Archive for the 'Storage' category

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.

There is a long list of file suffixes that cannot be shared on a network (even a local one) on this type of hard disc drive.

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.

Tom’s Hardware just compared 7 online services for online storage of data.

Take your storage online

Today is Blog Action Day: The day that bloggers chose to try and help save the planet from the impact of Human activity. For my own part, I decided to collect a few ideas to save energy in your computer usage:

• Upgrade your gear
• Dim your screen
• Consolidate and virtualize computers
• Turn off peripherals
• Kill unnecessary processes
• Get a smart power switch
• Enable energy saver settings
• Unplug energy vampires
• Spin down your hard drive
• Shut down the computer

Another trick: Power saving remote computing.

We are told that the newest version of Nero 8, the disc burner software for CD and DVD (I love that silly “Nero: Burning ROM” tag line). It does everything, but we are still left wondering whether it’s not a little too xpensive when we could download it for free (but legally).

For some time already, I have been recommending CDBurnerXP, free software program that I found always able to do all the burning jobs I threw at it. CDBurnerXP just received an upgrade (download CDBurnerXP 4):

• Support for burning Blu-Ray, HD-DVD, and Double layer DVDs
• Support for FLAC audio files
• Disc to Disc copy for audio and data
• Save discs and compilations as ISO files
• Support for WPL playlists

But there is even more freedom: InfraRecorder is not only free but also open source. It runs under Windows and can be downloaded freely.

Stop looking for a pirated version of Nero 8. Download it for free, just better: free and legal.

Microsoft would have us believing that the hybrid disk drives (containing a standard magnetic disc drive, some Flash memory and the usual cache memory) are the solution to all world’s problems (including hunger and poverty), the culmination of technology finally allowed by Windows Vista.

The basic principle of adding Flash memory to a disk drive is to provide some kind of cache memory buried less deeply into the disk system and that the Operating System (Windows Vista) would be able to use at will to improve disk system performance.

Thanks! But no thanks! It increase the cost and the complexity of the whole PC system. Where cache memory was a simple mean for the disk sub-system to optimize its operation without asking anything from the Operating System (it only sees a slightly faster drive), Flash memory of hybrid disks add one more task to Windows. Even worse, Windows already use several cache systems to optimize disk susb-systems. They all rely on the DRAM central memory of your PC; They are able to adapt to the size of the memory, to the user behaviour, to the list of active tasks/programs. But here, without even removing any of that feature (which is easily forgotten because it is nicely embedded) another layer is added.

Seriously, rather than buying a hybrid disk drive with all its added costs, I recommend that you go and invest into some more central PC memory. A little more SDRAM is what has the best impact on your PC performance (including the visible performance of the hard disk drive).

Last minute: Now, disk manufacturers are willing to explain that this is not because of thechnology that the hybrid disks are not more common. It’s merely that Flash memory prices are too high (!) and you should put more than the ususal 256MB usually found nowadays in hybrid models currently on the shelves [1].

RAID storage is a good way to ensure a good security for your data: Two or more discs are used to give some redundancy and be sure that in case of a single drive failure you can still access your files (it will not protect you against deleting the files, though). However, the problem is often that RAID storage is very expensive or very complex (buying an expensive appliance, setting up a complex PC configuration). So much so that a normal user (a photographer willing to protect her zillions of digital images, a student willing to give reliability to his MP3 and DivX files, etc.) will not do it.

Now, Iomega is proposing a solution for an external RAID at a bargain price (It’s available in a 500 GB model with street pricing as low as $240). Tom’s Hardware’s SmallNetBuilder is giving it a run and tells us all about it: Tiny Terabyte RAID: Iomega 1 TB StorCenter Network Hard Drive Review.

Strange coincidence in the recent press releases about DVD discs.

For the first time, the industry group that manages the licenses for the DVD format (the DVD 6C Licensing Group or DVD 6C) decided to revoque the DVD patent agreement of Chinese manufacturer Chaoyue (Jiangsu) Digital [1]. They must have been doing really ugly things to loose even the right to try and manufacture DVD players.

Apparently without any link, we also learn that researchers from the Tsinghua University of Beijing created a new high definition DVD disc format. Quite similar to HD-DVD, its name will be CH-DVD (China DVD?) and it will contain some specifically Chinese patents and IP. But this is not the first time Chinese authorities tried to start a new format in direct competition with an international standard. The most recent being the EVD that roared to replace the DVD [2].

A few days ago, it has been released publicly that a new Flash memory card format is arriving. I can see the John “Consumer” Doe thrilled in anticipation of yet another new card format: UFS. I can imagine that it will solve all existing issues with dozens of previously existing -and incompatible- memory cards.

This is going to offer a vastly improved speed for the users. To quote from the press release: “Today, users experience a three-minute access time for a 90-minute (4 Gigabyte) high-definition movie; with the new standard, this would be reduced to a few seconds.” Do we care? Will the movie run faster?

Of course, it is touted by its promoters as a giant leap in technology and the universal memory solution (do I hear “snake oil”?) I need a little more than a long list of supporters to jump and shout joyfully…

The race for larger hard drives does nto slow down. Today, it is quite easy to find 500GB disks at a very reasonable cost (and remember that this is no less than half a tera-byte of data!)

I recently observed several interesting comparisons about this issue:

• In English: Tom’s Hardware (external disks)
• In French: Hardware.fr (internal SATA disks)

Acronis True Image is one of the best disk utilities of the market: Like Norton Ghost it allows to make a full-image copy of one hard disk drive and to restore it later in one pass. Unfortunately, up to now, it was a little expensive at $49.95.

did you know that a lot of us can have it for free? And legally, too? You just have to be the happy owner of a Seagate (I have several of them) or Maxtor disk drive. Seagate’s Disc Wizard and Maxtor’s Max Blast actually contain a very extensive OEM version of the original software from Acronis. Why not use it?

• Seagate downloads
• Maxtor downloads

Source: The Inquirer.

Some time ago, I had spoken here of SequoiaView, a Windows utility to visualize the space used by files on a hard disk drive (a great way to prepare for freeing space on a hard drive choking full of hundreds of GB of data).

Today, I found a free utility doing about the same task on a Mac: GrandPerspective. Recommended.

Source: LifeHacker.