainly gives the president authority to create, but not rescind or modify national monuments. The Federal Land Policy Management Act of 1976 re-confirmed that the power to create national monuments is a “one way” authority given by Congress to the president. (See Squillace et al, 2017 for the drafting history of FLPMA and the relevant section of the law.) Since FLPMA’s passage, no president has attempted to eliminate or alter a national monument.
During the brief 15-day comment period, hundreds of thousands of Americans voiced their support for Bears Ears National Monument. The Center for Western Priorities’ analysis of individual comments submitted to regulations.gov found 96 percent of those comments supported monument designations. When combined with bundled comments collected by advocacy groups, well over 99 percent of public comments told Secretary Zinke and President Trump to leave our national monuments alone.
This recommendation also goes against the wishes of Utahns. Self-identified Utah residents supported maintaining Bears Ears National Monument by a 9-to-1 margin in comments submitted to the Interior Department, an overwhelming majority.
During Ryan Zinke’s 4-day trip to Utah, he went out of his way to avoid listening to monument supporters, spending just 90 minutes with advocates for Bears Ears. The Secretary refused to meet with business leaders near Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, and left Utah as a crowd outside the airport chanted “talk to us.”
Learn More
New analysis of submitted comments finds overwhelming in-state support for national monuments
New analysis shows national monument support dominates public comment period
For more information, visit westernpriorities.org. To speak with an expert on public lands, contact Jesse Prentice-Dunn at 720-204-1886 or jesse@westernpriorities.org.
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The Center for Western Priorities is a conservation policy and advocacy organization focused on land and energy issues across the American West.
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