The software program displays a list of all devices that are currently connected to the local computer system. The display is very informative and it is possible to get an overview of all the connected drives in a few seconds. Information like the drive letter, label, type, size, vendor or format are displayed. It is furthermore possible to filter the list to hide certain types of drives like those that are not mounted at the moment or network drives.

The header of the application contains links to several functions and options that can be used to manage the drives. It is for example possible to explore the drives, look at their properties and smart values (for hard drives), run check disk, hide them from the system or use the subst command to substitute drive letters.

Additional options are provided in the main menu that include benchmarking a drive, defragmenting it, ejecting CD or DVD drives or mapping network drives.

Drive Manager is a free and portable computer program for the Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

Related posts

• Enable SATA Hot Swap (3)
• Device Driver Cleanup (9)
• Computer Hardware Drivers List (6)
• Youtube Video Search Is A Barebone Youtube Downloader (2)
• Xkcd Comic Wallpaper Changer (2)

OverDisk is one of these software programs. It generates an interesting looking chart after analysing a hard drives contents. The chart displays the root level, the folders on that level and most of the subfolders with the size on the chart reflecting the percentage of disk usage on the selected hard drive. Additional information are displayed when hovering the mouse over one of the elements of the chart including the name of the folder, the total number of files and folders as well as the size occupied on the hard drive. A click on an element will center the visualization on that folder and build a new chart that display the different folder levels starting with that folder in root. This is an easy and convenient way to browse through the folder structure of the selected hard drive.

Several statistical information are provided in the toolbar menu. Interesting and unusual is the cluster information dialog that displays various cluster sizes and their implication on the used and wasted space on the hard drive.

Another option is to run queries to find the largest files, longest or deepest path names, directories with most file entries or bytes and those with greatest wasted space. OverDisk is an interesting software program to visualize the space utilization of selected hard drives.

Related posts

• Use Drive Manager To Manage And Identify Drives (6)
• Enable SATA Hot Swap (3)
• Disk Space Analyzer (6)
• ZoneScreen Finally Gets 64-bit Update (6)
• ZC DVD Creator Platinum [Free Full Version] (16)

Their biggest downfall besides the price is the write speed which can be low. So low that it will slow down the computer system when data is written on that drive. Many programs, including web browsers, email programs, editors but also the operating system itself cache data on the hard drive or use the hard drive to store temporary data. That’s a problem if the cache folder of that application is located on the Solid State.

What can be done to speed up the overall computer system?

• Move the temp folders of the operating system to another hard drive.
• Move the pagefile and System Restore locations to another hard drive
• Move the cache of applications to another hard drive, e.g. web browsers, email clients.
• Disable programs that access the hard drive and that are not needed, like Windows Indexing Service
• Upgrade the computer memory of the computer system (only makes sense if sub 4 Gigabybtes on a 32-bit system)

Most of these tips center around moving the cache to a new hard drive and disabling features that slow down the computer system. If you cannot install a second hard drive to the computer system you might consider adding a fast external device that can be used for caching. The downside of this method is that you need to have it near the computer system all the time which can be annoying if the system is mostly used on the road.

Newer Solid State Drives (check the OCZ Vertex review for instance) are slowly introduced that beat conventional hard drives fair and square both in write and read performance. They come at a price though but this is going to change in the future. Prices will drop, capacities increase and the slower SSD will slowly cease to exist.

Related posts

• Solid State Drives Test Results (4)
• Optimize Windows For Solid State Drives Usage (6)
• SSD Security: Erase Solid State Drives Data (0)
• OCZ Z-Drive (0)
• OCZ Vertex Series 120GB SSD (10)

This in effect means that all methods of overwriting free space are not sufficient for erasing the data securely on those drives. This also means as well that it is not possible to erase specific files securely on the SSD. Users who want to delete data securely on SSDs have therefor the following options at hand:

• Encryption
• Format
• Filling the Drive

Encryption is surely the best method of ensuring that the data on a SSD is secure as it cannot be accessed without decryption. Formatting the drive on the other hand is only reasonable if no data on that drive is needed anymore. It would otherwise require extensive backup and restoration procedures. Filling the drive with data might work as well as it would overwrite anything on the drive as well.

Related posts

• Should You Defragment A SSD? (25)
• Optimize Windows For Solid State Drives Usage (6)
• Optimize Slow Solid State Drives (8)
• Solid State Drives Test Results (4)
• OCZ Z-Drive (0)

OCZ on the other hand seems to be one of the driving forces in SSD technology at this point in time. Their OCZ Vertex drives look really promising in both read and write performance. Old Solid State Drives usually excelled in read performance but lacked the necessary write performance.

Their latest hardware that was first shown at the Cebit in Germany is the OCZ Z-Drive. This piece of computer hardware is connected via PCI Express to a computer system taking up two slots because of its dimensions. It is made up of four 256 Gigabyte MLC-based OCZ Solid State Drives and 256 Megabytes of ECC DDR2 RAM. This adds up to a total storage capacity of 1 Terabyte and promises maximum read rates of 600 MB/s and read rates of 500 MB/s. The sustained write speed is said to be 400 MB/s.

The only drawback is the hefty price tag which is expected to be between $1500 and $2000. The OCZ Z-Drive is expected to be available in April 2009 with additional models following later this year.

Related posts

• Solid State Drives Test Results (4)
• Optimize Slow Solid State Drives (8)
• OCZ Vertex Series 120GB SSD (10)
• SSD Security: Erase Solid State Drives Data (0)
• Samsung SS805 SSD (8)

There are however cases where the controller supports hot swap but the driver has not implemented it. This is where the computer software Hot Swap comes into play. The portable software program will add the functionality to the operating system so that the SATA drives can be safely removed from the running computer system.

The software comes as a 32-bit and 64-bit edition. Both become available after unpacking the software on the local system. Executing either version will place a new icon in the Windows system tray that can be used to configure and work with the software.

A left-click on the icon will display options to remove selected devices safely from the computer. A right-click opens the configuration menu where the type of supported devices can be configured. By default only fixed disk drives are scanned and offered as an option which can be expanded to include CD and DVD drives, removable disk drives, safely removable devices and non hotswap devices.

The same menu contains options to scan for new hardware, to uninstall the program or to change the language from English to German or French.

Hot Swap is an excellent solution for users with external SATA devices who would like to use the hot swap option of their drives.

Related posts

• Use Drive Manager To Manage And Identify Drives (6)
• Youtube Video Search Is A Barebone Youtube Downloader (2)
• Xkcd Comic Wallpaper Changer (2)
• Wireless Networking Software Homedale (13)
• Windows XP: Default Internet Browser Per User Profile (0)

This is even more important if a Windows operating system has been installed on the Solid State Drive. (It is basically the same deal for Linux users who should think about moving all write intensive tasks to other drives)

Three different types of tweaks can be applied. Tweaks that are applied directly to the hardware device in Windows, tweaks to the Windows operating system and tweaks to applications.

Hardware Tweaks:

• PIO Mode

Make sure the SSD is not running in PIO mode. To verify that go into the Device Manager, open IDE ATA / ATAPI controllers and double-click all Primary and Secondary IDE Channels.

Verify that there are no signs of PIO Mode under the Current Transfer Mode entry in Advanced Settings. It should list Ultra DMA Mode 5 there.

• Enable Write Caching

Click on Disk Drives in the Device Manager and locate the Solid State Drive. Double-click it and open the Policies tab on top.

Select Optimize for performance and enable “Enable write caching on the disk”. There is no need for the quick removal option as the SSD will never be removed from the computer (like any other hard drive).

Windows Tweaks:

• Moving the Pagefile

Moving the pagefile to another hard drive has a positive effect on the performance of SSD drives.

Go back to System Properties. Click on the Advanced Tabm there on Settings under the Performance entry. Again on Advanced in the new window and finally on the Change button under the Virtual Memory entry.

The Virtual Memory window opens and it will display all drive partitions on top and the size of their paging files. Select the Solid State Drive and check the “No Paging File” entry. Click the Set button to set the new preferences.

Now select another hard drive and assign the pagefile to this drive.

• Move the temp files

The Advanced tab under System Properties has a button entitled Environment Variables. Click it and locate the temp and tmp variables for the user and the system. Change the path to another hard drive if they are located on the Solid State Drive.

• Disable the Indexing Service on the drive

Right-click on the drive letter of the SSD and select Properties from the menu. Locate the Allow Indexing Service to index the disk for fast file searching line and make sure it is disabled.

Application Tweaks:

Most application tweaks center around the idea of moving temporary files to another hard drive. Take the cache of web browsers or temp files during video production for example. Moving them to another hard drive will have an impact on the system’s performance.

Do you know of additional tweaks that might improve system performance of SSD drives?

Related posts

• Optimize Slow Solid State Drives (8)
• SSD Security: Erase Solid State Drives Data (0)
• Should You Defragment A SSD? (25)
• Solid State Drives Test Results (4)
• OCZ Z-Drive (0)

The figure means that 66 used hard drives out of 100 sold would contain data data about the previous owner. Half of that number would still mean that every third used hard drive sold would contain personal data. The figures seem to grow worth instead of better with every passing year. Researchers seem to concentrate on hard drives but digital cameras or mobile phones might reveal the same amount of information including personal pictures, documents, contacts and even credit card or bank account information.

How can users protect themselves and their data? The easiest way would be to stop selling used hardware that contained data at one point. That solution is not always practicable though.

The user should make sure to make the data on the storage device unrecoverable. One of the best tools for that purpose is Eraser which can be used to clear the free disk space so that the files “underneath” cannot be recovered with file recovery software anymore.

Any tips that you might want to add? Let me know.

Related posts

• Win more eBay auctions (5)
• Use Drive Manager To Manage And Identify Drives (6)
• Time To Look For A Skype Alternative (3)
• The Brits Surely Know How To Spread Confidential Data (5)
• SSD Security: Erase Solid State Drives Data (0)

SpeedFan is well known program in the category of system monitoring. It is a very good tool for controlling CPU and case fans (kinda obvious from its name) and was mentioned here on ghacks numerous times. However it has an interesting secondary function of analyzing hard drive health by reading and processing SMART data.

SMART (short for Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) is set of values that roughly expresses the amount of working time, load and errors hard drives have experienced since leaving the factory. Unfortunately for humans SMART is bunch of hexadecimal numbers that are hard to read and even harder to understand. In addition drive manufacturers are using different attributes and values that are not helping either.

Without leaving interface SpeedFan can show (on SMART tab) the values themselves and is trying to mark meaningful ones and calculate two indexes – performance and fitness:

• failing performance index means drive no longer performs its best;
• failing fitness index means drive is preparing to die with all your data.

Since one of the attributes is drive temperature SpeeFan can tie (as it can other temperatures) it to case fans speed and control airflow depending on its value.

Deeper and better analysis is hidden behind the "Perform an in-depth online analysis of this hard disk" button. It unchains you from local interface and submits data of your drive to hddstatus online service. In seconds your browser is forwarded to an automated report on your drive.

Why the need for an online service at all? Big advantage is that the online tool has access to SMART data of all hard drives of all models ever submitted to it. Instead of vaguely guessing it compares your drive with numerous similar drives and gives evaluation that fits exactly the hard drive model.

The report itself is formatted using understandable words like "good" and "not good" plus nice graphical bars showing how far your drive's values are from optimal ones. Interesting extra is the number of drives of that model tested and min/max/average temperatures for them. Sample report.

Related posts

• Hard Drive Health Monitoring (3)
• Visualize Hard Drive Space (3)
• Used Hard Drives Still Haven For Identify Theft (2)
• Use Speedfan to control temperatures (9)
• Use Drive Manager To Manage And Identify Drives (6)

The question however is if you want to shell out the extra bucks for that visible speed gain and I think it comes down to a discussion among video card enthusiasts. Some purchase the top product that produces a few additional frames but costs double the amount of the video card that computes less frames. Still both make the games playable.

It’s the same with the current generation of Solid State Drives except for a few scenarios where they really shine. They need less energy to run and are completely silent which makes them an ideal candidate for a notebook hard drive replacement. That’s in my opinion the number one reason to purchase a Solid State Drive, to place it in a mobile device or computer that is being used as a media player.

samsung hard drive benchmark

ocz core series ssd benchmark

samsung hd103uj benchmark

ocz core series ssd 64gb benchmark

Where operating systems and desktop computers are concerned I would probably wait for the next generation that surely sees another huge price drop and speed increase.

Don’t get me wrong.. The Solid State Drive is faster than my shiny new Samsung hard drive, it loads pretty much everything faster but some of its gains, the silence, can only be effective if I would remove the conventional hard drives and that is not possible until the flash drives come with sufficient storage space.

Conclusion:

You should consider buying a Solid State Drive if..

• You turn on and off the operating system regularly
• You load and close many applications and files during the computer uptime
• You do not need space but energy efficiency or silence
• You want bragging rights
• You got the money to buy one

Everyone else is better of waiting for the next generation of flash drives in my opinion.

Related posts

• Optimize Slow Solid State Drives (8)
• OCZ Z-Drive (0)
• Fast SSD vs. Hard Disks (5)
• SSD Security: Erase Solid State Drives Data (0)
• Solid State Hard Drives (16)

The situation seems to be changing slowly with 64 Gigabyte SSD drives available in larger quantities and better prices. One SSD drive that I was looking forward to was the OCZ Core Series SSD drive with 64 Gigabyte capacity and the guys at Hot Hardware managed to get their hands on one of those drives and compared it to the ultra fast WD VelociRaptor hard disk.

While the OCZ Core Series SSD drive lacks behind in write speeds (tops 87 MB/s compared to 129 MB/s for the VelociRaptor) it managed to win the read speed benchmark (140 MB/s compared to 123 MB/s) and of course in random access times.

Far more impressive than those computed values are values from real applications, and those tests make a difference.

How about a Windows Vista startup of 51 MB/s compared to 15.6 MB/s for the conventional hard drive ? Similar results are available for gaming (77 MB/s vs. 12.5 MB/s), application loading (21 MB/s vs. 3.7 MB/s) and Windows Defender (66 MB/s vs. 19.8 MB/s). The SSD drive managed to beat the hard drive in every test which has to be attributed largely to the low random access time.

This convinced me and I just ordered a OCZ Core Series SSD drive with 64 Gigabyte capacity for 200 Euros. Once I have that will do some tests with various operating systems and benchmarks.

Related posts

• Solid State Drives Test Results (4)
• SSD Security: Erase Solid State Drives Data (0)
• Solid State Hard Drives (16)
• Should You Defragment A SSD? (25)
• Optimize Windows For Solid State Drives Usage (6)

This is where Dante stepped in and wrote an explanation on how to assign a specific drive letter to the USB drive.  He also mentioned that the tool would not work in Windows Vista and that the method using Disk Management would.

Right-click on the My Computer icon in Windows XP or on Computer in Windows Vista and select Manage form the menu. You can alternatively access it by entering compmgmt.msc in the run box or search box. Now select Disk Management in that menu and perform a right-click on the drive that you want to assign a specific driver letter to.

Now select Change Driver Letter and Path and assign the specific drive letter to the device.

Related posts

• USB Flash Drive Write Protection (12)
• Speed up Hard Drives under Windows Vista (0)
• Permanently Assign Drive Letters to USB Devices (1)
• Howto fix slow hard drives (2)
• Assign Drive Letters to Folders (2)

Solid State Disks have no moving parts which means they make no noises whatsoever, have a largely reduced access time, are not prone to electro-magnetic failures, have a lower power consumption, no heat generator and a better ability to endure extreme shock.

Solid State Disks do have some limitations though. The most dominant ones are currently availability, pricing and capacity. The largest capacity of Solid State Disks is 128 Gigabytes at the moment which I have seen for sale for roughly $3800 (SUPER TALENT 2.5″ 128GB SATA Internal Solid state disk). More affordable units are 32 Gigabyte Solid State Disks (for instance the SAMSUNG 32GB IDE Internal Solid state disk) that retail for roughly $400 and 16 Gigabyte disks for $200.

My next computer that I will build next year will have one of those Solid State Disks as the main boot hard drive resulting in faster boot times of the operating system, lower noise level and faster response times. I will still use conventional hard drives for storage mainly because the pricing is currently way out of line. Reminds me of the good old days when a 10 Megabyte hard drive cost that much.

If the pricing drops to around $500 for 64 Gigabyte drives I would buy one of those instead but I’m perfectly fine with a 32 Gigabyte Solid State Disk as well. My current Windows partition has only 10 Gigabytes so even a 16 Gigabyte Solid State Disk would be fine.

This technology will be even more exciting for notebook owners. They could for instance replace their conventional hard drive with a solid state disk to reduce the noise level and speed up all processes.

Related posts

• Solid State Drives Test Results (4)
• How to erase file information on unused disk space (22)
• Fast SSD vs. Hard Disks (5)
• Check your Hard Drives with HDD Health (3)
• Windows Steady State (10)

I was thinking of something different though. What if I want to keep my hard drives for now but make sure that deleted data can’t be recovered by any means ? I tried and ran some file recovery programs such as Recuva and it showed thousands of files that were still referenced on my system although they have been deleted before. I think that this is a privacy problem and decided to look for a way to delete all file information on the unused part of my hard drives.

I decided to use Recuva first and see how many file information it would find. After that I would run a program named Eraser which I will use to clean the unused disk space of any deleted file information and finally run Recuva again to see if this reduced the amount of files that could be undeleted from my system.

Testing my Hard Drive with Recuva:

Recuva found 33720 files on my hard drive f: that could be undeleted. This is a large amount of files.

Running Eraser:

After right-clicking the central pane I was able to create a new task. The first option was unused space on drive which is the default option in the menu. I selected the f: hard drive from the list. Eraser was showing my newly selected task in the central pane and I had to right-click that task once again and select Run from the context menu. It took two and a half hours to overwrite all the data on my 100 gigabyte hard drive.

Testing the result with Recuva:

Recuva found one file on drive f: Everything else was not found anymore which leads to the conclusion that this is an excellent way to erase file information that exists on the unused space on your hard drives. This is probably not enough to erase it for the big boys if you know what I mean but every amateur should have problems getting information about those files.

Related posts

• Solid State Hard Drives (16)
• Solid State Drives Test Results (4)
• Recover Deleted Files (4)
• Fast SSD vs. Hard Disks (5)
• Check your Hard Drives with HDD Health (3)

So, open the Device Manger by either typing device in the search box of Windows Vista or typing devmgmt.msc from the command line. Go to the disk Drives tab and right-click the SATA drive and select Properties from the menu. Now select the Policies tab and check the box Enable Advanced Performance. You have to repeat the process if you have more than one SATA drive installed on your system

You have to perform almost the same steps to speed up usb drivers under Windows Vista. Open again the policies tab of the USB drive and select Optimize for Performance from the options there. This method has one little drawback, you need to Safely Remove the Hardware if you want to unplug the device from your system.

Both tips have been found at the How to Geek.

Related posts

• How to assign a specific drive letter to the USB drive (3)
• Windows Vista SP1 will annoy Pirates (15)
• Windows Boot Timer (15)
• Why 2 is better than 1 (5)
• Used Hard Drives Still Haven For Identify Theft (2)

Undelete Plus is a file recovery freeware that scans your hard drive for deleted files and recovers them for you. It supports the most common file systems such as fat16, fat32 and ntfs and is able to work with removable devices such as flash memory or disk drives as well. A great feature for a freeware file recovery software is the ability to work on network drives as well.

A little bit of background information why Undelete Plus is able to recover deleted files. Many users do not know that files that are deleted are not removed from the system at once. The complete file still exists on the drive but the reference to the file is deleted. File operations on those sectors make it harder to recover those files but the right tools (professional data recovery) can still detect those files.

This is one of the reasons why I would never sell my hard drives at ebay or other websites. The right equipment is able to check on my data and this is something that I do not want to risk. Even if you wipe it carefully there is the possiblity to recover files. Not with tools like Undelete Plus though.

The scan does not take this long until it is complete, on my 300 Gb hard drive it took about 20 minutes. After the scan finishes all files that can be recovered are displayed in the main window. The left window supplies some filters, you can choose that only a certain filetype is displayed for recovery, a certain folder location or a drive. (you may scan more than one drive).

Just mark the files that you want to recover and choose to keep the original folder structure of the files or move them all into a different folder. Undelete Plus found more than 60000 files that could be recovered on my drive which is a big number, I really have to think of a way to wipe them completely after a set number of days.

Related posts

• DP Secure Wiper removes files securely from your system (3)
• Automatically move files from your desktop (6)
• Analyse your hard disk and stop wasting space (5)
• Xsite Freeware (1)
• Windows Tip: Don’t replace any files while copying (9)

I’am now going to introduce two freewares that emulate floppy drives and are able to copy and run the bootdisk from USB. The first freeware is called Bootdisk to Bootstick, it makes it possible to copy the contents of a floppy disk or virtual floppy image to an USB stick. The USB stick remains bootable just like the floppy disk would be. This is great if you do not have a floppy drive anymore but need to boot from floppy because your manufacturer is offering the tool / driver only as a bootable floppy disk.

Virtual Floppy drive is used to emulate a floppy drive making it possible to create bootable floppy disks without having a floppy drive connected to your computer. I still remember the old days when a program would only create a bootdisk if a floppy drive was present. If you did not have a floppy drive or disk inside it would not create the much needed bootdisk. This belongs to the past now.

Related posts

• Fast SSD vs. Hard Disks (5)
• Enable SATA Hot Swap (3)
• Windows Boot Manager (8)
• Vista SATA RAID Installation Problems (19)
• Virtual Floppy Drives (9)

HDD Health monitors some of the important key factors of modern hard drives such as temperature, read and seek error rates and performance. If one variable reaches a critical value you are informed by HDD Health and should take counter measures. The first would be making a reliable backup of your hard drive, the second thinking about ways to fix the problematic values.

If the temperature for example is reported to be of critical value you should think of improving the air flow of your case, get hard drive coolers, add more fans or move from air cooling to water cooling. Other errors such as read write errors prove to be more complex. They could be temperature related of course but if the temperature is not critical it is an unlikely reason.

So, the main advantage you get is to receive a report before a crash or hard drive failure occurs giving you time to react and backup your data.

Related posts

• Solid State Hard Drives (16)
• Solid State Drives Test Results (4)
• How to erase file information on unused disk space (22)
• Fast SSD vs. Hard Disks (5)
• Automatically back up your hard drive (1)

Note: You should know the maximum DMA mode value of your hard drive. Windows reduces this value after six read or write errors and will not automatically rise it again. This could mean that your hard drives are running in a lower mode than they are capable of.

Enter the registry and navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEMCurrentControlSet\Control\
Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}

You find a list of subkeys, e.g. 0001, 0002 aso. Click on them to see their values. To verify that you have located the correct subkey, verify that the DriverDesc value for the subkey contains the string value “Primary IDE Channel” or the string value “Secondary IDE Channel.”

1. Backup your registry right now:
2. Delete MasterIdDataCheckSum and SlaveIdDataCheckSum. This resets the number of read and write errors.
3. Create the Dword ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess and give it the value 1. The transfer mode is only lowered if you have six consecutive read or write errors, before it was cumulative (alltime).
4. Add the value ffffffff to the following keys if they exist:

• MasterDeviceTimingMode
• MasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed
• SlaveDeviceTimingMode
• SlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed
• UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed
• UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed

Restart your computer and look in the device manager if you see any changes. This method works well if you have problems playing dvds and you experience a stuttering.

source

Related posts

• Windows Tip: Don’t replace any files while copying (9)
• Windows Steady State (10)
• Windows shut down takes ages ? Try Profile Hive (5)
• Windows Keyboard shortcuts (0)
• Windows Explorer: Quickly Jump To Files (5)

The Raid Tutorial explains all Raid modes (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,10,50,0+1) in a great way. You see a diagram which explains the dataflow visually. Below the diagram is an characteristics & advantages and a disadvantages as well as one for recommended applications. Take a look, its great, fast loading and does not take to much time to understand the Raid concept and which you should chose if you want to switch to Raid.

[tags]raid, raid  system, Redundant Array Of Independent Disks, hard drive, hard disk, hd, mirror[/tags]

Related posts

• OCZ Z-Drive (0)
• Used Hard Drives Still Haven For Identify Theft (2)
• Use Drive Manager To Manage And Identify Drives (6)
• SSD Security: Erase Solid State Drives Data (0)
• Speed up Hard Drives under Windows Vista (0)