There a re zillions of disk defragmenters for Windows. Most are free and nearly all of them do unknown actions with no perceptible effect. UltimateDefrag is not the ordinary defragmenter for (at least) two reasons:
It is beatifully presented as you can see below.
It groups the most used files in the fastest access location of your disk drive. It does not make the computer faster, but it helps in loading faster those applications that you use most.
It is always a bit difficult to actually think about doing backups. Either you spend too much time thinking about it or you forget about it. For Windows, I found a nice free utility program: FileHamster from MOGware.
This small utility will allow you to automatically backup every single file you save or modify. FileHamster will create a full history track of your activity without even the need to think about it. It acts immediately (you don’t have to wait for a daily backup), and keeps everything. Of course, you need some free disk space, but it’s so much of a relief…
If you want the best possible Flash memory storage for your camera, you need to look for a good Flash memory card. But which one is the best? Just look at those tests:
And remember that the fastest memory cards are no longer needed if you are not using one of the biggest SLR cameras and in RAW mode. However, a fast memory card is still useful to get the data into Photoshop (if you have a really good flash card reader on your computer, not the first 13-in-1 USB reader on eBay).
When you have a computer with multiple partitions on the same disk or several disks with different partitions, things start getting bad if one of them is a Linux Ext or Ext2 partition: Usually, you can’t access the Linux partition from your Windows computer, Microsoft totally ignore your disk/partition.
In order to correct this, you can/must use a special Windows driver able to recognize correctly those Linux Ext/Ext2 partitions. Ext2 IFS provides full read/write access. It’s is essentially a kernel ext2/ext3 filesystem driver for Windows. When installed in your Windows computer, it simply becomes able to natively access the Linux disk. After installing, you can mount your Linux partition under a drive letter, just like you would an NTFS partition. The drive will be available in Explorer and within any file browser dialog in your favorite Windows applications.
Your hard disk drive is a black box in more meanings than one. Wouldn’t it be pleasant to be able to directly visualize its contents? That is the core of the following proposal: an external hard disc drive whose surface is covered by an OLED screen used to display a treemap contents like it’s done by SequoiaView (see the example here showing the contents of a large disc drive containing hundreds of small files and a few bigger masses).
The display is slightly different, but takes advantage of the same principles and gives you a direct perception of the internal status of your storage media. It reminded me (in a more practical way) the slightly silly proposal I saw a few weeks ago, of a USB key chain that would physically inflate as you fill it with data.
Sometimes, you make a heavy use of a FTP server. But it is tiresome to go to a separate program in order to copy files to and from this server. There is an easy solution under Windows: Add a FTP server onto a disk drive letter.
What could be the use of network hard disk drive of one Tera-Byte which would strictly refuse to serve files because there may be a risk of breaching licensing agreement potentially applicable to them? This is the question that potential buyers should ask before purchasing the Western Digital disc drives using WD Anywhere Access: WD My Book World Edition.
In my opinion, a WD My Book World Edition disc is defintely worthless. You cannot usefully put on it an MP3 file, and AVI file, a TMP file, a QuickTime video or a Windows Media video. Western Digital seems worried that you may not have the licensing rights for these. So they don’t want you to use them. Leave those Western Digital discs at he irresponsible stores which are selling them or bring them back.
Manufacturers of DRAM chips and NAND Flash modules still see the market as one long nightmare they cannot wake up from. There is a permanent oversupply that does not seem to be reduced by the end-of-the-year purchases. Taiwan DRAM makers are worried because they do not even see a reason why this should improve in the coming weeks.
This means that if you need either DRAM modules to upgrade your computer or Flash memory cards, you are both quite alone on this market and prices should be nice to you.