gHacks technology news » hd http://www.ghacks.net A technology blog covering software, mobile phones, gadgets, security, the Internet and other relevant areas. Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:11:12 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.5 en hourly 1 How many hours have your hard disks been running ? http://www.ghacks.net/2008/06/29/how-many-hours-have-your-hard-disks-been-running/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/06/29/how-many-hours-have-your-hard-disks-been-running/#comments Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:12:32 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=5139 Can you tell me how many hours your hard disk or Solid State Disk has been running and how many times it has been powered on since you started using it in your computer ? My Samsung 1 TB hard drive was powered on 106 times and active for 814 hours since I build my new computer a few months ago.

How I know that ? I looked it up in the software Crystal Disk Info. This software basically displays all kind of information about hard drives and Solid State Disks and two that are not displayed in every other of that type are the two I mentioned above.

It does display all the usual information as well. Begins with the hard disk temperature, serial number, transfer mode, drive letters and supported features among other parameters. Two of the aforementioned parameters are worth a closer look if you are experiencing crashes or slow downs.

crystal disk info

The temperature of the hard drive can be a cause for system crashes. It if goes to high it can lead to data loss and errors. The transfer mode can be interesting if you think that your hard drive is not as fast as it should be. Check the supported transfer modes of your drive and compare them to the one that is currently being used for it. It might very well be that it’s not the fastest available.

Crystal Disk Info is a portable application that is compatible to Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows Server 2003 / 2008.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/06/29/how-many-hours-have-your-hard-disks-been-running/feed/ 18 Ultimate Defrag http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/23/ultimate-defrag/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/23/ultimate-defrag/#comments Fri, 23 May 2008 07:26:30 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/?p=4236 Ultimate Defrag is on first glance yet another defragmentation tool that can analyze the hard drive and defragment it to speed it up. Looking a bit closer however will reveal another feature that has never been before implemented in defragmentation programs: The ability to move the files to other locations on the disk based on the highest possible performance. The outer locations of the hard drive are the faster ones while the inner locations tend to be slower.

When you start Ultimate Defrag for the first time you notice that is is displaying an image of your hard drive in the main pane and information i the left pane. You can select a different hard drive in the left pane or hit the analyze button to analyze the defragmentation level of the hard drive.

Once the hard disk has been analyzed one out of six methods to defragment and optimize the hard disk can be selected from the left pane. This includes the following options:

ultimate defrag

  • Fragmented Files Only: Defragments the hard drive, comparable to the classic Windows defragmentation
  • Consolidate: Places all directories next to each other on the hard drive to reduce seek time
  • Folder / File Name: Places files and folders on the hard drive based on folder name order
  • Recency: ideal for data drives. Sorts files and folders according to last access dates, modify dates and file creation dates.
  • Volatile: A variation of the Recency optimization. Will order folders last modification data and files alphabetically
  • Auto: The program uses its own optimization algorithm to defrag the hard disk and optimize its performance.

The user can select specific files and folders that should receive the best positions on the hard disk to achieve the best performance possible. This can be for instance the Windows directory, a game, dynamic link libraries or applications. On the other hand files and folders that do not require the best performance can be selected to be placed in the slower sectors of the hard drive. This includes archives, images and backup files.

The help file of Ultimate Defrag is excellent. It gives an explanation of hard disk performance at the beginning, explains all the settings and functions in a non-geeky way and even provides examples of how to optimize computers based on usage, say gaming, office and home.

The Ultimate Defrag Free version is available at Freeware Geeks. I would like to mention that I’m not a lab and I do not have the possibility to check the performance before and after the defragmentation scientifically. My computer is relatively new with not enough files to test the new performance. It does make sense however that this could indeed increase system performance.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/05/23/ultimate-defrag/feed/ 16 Microsoft HD View http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/18/microsoft-hd-view/ http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/18/microsoft-hd-view/#comments Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:58:09 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/18/microsoft-hd-view/ HD View is a new technology that is developed by Microsoft Research that aids in the display and interaction with large images with sizes of one or more Gigapixels. I was very astonished to discover a plugin for Internet Explorer [link] and Mozilla Firefox [link] that could be installed from the project website although I was not able to make it work in Firefox.

The plugin makes the browser HD View compatible which means that you can use the advanced features of the plugin to interact with specially prepared images. Those large images normally don’t fit the screen and the user may use the mouse to move around and zoom in or out of the image.

Since the images are of high resolution it normally does not decrease image quality that much when you zoom in. Only when you reach the limits of the image you will notice the usual effects when zooming in on images like a reduced sharpness of it.

Microsoft HD View Normal:

hd view normal view

Microsoft HD View Zoomed:

microsoft hd view zoom

As you can see it is does not degrade image quality when zooming in on the image. Microsoft Research is offering information on how to produce and provide images for HD View. They are offering three methods which are described on this page, one of them is a Adobe Photoshop plugin.

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]]> http://www.ghacks.net/2008/03/18/microsoft-hd-view/feed/ 4 HD-DVD Encryption has been hacked http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/28/hd-dvd-encryption-has-been-hacked/ http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/28/hd-dvd-encryption-has-been-hacked/#comments Thu, 28 Dec 2006 08:09:16 +0000 Martin http://www.ghacks.net/2006/12/28/hd-dvd-encryption-has-been-hacked/ hack the HD-DVD encryption. Being able to backup the expensive HD-DVD movies could win the format war. Most users will not be able to backup their HD-DVDs right away because the process sounds a little bit complicated and the author of the code did not reveal all the information how he managed to rip a HD-DVD movie but the source is available which means that many programmers will take a look and create advanced versions of it.]]> The war between Blue-Ray and HD-DVD is still in the beginning which frustrates the consumers. One nail in the Blue-Ray coffin might have been added today by a guy who managed to hack the HD-DVD encryption. Being able to backup the expensive HD-DVD movies could win the format war. Most users will not be able to backup their HD-DVDs right away because the process sounds a little bit complicated and the author of the code did not reveal all the information how he managed to rip a HD-DVD movie but the source is available which means that many programmers will take a look and create advanced versions of it.

It took the author 20 days to encrypt the protection using his Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive and lots of free time. He started looking at solutions because he was unable to play a purchased HD-DVD movie using a HD-DVD drive and a HD monitor. I never fully understood why they created such restrictive formats in the first place. They only make their customers angry with restrictions like this, hackers will always find a way.

The author published a youtube movie, here it is:

The faq that comes with the program gives valuable information. I decided to publish it fully as well.

    • What is “Backup HDDVD” for?
      It can do backup copies of HD DVD movies that YOU OWN! I don’t want anyone to do
      piracy here! This software is a good way to protect your investment, because I have
      notice that this type of media seems very fragile, if it’s scratched a little or
      dirty, it won’t play. It seems less tolerent than DVD format. (Higher density!)
      What “Backup HDDVD” is doing exactly?
      This is a java based command line utility that decrypt video files (.evo) from a
      HD DVD disk that you own, to your hard drive and you can play them back with a
      HD DVD player software.
      What are the system requirements to use “Backup HDDVD”
      A Windows based system
      A HDDVD disk drive
      A HDDVD player software (like PowerDVD)
      A HDDVD movie(s)
      Java rutime 1.5
      The possibility to access the content of the disk with a drive letter under windows.
      (you may need UDF 2.5 file system driver for this)
      A lot of free hard disk space to backup your movies!
      Was your first HDDVD movie hard to decrypt?
      It took me around a week to do. But I have wasted few days
      trying to work on too complicated approach. In fact, it is very simple.
      How do you do that?
      The program itself has nothing special. It simply implement the AACS
      decyption protocol. I have followed the freely available documents about AACS
      Have a look at: www.aacsla.com
      The trick, is to find what they call the “Title keys”. So I figure out how to
      extract them.
      How do you extract the “Title keys”?
      I won’t explain it in detail. Read the AACS doc first. You will understand.
      The title keys are located on the disk in encrypted form, but for a
      content to be played, it has to be decrypted! So where is the
      decrypted version of the title key? Think about it…
      What kind of crypto algorithms are involved?
      Standards algorithms:
      ECC-160
      ES-128
      Look in the AACS doc for more details.
      What is the TKDB.cfg file?
      This is the Title key Database file. It holds the decryption keys for the movies.
      What is the format of this file?
      Field 1: SHA1 Hash of the VTKF000.AACS file on your HDDVD disk.
      Next fields are pipe “|” delimited.
      -Movie Title
      -A variable number of Title key, pipe delimited
      You have a key number followed by the key value like:
      12-08A3DC61910280F2…
      Key values are 128 bits long, so 16 bytes, or 32 hexadecimal characters long.
      The TKDB.cfg file provided with your program is empty or incomplete, what can I do?
      Well, you are on your own.
      What do you think of the technical aspects of AACS?
      The design is not that bad, but it’s too easy to have an insecure player
      implementation somewhere. And just one bad implementation is all it needs
      to get the keys! There will always be insecure implementations
      of a player somewhere! And the “Revocation system” is totaly useless if you use
      the Title key directly.
      Is there any known problems with the decryption?
      Yes. I call this problem the “Nav chain” bug. I realize that I have a lot of
      frame skipping at playback after the decryption, so I hunted down the problem.
      To avoid the frame skipping, I patch the video file.
      This fix allows smooth playback of the movie, but there are some side effects.
      What are the side effects of the “Nav chain” bug fix?
      You cannot do fast forward, or backward using the round dial, but you can still
      use the progress bar to navigate through the film. So it’s not that bad…

      For some reason, the sub-titles don’t seems to work anymore.
      It may be a side effect of the nav chain bug. But may be not…

      Why the “Nav chain” bug is called the “Nav chain” bug?
      Well, it has something to do with the chaining of navigation pack.
      Look at some doc about standard DVD VOB file, you will see.
      If someone wants to help me with that bug, please do!
      Are you going to support Blu-Ray?
      I don’t own a Blu-Ray drive!
      Do you plan to do a user interface version?
      No, other people will do. You have the source code, so enjoy it!
      Do you plan to do a Linux version?
      See the previous answer.
      I don’t use any windows specific API and this is a java application!
      A port to Linux will be easy.
      Can you send me some decryption keys? PLEASE!
      No.
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