A hard drive’s spec sheet usually displays information about the operating and non-operating temperatures. Most manufacturers set the operating temperature threshold at 5° Celsius to 55° Celsius. Others may have a slightly different threshold going up to 60° Celsius.

A lot of things can happen if a hard drive reaches non-operating temperatures. This ranges from data corruption and data loss to crashes and even hardware failures.

While it is not likely that most computer users will ever experience they hard drives reaching critical temperatures, it can happen if they work in environments with unusually low or high temperatures. Other reasons can be bad or no cooling, or other hardware close to the hard drive that is emitting lots of heat.

How can you check a hard drive’s temperature level? Most modern hard drives support a technology called SMART, which stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology. Programs can read and display SMART data.

One of my favorite programs for the job is Speedfan, a lightweight program that reads the majority of PC sensors.

Speedfan scans the hardware for sensors and displays its findings directly in the main interface.

The hard drives are listed on the right side. Normal, falling and critical temperatures are all indicated with icons which makes identification easier. You can alternatively click on the SMART tab, select one of the hard drives available and look at the SMART values for additional information. Very interesting in this regard is the temperature reading, as it lists the worst temperature the hard drive has ever reached on the system.

You can use the value to find out if the selected hard drive ever reached critical temperature levels on your computer.

If it did, you may want to start thinking about proper backup of data and replacement.

Displayed in the middle of the window is a colorful chart showing memory information in different sizes and colors around the chart. Unused disk space is shown with no extensions, as that part of the drive is blank. On the left panel shows all connected drives. It will show USB drives, external hard drives, SD cards, partitions, etc. When you click on a particular field, you see what that area of the hard drive contains and another pie chart will be presented to represent that space and the different files and folders contained therein. This is quite handy when you need to clean your hard drive space or find specific files and folders.

In the screenshot above, you can see all of the sectors in Drive C: and by placing the mouse over a certain area, a small box provides the information for the occupancy of that sector. In this example, VirtualBox is highlighted. Click on the selected field and you will get the specifics.

When you get the pie chart for the selected sector, X – Ray Lite allows you to go deeper. For example, the VirtualBox chart has 4 sectors representing virtual machines stored on the hard drive. In this demonstration, the area for Debian Linux is found when the mouse is hovered over an area. When this is clicked, a chart that isolates Debian is displayed.

You follow the same process to isolate any file or folder from the original chart for any given drive highlighted in the left pane. By right-clicking a sector of the chart, you are presented with a context menu with options to Zoom, Recycle or Delete and also view Properties. From there, you can do what you want. To clear any area of the hard drive, select delete and then empty the recycle bin. Alternatively, you can choose the Zoom option to get even more detailed specifics of the drive memory occupation or open the Properties.

There is also an option to access the application from the Windows Explorer context menu. From Windows Explorer, select a folder and right-click to open the context menu. Right-click the selected folder and select “x-Ray it!” and this will show a pie chart for that file.

TDP x-Ray Lite is incredibly easy to use and versatile. For users who work well with pie chart schemes, it is ideal. When you download the application, a desktop icon is generally not created. You will have to open the start menu and use the search box to find it then drag and drop to the desktop if you want an icon there.

Download TDP x-Ray Lite from this link:
http://www.tdp.cz/downloads/en/xray-lite

TDP x-Ray Lite works on all versions of Windows.

These days, things have changed. Now the purchase of an external hard drive is a simple affair. Pick the one you want, with the capacity you want, and take it to the check-out point. This is probably largely due to the popularity of external hard drives these days. Shifting data around is always needed, whether it be important work documents or a bunch of illicit video files nicked off of the Internet. And, with long download times via email (aside from email size restrictions) and the generally smaller storage capacity of other data transfer devices, the external hard drive makes a lot of sense. And among those sensible devices are some that make even more sense, for various reason.

Apacer’s AC430 external hard drive is one of those. First of all, it makes use of a 2.5” drive. That means that it’s small. It’s not quite what one could consider pocketsized, but it comes close. That means easy transportation, facilitated by a stylish protective slip-case included in the box. Further portability is implied by the unit’s sturdy design.

The casing is mostly finished in brushed metal, with sturdy plastic caps covering the ends. An internal anti-shock system will help protect against accidental bumps and bruises, although heavy blows may still have an effect on the device’s performance. So don’t throw it at people who annoy you.

The 2.5” drive in the model we tested offers a fairly generous 500GB of storage space, which can be transferred to and from the device via a USB cable. Power is also supplied to the unit via the same cable, so the need for lugging an extra power adapter around is removed. On the downside, though, it uses a very specific USB cable… the plug on the unit itself is an odd one, so you’ll want to treat the included cable like gold. The carry-case has an elasticised strap to hold it in place, but you may want to consider a slightly sturdier option than that.

Best of all: it’s USB 3.0. We haven’t seen too many devices using this new speed standard yet, so the very fast data transfer rates that the AC430 offers are something of a treat. Naturally this can be used with all other iterations of USB technology, but that speed is sublime.

The device also has a smart power management system, so leaving it plugged into your PC or laptop for extended periods of time will not put too much strain on the system.
The drive’s power status is indicated by an LED light housed behind one of the plastic end-caps.

OK, maybe the USB 3.0 isn’t the best aspect here… we really like the price. Considering the reliability and performance of the unit, as well as its sleek, sturdy design, the recommended retail price is really rather sweet. All in all, a winner.

PROS:

• Good value
• Fast
• Well-built

CONS:

• Proprietary USB plug
• “Only” 500 Gigabytes

Verdict:

Sturdy, stylish and fast… it’s like an external HDD version of a sports car.

The hard drive diagnostic software is free to use. It offers two tests which become available on program startup. The SMART test retrieves a drive’s SMART values which reveal many information about a drive’s health and status.

This includes the temperature, number of power cycles, power on hours or error count.

The values are presented to the user in the interface, but they are not interpreted or explained by the application. Users without the proper know how may have troubles understanding at least some of the values listed.

The second option is for drives that do not report SMART values. This may include storage devices such as external hard drives or other USB drives. The sector scan basically performs a read test on all sectors of the drive. Read errors can be the first sign of a failing hard drive. This test can take a long time, depending on the size and speed of the drive.

A test on a 2 Terabyte drive with a speed of 5400 rpm for instance took 5 hours to complete. Smaller or faster devices should test considerably faster.

One interesting option is the ability to configure email reports. This basically sends a report to an email address whenever a test is run in the application. It is necessary to enter not only the recipients email address but also the SMTP host, username and password.

An option to schedule regular scans is missing unfortunately. Windows users who are interested in Easis Drive Check can download the program from the developer website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system.

To begin, go to Start > Right-click Computer > Manage (or enter computer in the search and run box and select Computer Management from the results listing).

This is the computer management window which will open. Remember, this is a right-click to get the Manage option. Click on Storage > Disk Management. This is how you will be able to select the drive you want to partition. You should see a similar listing of all connected disks and drives after a scan of the system drives.

Choose which drive that you want to partition. There may be, of course, more hard drives on the system. External hard drives can be partitioned as well, but that is another matter. The focus will remain on partitioning an existing internal hard drive. Right-click on the drive that you want to partition and click Shrink Volume.

A query for available disk space will commence and next a window will be presented to demonstrate the size of the hard drive and what space is available for shrink. You will need to enter the amount that you want to shrink, or the size of the new partition. Obviously, it cannot be more than the amount of space available and the amount of space needed should have been carefully considered. There is no need to create an excessively large partition if it is not going to be used.

The “Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB value needs to be set. This basically cuts the selected amount of Megabytes from the current partition and makes it available for another one. Please note that you need to enter the amount in Megabytes in the menu. 1000 Megabytes are one Gigabyte, for 100 Gigabyte you would enter 100000 in the form.

Click Shrink after entering the values and the operation will take a period of time to complete, depending on the drive size and shrink amount selected. When it is complete, you will see an unallocated space representing this size selected.

Select this unallocated space and right-click and choose New Simple Volume. The setup Wizard will appear. Follow the steps and fill in the partition size. Typically, this is the same size as that selected for shrink, but may differ by a few megabytes.

Click Next and assign a drive letter of your choice. It is irrelevant which drive letter you choose as long as it is not already assigned. In this example, the drive letter M is chosen for this new partition, but you are free to select another free driver letter instead. Select NTFS and enter a name for the drive. Simply click finish and the partition has been created.

It is usually not necessary to use third party partitioning software under Windows 7 unless you run into error messages.

I won’t repeat what the article says here, but it’s extensive and he’s gone into some depth.  I would like to add my voice to a choir though.

I built myself a new desktop PC back in July 2010 around an Intel Core i7 860 running at 2.80GHz, 6Gb of DDR3 RAM and an Intel X25-M 80GB SSD.  I bought this particular SSD on the recommendation of PC Pro magazine here in the UK who had only the month before group tested a great deal of them.

I also bought a Samsung Spinpoint F3 1Tb hard disk, a couple of them actually, for data storage as they too had come recommended in a group test.  Both of these components I selected for sheer speed.

Now I can attest that not only is booting Windows 7 from an SSD significantly quicker than from any conventional hard disk, but running it from the SSD is also significantly quicker day to day.  If that is, you buy the correct SSD!

One of the things that the PC Pro group test revealed is that the wrong SSD can be as slow as a normal, ordinary middle of the road, mechanical hard disk.

If you intend to buy an SSD it’s worth checking the computer magazines and online to see group tests that compare the current crop of disks side-by-side as the differences in read/write and general access times can vary dramatically.

So have a look at Ed’s article as it’s extremely informative, but before you rush out to buy yourself an SSD, do your homework and make sure that you’re not throwing your money away on an expensive gadget which will provide no real-world benefits.

Still, some early adopters cannot resist the temptation and buy SSDs, despite their price tag and relatively low storage capacities. Sometimes, users buy a SSD for their old system, with the intention to replace the current hard drive the system is installed on.

Those users face a problem. How can they migrate the operating system from the old hard drive to the new and faster Solid State Drive.

Paragon Migrate OS to SSD offers a solution for those users. The software is currently in testing, and available for all early adopters at the Paragon website. All it takes is to enter some registration information and the product keys and download links will be delivered to the email account entered in the registration form.

After program installation, launch the tool using the program list in Windows start menu, or by clicking the corresponding shortcut on your desktop.

On the wizard welcome screen, read the warning about data on the second disk drive. According to the program logic, all data on this drive will be overwritten by copying data from the source drive. Before you click next, make sure you have saved any important data on the second drive to an outside source.

Clicking the Learn more link in the bottom left corner opens a program tip-window with useful information about the tool.

Click Next>, and the program analyzes the disk configuration of your computer and searches for any system volumes.

In the next screen, you will be presented with possible migration scenarios. You can either agree to perform the operation, or cancel it.

In the next window, specify which files and folders to exclude during migration. This option is very useful if you want to reduce the space you will use on the final partition, or copy the system to a smaller drive than the original one.

After migration, shutdown the computer and remove the source drive. Make the remaining drive bootable in BIOS and restart the computer. Your newly migrated system will boot after the system finishes processing.

Paragon Migrate OS to SSD will detect all operating systems installed on the hard drives automatically, and prompt the user to pick one of the systems that have been discovered.

The user is then asked to pick the target drive for the OS migration, which in this case is the SSD. If the SSD has a larger size than the data on the OS partition all data can be transferred. If the target drive has a lower size then the user is asked to select data that is then excluded from the migration.

Paragon Migrate OS to SSD’s biggest strength is that it is very easy and convenient to use. In addition, users do need a deeper knowledge of partitions and system disks, as this is mostly handled by the program.

Even inexperienced users can migrate an operating system to a SSD with the program comfortably.

Acronis Drive Monitor is a free hard disk monitoring software that uses SMART information and the Windows event log to display important events to the system user. The program is pretty basic, which is surprising considering its size of nearly 18 Megabytes.

On startup a summary is displayed, which displays disk problems, backup information and critical events. Disk problems are directly linked to SMART parameters, and the program will either report that all disks are working normally, or that problems have been encountered.

acronis drive monitor

Critical events taps right into the Windows event log and displays high risk events of the system’s storage devices. Backup finally has probably been added to distribute or sell Acronis products as it proposes to download Acronis backup software if no backup software is detected on the system.

Links lead to detailed information about each of the information provided by the software. Probably the most interesting feature of the program is the critical events listing which makes use of the Windows Event log. Not many hard drive monitoring applications offer this feature.

Then again, it is possible to create those custom alerts quite easily without third party software.

The page displays all critical events, sorted by date. Included in the listing is the risk evaluation rating, severity, source and event id. A double-click on an event displays detailed information about that specific event, with a link to the Acronis Knowledge Base website for additional information.

critical events

The Disks page lists the usual information about the primary partition of the computer. We did not find an option to make the drive monitor display those information for other connected drives.

Finally, the program can create four types of alerts that are send to an email address that needs to be configured in the program’s options. Alerts can be configured for temperature levels, critical events, disks monitoring errors and backup monitoring errors.

Acronis Drive Monitor does not offer anything that other tools or even Windows first party tools do not offer. Some users may still be inclined to give the program a try, it is free after all. The program supports both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. Downloads are provided at the Acronis website after registration.

What he apparently did not know is that it is necessary to configure a drive so that it becomes available in Windows. New hard drives usually do not come with a file system pre-installed, which means that it is up to the user to pick a file system so that the hard disk can be accessed in the operating system.

In Windows 7 this is done with the Disk Management tool. The easiest way to load Disk Management is to press Windows-R, type diskmgmt.msc and hit enter.

Disk Management lists all connected drives. This can be drives that already have a file system, drives that have not been initialized yet and optical drives such as CD and DVD drives.

windows 7 hard drive

The most important part of the following operation is to pick the right drive. The easiest way to find the new drive in the drive listing is to find the drive with the right storage space. In his case, it was relatively easy as he bought a new 60 Gigabyte Solid State Drive.

The drive needs to be initialized, this is done by selecting it in the drive listing, right-clicking afterwards and clicking Initialize Disk from the context menu.

initialize disk

It is now important to select the right disk from the menu. Important because there may be multiple disks that are not initialized. Disks can be unselected from the menu. It is usually sufficient to select the MBR partition style, unless the disk that needs to be initialized is larger than 2 Terabytes or is used on Itanium based computers.

windows7 initialize disk

The process takes a few seconds the most, and the status of the disk should change from Not Initialized to Online. The drive space on the other hand is still shown as unallocated. This is because no file system has been selected yet for the drive.

The drive can be formatted by right-clicking on the Unallocated space in Disk Management, and selecting New Simple Volume. There are other options but those are usually for more advanced uses.

The operating system will then walk the user through setting up the hard drive so that it can be accessed in Windows.

The first step is to select the volume size for the drive, which usually should be the maximum size available unless the drive should be partitioned.

After that a drive letter can be selected for the new hard drive, so that it becomes accessible in Windows 7.

In the last step, the file system can be selected. It is NTFS by default and it is usually not required to make any changes here. It may make sense however to change the volume label for better identification of the drive in Windows.

The formatting should not take long and the drive becomes available right after the operation ends.

In this article I am going to show you how to migrate your ext2 or ext3 partition to ext4. I will use a Ubuntu machine as an example. I want to warn you that you could lose data by doing this so, following good administrative practices, back up your data! Once you are certain you have that backup of your data, it’s time to begin.

Kernel pre-requisite

You must be certain you have a kernel that is at least 2.6.28-11-generic or higher. If not, do NOT continue on with this. To find out what kernel you are running issue the command uname -r. If your kernel is lower thatn 2.6.28-11 stop where you are and close your browser.

Step 1

The first step is to boot from a Ubuntu Live CD. You do this because you can’t convert a file system that has been mounted. If you are converting a second drive on your machine (one that doesn’t contain your OS or your ~/ (home) directory, you can always just unmount that drive and do this without booting the Live CD.

Step 2:

Now it’s time to convert. We’re going to use /dev/sda1 as an example for converting. You will want to know the exact name of the drive and/or partition you are wanting to covert. If you are converting from ext2 to ext4 issue the following commands:

sudo bash
tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index,has_journal /dev/sda1

If you are wanting to convert ext3 to ext4 issue the following commands:
sudo bash
tune2fs -O extents,uninit_bg,dir_index /dev/sda1

NOTE: After you enter either of the sudo bash commands you will have to enter your sudo password.

Step 3:

Regardless of which conversion you are doing you will want to check the drive (or partition) after the conversion and repair any issues. Do this with the command:

e2fsck -pf /dev/sda1

Step 4:

Now you need to make sure the partition will mount. Do this with the command:

sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mnt

Hopefully you won’t see any errors. You should now see the contents of that drive listed in the /mnt directory.

Step 5:

It’s time to edit your /etc/fstab file to reflect the change. Open this file up with your favorite text editor and look for the line that corresponds to the drive/partition you just changed. In that line you will reference to either ext2 or ext3. Change that reference to ext4. Save and close that file.

Step 6:

Now you need to refresh grub. Depending upon how your boot partition is will determine how you do this. If your boot partition is SEPARATE, do the following:

sudo bash
mkdir /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
grub-install /dev/sda --root-directory=/mnt --recheck

If your boot partition is NOT separate, do the following:

sudo bash
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
grub-install /dev/sda --root-directory=/mnt --recheck

Step 7:

Reboot. Once up and running you will now be using the ext4 file system!

Final thoughts

If you are leery of any of the above, don’t worry…you don’t HAVE to do this. Your system will run fine with ext2 or ex3. But if you love to get your hands dirty with your machines…then you will enjoy converting a working file system from one type to another. Just remember BACK UP YOUR DATA!

I still have a machine that tends to work pretty hard, so I like to keep tabs on what the temp is doing at any given moment. Fortunately this is easy (when you have a PC that has the hardware setup to monitor the temperature. If you do, then you are nearly half-way there. In this article I am going to take you the rest of the way and show you how to monitor you systems temperature in Linux with a few simple gadets.

Panel or “widget”?

There are two ways in which I will show you how to monitor your temperature from your panel and/or using a screenlet. Both are incredibly simple to use and each have a very different look and different feel about them, but both tackle the same task.

GNOME Panel

Let’s first take a look at adding temperature sensors to the GNOME Panel. This is fairly straight-forward. If you right-click the GNOME panel you will see the entry “Add to panel”. Select that and, from the resulting window, scroll down until you see “Hardware Sensors Monitor”. Select that applet and click the Add button. You will immediately see a new applet on your panel (see Figure 1).

Figure 1

With this monitor running you will see temperatures for all the cores in your CPU as well as the motherboard temperature. In the Figure you see above, the farthest temp on the left will be the acpi temp. You also see five other temperatures. You can add or remove sensors if your right-click, select preferences, click on the Sensors tab, and check what you do or do not want to see. The more cores on your CPU, the more temperature sensors will appear.

Screenlet

My favorite way to keep track of temperature is through the Screenlets application. By default there will be a particular screenlet called Ring Sensors. But before you even use it, you have to install Screenlets. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open up your Add/Remove Software tool.
2. Search for “screenlets” (no quotes).
3. Mark Screenlets for installation.
4. Click Apply to install.

That’s it! Now click Applications > Accessories > Screenlets and the screenlets icon will appear in your notification area. Right-click on the Screenlets icon and choose Screenlets Manager. When this window open scroll down until you see Ring Sensors. Double click the ring sensors to add it to the desktop.

By default, Ring Sensors will not be monitoring your CPU temperature. You have to tell this screenlet what to monitor. Right-click on the ring and select Properties. In this window (see Figure 1) click on the Options tab and then the Sensors sub-tab. From that window select the core you want to monitor and then click Close.

You will now see a ring sensor monitoring the temperature of the core you choose to monitor. If you need to monitor more than one core, just add another Ring Sensor applet and configure it to monitor a different core.

Figure 3

When on your desktop, the Ring Sensor will look like those shown in Figure 3. You can adjust the size of each ring by right clicking a ring, selecting Size, and then selecting a percentage.

Final thoughts

There are plenty of other ways to monitor the temperature of your system. You can monitor the hard drive temperature and you can monitor the acpi temperature – both via command line! But keeping track of your CPU temperature will go a long way to help you know the health of your system.

Installing a single game or large application on the drive could be enough to fill it to the brim, which would result in performance drops all over the board, as hard drives react with performance drops if they are (almost) filled completely with data.

TreeSize Free is a freeware program for Windows that displays the space allocation of a drive or a selected folder. The calculations are fast, and the sizes and folder names are displayed in a tree style listing after the scan.

Each folder is shown with its icon, the space allocation of all files it contains and its name. Folders can be expanded if they have subfolders, to analyse the disk space usage of each subfolder. This does not require a new scan.

At each root level, the files are listed. A right-click opens the standard Windows Explorer menu with options to delete or copy files, a left-click will execute the selected file right away.

treesize free

The header bar at the top holds several options to change the display. It is for instance possible to switch from Megabytes to either Kilobytes or Gigabytes, switch to percentage view, display total number of files per folder instead of sizes, or change the sorting from size to names.

TreeSize Free is a lightweight and fast disk analyzer for Windows. A professional version is available as well, which adds reporting, duplicate file search and statistics to the program, which the free version does not offer.

The free version is fully sufficient for a quick overview of the largest folders of a hard drive. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7. An earlier version is provided for Windows 9x users.

SSDs work differently than platter-based hard drives, especially when it comes to read and write processes on the drive. The most effective way to securely delete platter-based hard drives (overwriting space with data) becomes unusable on SSDs because of their design.

Data on platter-based hard disks can be deleted by overwriting it. This ensures that the data is not recoverable by data recovery tools. This method is not working on SSDs as it is not possible to specify the location to overwrite.

That’s highly problematic for computer users who want to give their computer away or sell it to a third party as data on the SSD could be recovered by the new owner.

Several suggestions have been made on how to delete data on solid state drives permanently. We have decided to test those methods on an old OCZ Core Series II SSD to see how effective they are.

• Delete the files
• Format the SSD
• Encrypt the whole drive
• Issuing a secure erase command with HDDErase

The efficiency of the methods will be tested by running the data recovery software Recuva after each method. An effective method should leave no recoverable files behind.

Test System

• Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
• OCZ Core Series II SSD
• File recovery software Recuva

Deleting the files

This is a direct way to delete files on the Solid State drive. It is the only option in the article that can be used to delete files and folders selectively.

Deleting the files directly in Windows Explorer is not sufficient to protect the data from recovery software. Recuva found almost 100% of the files that have been deleted in Windows Explorer.

delete files directly

Deleting files directly in the operating system is therefor not an option to delete data permanently on solid state drives.

Formatting the Solid State Drive

This is the easiest option as it can be executed directly without additional software requirements. Windows users need to locate the SSD in Windows Explorer, right-click it and select Format from the available options.

format solid state drive

It is important to uncheck the Quick Format option to ensure that all data on the drive will be formatted.

format drive

Windows Explorer does not list any files on the drive after the full format completes.

It is now up to Recuva to find out if files can be restored from the drive after a full format. Recuva is easy to use. All it takes is to select the solid state drive letter and click the scan button. A deep scan is proposed and should be accepted. This scan might take a while depending on the size and speed of the SSD.

ssd file recovery

The scan did find a total of 243 files of which were all ignored and not shown in Recuva. Ignored files are mainly zero byte files, in our case all files that were found were 0-byte files.

The full format did delete all files on the drive with the exception of unrecoverable files. The ignored files that were shown as recoverable had no filename, were all 0 byte files and note recoverable.

Alternative Format Software:

Darik’s Boot and Nuke is an option for users who only have the SSD connected to their computer or use another operating system.

Encrypting the Solid State Drive

Encrypting the whole SSD should in theory be enough to make the files unrecoverable. We have decided to use the encryption software True Crypt to encrypt the Solid State Drive. True Crypt if available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Here are the steps to encrypt a drive with True Crypt. Click the Create Volume button in the main True Crypt interface. This opens the TrueCrypt volume creation wizard.

true crypt

Encrypt a non-system partition/drive is the option to encrypt a drive other than the system drive. Select standard TrueCrypt volume in the next window and the select device button in the next. Pick the Solid State Drive partition from the list of connected hard drives.

encrypt drive

Selected Create encrypted volume and format it on the next screen, keep the default values in the encryption options on the next screen, click next on the volume size screen and pick a password thereafter. Keep the default settings from that point on by clicking Next whenever available.

A click on the Format button in the end will spawn a warning window in True Crypt stating that all data on the drive will be deleted when the True Crypt volume is created. Continue by selecting “Erase any files stored on the partition by creating a TrueCrypt volume within it”.

true crypt format

True Crypt will then format the drive and display a notification window afterwards stating that the encrypted volume has been created successfully.

Recuva was not able to scan the drive stating that the boot sector of the SSD could not be read. Additional recovery programs were not able to recover files as well. Cautious users could format the drive after it has been encrypted and run the file recovery software afterwards to test the effects. This yielded the same results as the plain drive format did.

Issuing a secure erase command with HDDErase

The secure erase command resets all NAND locations to an erased state which effectively removes all data from the drive. The command is mainly used to restore factory settings of drives that see reduced performance levels over time.

This method is for advanced users only, largely because it requires BIOS configuration and the creation of a boot disk.

HDDErase is one of the tools supporting the secure erase command. The latest version is HDDErase 4 which is not compatible anymore with Intel SSDs. Intel users need to download HDDErase 33 instead.

A bootable disk needs to be created. HDDErase will only work if AHCI is disabled in the computer BIOS.

Secure Erase scans the drive to verify that it supports the command.

sec erase 2

A full walkthrough of the steps required to use HDDErase to securely erase the SSD is available at IISHacks.

No data was recoverable after the secure erase command was issued in DOS.

Recommended method to erase data on solid state drives

Format, encryption and the secure erase command have made the data on the drives unrecoverable. A lot speaks for formatting the Solid State Drive as it is the easiest method of the three. It is usually not necessary to encrypt the data on the drive before formatting it as it yielded the same results as a standard format.

It is highly recommended to test the result with file recovery software to make sure that no data left-overs can be recovered.

Do you know of other methods to delete data on solid state drives permanently? Let us know in the comments.

Hard drive diagnostics are essential in analyzing hard drives to have enough time to react when signals indicate a failing hard drive. The only viable option here is to backup all relevant data to other drives or storage devices and disconnect the failing hard drive from the computer.

GSmartControl is a free hard drive diagnostics program for Windows, Mac and Linux that is offered as a portable version, installer and Live CD to suite all work environments and scenarios.

The name implies that the software is only able to analyze hard drives that support S.M.A.R.T., the Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, which most modern hard drives support. GSmartControl will automatically scan and display all connected hard drives on startup.

Each hard disk is displayed with a drive icon and name which usually is enough to identify it. Basic drive information are displayed at the top of the screen after a drive has been selected with the mouse. Information displayed there include the drive’s capacity and if it did pass the basic health check.

Some users might not see the basic health check information after selecting a drive. This usually means that SMART is either not activated or that the drive is not supporting SMART at all. SMART can be activated by right-clicking a drive and selecting Enable SMART. This will not work if the hard drive is not supporting the SMART technology or if SMART is disabled in the computer bios.

The best option in this case is to reboot the computer and check the BIOS to make sure that SMART is enabled there. If SMART cannot be activated after this it is not supported by the hard drive.

A double-click on any drive will open the Device information, a tabbed window with extensive information about the selected hard drive.

The Identity tab displays important information about the drive. It will list the device model, serial number, firmware, capacity, ATA version, if SMART is supported and enabled and if the overall health self-assessment test has been passed.

The attributes tab displays SMART attributes data. The important information are listed in the failed column which should show never to indicate a good drive health. Another indicator are the norm-ed value and worst which should not diverge at all for best results.

The Error log tab displays the five most recent errors that the hard drive has encountered. No errors are another indicator of a good drive health.

The Perform Tests tab lists various tests that can be performed. This includes a short self-text, extended self-test and conveyance self-test. It is usually a good idea to begin with the short self-test and execute the extended self-test afterwards.

• Short self-test consists of a collection of test routines that have the highest chance of detecting drive problems. Its result is reported in the Self-test Log. Note that this test is in no way comprehensive. Its main purpose is to detect totally damaged drives without running the full surface scan.
  Note: On some drives this actually runs several consequent tests, which may cause the program to display the test progress incorrectly.
• Extended self-test examines complete disk surface and performs various test routines built into the drive. Its result is reported in the Self-test Log.
• Conveyance self-test is intended to identify damage incurred during transporting of the drive.

A log file is generated for every test that can be viewed by clicking on the View Output button. The log file contains detailed information about the hard drive and a final assessment. Completed without error indicates that the drive is in good health.

GSmartControl comes with an option to perform a self test every few hours. This test is not affecting the performance of the drive or computer system and can be helpful in monitoring a drive’s health over time.

The hard drive diagnostics tool can also be executed from the command line. All command line options are explained in the program’s help file or by adding -? to the executable.

GSmartControl is a invaluable diagnostics software for hard drives. It’s tests and automatic options make it a recommended tool for every system administrator and end user.

Versions for all operating systems are available at the developer’s website.

Everyone else may find it sufficient to know that aligning the partitions reduces redundant read write operations on the hard drive which increases the performance of the drives and the lifespan of Solid State Drives and other flash based storage devices.

As you can see in the graphics above the program aligns the partitions to reduce the read write operations on the drive significantly.

The Paragon Alignment Tool will scan the connected hard drives of the PC on startup. The hard drives are then categorized in optimally aligned partitions, non-optimally aligned partitions and partitions that cannot be aligned.

Nothing needs to be done if all partitions are already aligned optimally. Non-optimally aligned partitions on the other hand can be processed by the program to align them correctly to increase the performance of the drive.

PAT works well with the new 4K drives (Advanced Format Drives) that have been introduced a while ago as well as Solid State Drives and virtual machines.

Paragon was nice enough to provide a special version of the tool to IT specialists. The 32-bit and 64-bit edition of the Paragon Alignment Tool is offered for free after registration. The whitepaper is also available at the same website.

The program downloads and whitepaper is linked in the email that is send after the registration has been completed.

The homepage of PAT contains additional information and links about the tool.

Why misaligned partitions are the problem for hard disk drives?

Partitions can be misaligned because the physical sector size is not 512 bytes and software does noknow about it. Modern hard disk drives, for example Western Digital, Seagate, etc., have an interna4096 bytes physical sector size, their logic operates 4K chunks of data, but for outside hardware andsoftware they appear as “traditional” drives with 512b sectors. This emulation is needed for oldsoftware compatibility. Thus another level of abstraction is being added.

Usually the partition start is indented on 63 sectors, because it is an old measure of a disk “cylinder” and some old versions of DOS or Windows demand that the partition has to be aligned to the “cylinder” for correctly sectors addressing and accessing. It is an old compatibility issue and all modern operating systems do not use this archaic CHS (cylinder/head/sector) addressing scheme. Instead, the Logical block addressing (LBA) scheme is used, where there is no any “cylinders” or “heads”, sectors are addressed continuously over a whole disk drive. But by legacy reasons all versions of Windows before Vista creates partitions according to this “cylinder alignment” rule.

There was no problem with this rule and partitions alignment in the home users segment before the appearance of mass 4K hard disk drives. Partitions aligned accordingly to 63 sectors start are not aligned with 4K sectors by default.

Why misaligned partitions are the problem for SSD?

Misaligned partitions problem is even more important for SSD drives than for traditional hard disk drives. Many modern SSD drives have an internal memory page size 4096 bytes or larger accordingly to 4K size, which are some analogue for 4K sectors. Thus all previously mentioned problems are the same for SSD partitions alignment.

There is one crucial SSD issue besides file system speed decline (which is not so noticeable in comparison to traditional HDD). It is the SSD memory cells degradation after some amount of write operations. So if partitions on SSD are misaligned beside downgraded system speed you put your solid state drive in danger. After partitions alignment PAT eliminates all redundant read/write operations and thus provides speed boost and grants SSD a longer lifetime.

Why misaligned partitions are the problem for SAN and RAID?

RAID is used to compose many hard disk drives or other storage devices into one large array of data. This array is seen as one large storage device in the system and data is striped across it. The granularity at which data is stored on one drive of the array before subsequent data is stored on the next drive of the array is called the stripe-unit size. Stripe-unit size may be different; you can set the stripe-unit size for example to 8 KB, 16 KB, 32 KB, or 64 KB.

System performance may slow when you use a hardware-based redundant array of independent disks (RAID) or a software-based RAID and if the starting location of the partition is not aligned with a stripe unit boundary in the disk partition that is created on the RAID. In this case one data operation will be multiplied over several RAID disks.

Both components vary highly depending on the needs of the user building the PC. A gamer naturally wants a fast video card to play games, someone who collects photos or videos needs lots of storage and Office worker a quiet video card.

Build your own PC: Storage

Storage devices are hard drives and optical drives. Hard drives can be divided into the two categories Solid State Drives (SSD) and conventional hard drives.

There are basically two options for selecting hard drives:

• Pick only conventional hard drives
• Combine conventional and solid state drives

Conventional hard drives have the advantage that they provide more storage for a cheaper price than Solid State Drives. Solid State Drives on the other hand are more expensive, offer way less storage but are way faster than convention drives. This is beneficial during system boot, playing games or loading applications.

The PC budget plays a big role in deciding the storage components. A good reliable Solid State Drive sells for about $250 for 64 Gigabytes of storage. Good conventional hard drives provide more than ten times the storage for that price.

PC users with a budget of about $400 for hard drives can consider combining Solid State Drives and conventional hard drives. The SSD would be used for the operating system and important applications (or games) whereas the standard hard drive would be used for storage.

Users with a lower budget should concentrate on buying a good fast hard drive instead that will be used for all files and the operating system.

When buying a Solid State Drive buyers need to make sure that it supports TRIM and garbage collection either out of the box or with a firmware update. TRIM and garbage collection ensure that the performance of the drive does not drop over time. This was a huge problem with first generation SSDs.

Hard drives come with speeds of 5400 and 7200. The former are more quiet while the latter are faster. A user who only works with light applications could consider buying a 5400 rpm drive whereas gamers or users with high end applications should buy a 7200 rpm drive.

The best combination at this point in time is to use a SSD as the boot drive and a 5400 rpm hard drive for storage.

Our Picks

• SSD: Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2M080G2R5 80 GB ($300)
• Hard Drive: Samsung EcoGreen F3 2000GB SATA II 32MB ($200)

The Intel X25-M is one of the fastest SSD when it comes to read speeds. The write speeds are usually lower in benchmarks but better in real life situations. It also offers 80 Gigabytes instead of 64 Gigabytes that most SSDs offer in that price range. It supports both TRIM and garbage collection.

The Samsung EcoGreen F3 is a drive with a speed of 5400. It has slower access and read speeds but offers 2 Terabytes of storage space. It is used to store everything but the most important applications, games and the operating system.

Build your own PC: Video Card

Selecting the right video cards usually depend on the level of gaming activity on the PC. We currently would suggest to buy an Ati Radeon 5000er video card as it is the only video card series currently supporting DirectX 11.

Gamers need to look at the Radeon 5850 or 5870 video cards for optimal performance. The selection here again depends on the budget. The Radeon 5870 retails for about $400, the 5850 for about $300. The 5870 is the faster card of the two and manages to beat the 5750 by 10fps+ in all benchmarks. Both cards can be used to play all modern games just fine.

Casual gamers might want to take a look at the ATI Radeon 5770 video card instead which retails for about $180.

Our Picks:

• High End Gaming: Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X ($440)
• Mid Level Gaming: ASUS EAH5850/2DIS/1GD5 Radeon HD 5850 ($300)
• Casual / No Gaming: POWERCOLOR PCS+ AX5770 ($170)

Our PC System:

Case: Lian Li PC-8NB ($100)
PSU: Enermax Modu 87+ 700W ($200)
CPU: Intel Core i7-860 ($300)
CPU Cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems Rev.B CPU Cooler ($60), 120mm fan, for example be quiet Silent Wings USC (BL013) ($20)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 ($120)
RAM: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 ($270)
Hard Drive 1: SSD: Intel X25-M Mainstream SSDSA2M080G2R5 80 GB ($300)
Hard Drive 2: Samsung EcoGreen F3 2000GB SATA II 32MB ($200)
Video Card: High End Gaming: Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 Vapor-X ($440)

Some components have not been discussed yet. This includes optical drives, keyboard, computer mouse, monitor, printer, sound adapter, network cards and other peripherals.

We have reviewed quite a few programs that offer this functionality, among them the disk space analyzer Free Disk Analyzer, the hard drive space visualization tool Overdisk or Treesize which reports the used hard drive space by folder.

Disktective is yet another hard drive space analyzer. The portable software program can be executed without installation (it needs to be unpacked first though) making it an ideal companion for portable uses.

The program can analyse a folder or complete drive and will display the results in a tree structure and as a pie chart in its interface after it has finished scanning the relevant parts of the hard drive.

The hard drive space analyzer sorts the folders by size from top to bottom in the tree structure. It is possible to navigate that structure which will also change the pie chart which is always displaying information about the active folder.

Disktective is a portable software program for the Windows operating system. It has not been updated in the last three years but works fine in all Microsoft operating systems including Windows 7 (64-bit not tested). The program is available at the developer’s website from where it can be downloaded.

The HDD Profiler provides a semi-automated way of monitoring a specific hard drive or folder for these changes. The portable software program creates snapshots of selected folders. These snapshots can then be loaded into the software program at a later time to compare them with the current state of the hard drive or folder. The Hard Drive Profiler will then display the changes that have been made in the meantime (that is the time between the initial snapshot and comparison) in various tabs that provide an excellent overview.

The computer program will for instance notice new and deleted folders and files or modified file names and files. It will basically catch any modification in the monitored folders or hard drives and report them in its interface. The changes that have been noticed can be saved in a log file so that they can be accessed at a later time in the application. The format can also be opened in text editors.

The interface is divided into various tabs including removed files, modified files or accessed files that make it easier to spot specific modifications. HDD Profiler can be downloaded from the developer’s website. The program is compatible with Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 9x and Windows ME according to the homepage. It is likely that it will work under Windows Vista or Windows 7 as well.

To combat this problem, I’ve decided its time for me to buy an external hard drive. I figure 500 GB is more than enough for me right now. What’s confusing me though is choosing which hard drive to buy. I’ve settled on a 2.5″ drive that draws power from the USB port so I won’t have to worry about an external power source. After a fair amount of research and considering my budget, I’ve narrowed my choice down to these two:

Seagate FreeAgent Go
Transcend StoreJet 25M

I’m getting a lot of conflicting reviews about both drives which is why I’m asking the Ghacks readers to help me make my decision. Here are some of my queries:

Multiple OS support: My primary computer runs Windows XP but I also own a laptop that’s running Ubuntu. I’d prefer something that works out of the box with both but I’m not averse to a little tweaking if necessary.

Partitioning: Would I need to partition my drive? I’m planning to segregate the data according to its format but can I just copy everything on it or should I create dedicated partitions? Should I leave some space free in case I want to install a portable version of an OS?

Durability: What’s the point in spending all that cash if my HD’s going to conk out after a while? Is build quality a factor and how long can I expect the drive to last?

What do you think of my choices? Have I missed anything out? What are you using for external storage and are you happy with it? Let me know in the comments.

Additional information and tabs are provided at the bottom which display information about a hard drive’s work time, model, temperature and health status. The first tab which is the active tab after selecting a hard drive will display detailed basic information about the selected drive including serial number and the firmware version. The next two tabs contain information about the S.M.A.R.T. status of the active hard drive and a temperature graph that displays the hard drive’s temperature changes over time.

The fourth tab can be used to scan the selected hard drive for bad sectors. The very same menu offers to schedule disk scans. A viable alternative is Speedfan which combines all of the possibilities offered by Active Hard Disk Monitor with advanced information and options including the display of all relevant system temperatures and fan speeds. The information and options are however not presented that clearly as in Active Hard Disk Monitor.

Active Hard Disk Monitor is compatible with many Microsoft operating systems including 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003 / 2008.

Update: Active Hard Disk Monitor is no longer freeware. Users who visit the developer page will note that only a commercial version of the program is available. I suggest you use Speedfan as an alternative, which remains free to use. Users interested in the Hard Disk Monitor application can download a free trial version at the developer website.