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LangaList 2004-06-21 Please visit our sponsors and help keep the LangaList S.E. free!
--- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList S.E. Free! ) --- "Hi Fred, Hey, I signed up for
the Plus edition and got my 1st one today. --------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 1) The USB Drive RevolutionWant to see something amazing? Click one of these: Plus subscribers:
http://langalist.com/plus/extras/usb_drives.asp Not many things stop me in my tracks, after almost 25 years covering computers, but that little puppy--- packing 2.2GB or 4.4GB into the space of a postage stamp--- sure did. It's an honest-to-god real hard drive with motors, heads, and a tiny one-inch (25mm) rotating platter; it plugs into any Compact Flash reader, or you can buy it with a custom USB housing: Just plug it into your PC, and you instantly have 2.2GB or 4.4GB of new, portable storage for anything you want--- moving files, storing backups, *anything*. For most OSes, you don't even need any extra software: Just plug it into a USB socket, and go. These tiny hard drives are just one of the three types of USB drives I've been experimenting with. Pen drives, thumb drives, jump drives, keychain drives... they're called many things and they use surprisingly varied technologies, but they all share a few features in common: They're compact, removable drives that attach to your PC via a USB port to add anywhere from 16MB to over 4GB of portable storage to your system. In operation, all these USB drives can act much like an ordinary floppy or hard drive. Many of these devices are even bootable, if the PC is of recent-enough vintage to allow booting from a USB device. Newer OSes (XP, Win2K, and some Linux distributions) automatically recognize
and mount these USB drives, assigning the next-available drive letter. Older
OSes (e.g. Win9x) may require a driver to recognize the USB device, but every
USB-drive vendor I've looked at provides such drives at no extra cost. There are
free and open-source drivers available too. Because there are three main types of compact, portable USB-drives, I first had to figure out the strengths and weaknesses of each type; and to weigh the costs and benefits. That exploration turned into an article in itself! In "The USB Drive Revolution" that's posted now (free!) at http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22100588 , I'll run through the pros and cons of each of the three types of USB drives ranging from standard thumb drives that can cost literally under $10 and provide tens to hundreds of megs of extra space, up to amazingly capacious drives that add extra room by the gig. I'll provide links and prices--- and even break down the costs on a price-per-megabyte basis, for easy comparison. Come on over to See you there! Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 2) When Update... Won'tFred - I just went to the Update website and the critical update they wanted me to install looked awfully familiar. It is "Security Update for Windows XP (KB835732)." I looked at my installation history on the site and it seems I've successfully downloaded and installed this update 11 times (!) since May 8! I went ahead and downloaded again, was informed it was successful, restarted the computer, went back to Windows Update - they want me to install it again!! This can happen when an update doesn't finish normally; the update may actually be installed, but no record is kept, (or the record is munged) causing Update to try again. We covered this previously when one of my systems here got bitten by the "can't update" bug: http://langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-09-15.htm#3 But there actually are a number of ways to fix this. See also: Click to email this item to a
friend 3) Second Drive Questions
Well, as you say, "The possibilities for handling the two drives are endless." <g> But there are some general considerations that may help guide you: Usually (but not always), the newest drive will be the
fastest. Set up the newer or fastest drive as the Master/Primary, and the older
or slower drive as the Slave/Secondary. If you're not sure of the speeds, use a
drive benchmark utility such as the one at
http://pcpitstop.com or If possible, try to put like devices on the same cable--- group your hard drives on one cable, for instance, and your CD/DVD drives on the other. If possible, try to keep the DMA settings the same for both drives, and (natch) at the fastest setting allowable: http://www.google.com/search?q=dma+drive+settings Likewise, pay attention to the SMART settings: In particular, the SMART acoustical properties, which can be used to reduce drive "chatter," can reduce effective speed. Make sure the drives are set the way you want, with no needless slowdowns built in: http://langa.com/u/5b.htm Once you're ready to install software, use your fastest drive for your most-accessed files, including the swap/paging file. It's almost always better to do a clean install when you can. If that's possible, then--- assuming the new drive is the faster--- I'd just install XP afresh on the new drive, with it as the Primary/Master; and use the old drive (set as Secondary/Slave) for extra storage. But, if your system is in great shape, software-wise, you could simply image the old drive, and restore the image onto the new drive. If the drives are the same speed, I'd still put the OS on the newer drive, because it's newer and presumably has a longer life ahead of it. But when you have two drives of similar speed, you have some other options: For example, you can put the swap/paging file on one drive, and the system files on the other. In XP, you even can split the swap/page file across both drives to gain a small boost that way, as well. (See the XP Help file.) Note that hard drive failures tend to cluster at the very start of service, and again when the drives are old. The new-drive failures are usually associated with manufacturing defects or shipping damage, and they show up early; the macabre tech term for these early failures is (believe it or not) "infant mortality." The old-age drive problems are usually just simple wear and tear: Eventually, all mechanical systems break. This means that the first few weeks of operation with a new drive carry a higher risk of trouble, so prepare for it with extra backups/images, chkdsks/scandisks, and whatnot. Likewise, if your original drive has some miles on it, it may deserve some extra care too. See http://langa.com/backups/backups.htm , and item #7, below. There's lots more, but the above will surely get you started. 8-) Click to email this item to a
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--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 4) Further Authoritative Info On CD/DVD LifeIt's been a long time coming, but there really does finally seem to be a consensus on the care, handling, and expected longevity of CDs and DVDs. Unlike the first crude guesstimates, much of this new work is based on accelerated aging tests and real-life experience, prompted in part by librarians, museums, and other agencies who have come to depend on optical media for long-term data storage, as we reported in http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-05-20.htm#5 . Now, the US National Archives and Records Administration requested that the National Institute of Standards and Technology generate data that could be used to develop authoritative care and handling instructions for optical media. That report is now available for free (well, not really free: but US taxpayers have already footed the bill <g>) at: NIST Special Publication 500-252: Digital Data
Preservation Program There's also third-party reporting, such as this:
Thanks, Steven. Click to email this item to a
friend 5) Update On RanganathRemember Ranganath, from India? Some time ago, he became one of the children sponsored on an ongoing basis by LangaList Plus! subscribers (see http://freetune.com/newsletters/2002/meet_ranganath.htm or http://freetune.com/july_2003_update_on_ranganath.htm or http://langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-12-18.htm#4 .We just got an update on how he's doing, and a little crayon drawing. He's basically doing well; he's worried about his schoolwork, and is asking for prayers to ensure good grades. 8-) His aid workers also sent a cover letter with gives a sobering insight into local life there. The village women, for example, just staged a silent protest against the killing of newborn baby girls, traditionally viewed as less valuable than male children. The cover letter and a note from Ranganath with drawing, and translation: Plus! Subscribers: Standard Edition Subscribers: Here's what this is all about: Those of us with
computers and Internet access are vastly better off than most of the world's
population. Because of this, I decided that a portion of the LangaList Plus!
subscription fees would be donated to registered/legitimate charities helping
the underprivileged around the world. The contribution does not increase the
cost of a Plus! subscription in any way; the donation is taken "off the top" of
any profits. (This is described in the pages at
http://langa.com/plus.htm ) or give a GIFT SUBSCRIPTION to the
Plus edition: Click to email this item to a
friend 6) Recommend This Newsletter And Win!If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, maybe a
friend would find it useful too! Just use the following link to recommend the
LangaList---your friend may find a new source of useful information and you just
may win one of three FREE ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTIONS to the LangaList Plus! edition
given each month. (If your name is drawn and you're already a Plus! subscriber,
your current subscription will be extended by a full year.) Click to email this item to a
friend 7) Resurrecting Dead DrivesThis reader found a tool for bringing back seemingly-dead floppies:
And this reader ran into a problem with a dying notebook hard drive--- although the solution pertains to *any* hard drive: Hi, Fred. Thanks for your always enlightening and entertaining newsletter. I have a Vaio PCG FXA36 notebook that's less than two years old, running Win XP Home. For several months, the system has gone into a blue screen/memory dump mode numerous times. This keeps recurring after I do a complete system restore and install all the Sony-issued updates. Scandisk, chkdsk, and Norton DD cannot find bad clusters. I've spent countless hours trying to trace the problem at MS KB, without success. I took the notebook to a repair shop where a system restore was completed, only to have the blue screen appear again. The techie at the shop surmised that it might be the hard disk. I've made copies of the restore disks just in case one might have become corrupted or scratched. I am at my wit's end and ready to buy a new HDD if that might solve the problem. Regards, Elfi Lee Assuming the problem is indeed with the hard drive itself (I have no way to know that for sure from here), then you're on the right track: You've already tried the simpler disk-repair tools. The heavy-duty tool I've recommended in the past is SpinRite, from Steve Gibson (whom you may know from "Shields Up" and the many other free tools at http://grc.com ). There's a new version of Spinrite out now that can handle NTFS drives; Linux, too. Heck, it can even work on Mac or Tivo hard drives, if you can physically get the drive connected to a PC! Spinrite is perhaps the most thorough drive-checking/repair tool there is, short of buying the gear that drive manufacturers themselves use. Spinrite can look past your drive's error-correction circuitry to detect when parts of the drive surface are starting to go bad, but haven't yet totally failed; it can then refresh and restore the damaged spots, and/or safely move any at-risk data out of harm's way before anything bad happens. Spinrite also can sometimes recover data even from drives that have suffered hard crashes: It can dig into the damaged areas, and try to recover whatever's left, even if your drive or other repair tools would otherwise simply skip over the entire area as unreadable. Notebook hard drives are expensive, so a tool like SpinRite could be a very worthwhile investment to try to bring one back from seeming death: Spinrite costs $89 for a first-time buyer; less if you own an earlier version. For standard hard drives, which can be quite inexpensive in themselves, Spinrite may still well be worthwhile as a maintenance tool: If it ever prevents even one data-loss incident, or lets you recover from one bad drive crash, then it'll pay for itself. Spinrite may not be ideal for casual PC users, but if you're serious about keeping your PC as healthy as possible, or if you're the one others call on for help when their PCs die, Spinrite may well deserve a place in your toolkit: http://grc.com/spinrite.htm Click to email this item to a
friend 8) More Reader Sites!Do you have a home page or website? (It doesn't matter
what size.) Please click over to
http://langa.com/code.htm , and maybe you can join the hundreds and hundreds
of LangaList readers who have "Loaded the Code!" (If you've already "Loaded The
Code" and are wondering if your site will appear here or on the Langa.Com web
site, please see http://langa.com/link.txt
) Manually Browse All Posted-to-Date Sites Starting At Software Security Solutions Hawaii Condo Sgt Rumble Peter's Page Phoenix Center Travel Across America (blog) Living Family Albums Hand carved Decoys SoulFlower Fine Arts CompuTech Direct (Colorado) Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList S.E. Free! ) --- Fred's Own Reference Shelf---
And Up To 20% Discounts! --------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 9) Many Useful Items
Thanks, Anne! The page *looks* awful--- like a vision test--- but the links are indeed well worth the effort to dig out of the visual clutter. Tons of good stuff there! Click to email this item to a
friend 10) Just For GrinsFirst, for the record, and in response to the flood of emails about just what constitutes a "grin" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2004/2004-06-10.htm#10 ): Yes, the word "grin" derives from the Old English grennian, to grimace; or to even older Germanic cognates for "mutter," "grunt," "groan" and "howl"--- none of which are very mirthful at all! (And which casts the name of the monster "Grendel," in Beowulf, in an interesting light I'd never considered before. But I digress....) I also respect the many British readers who wrote to say that "grin" in the UK still carries a lingering undertone of that older usage. Indeed, my copy of the Concise Oxford leans a little that way, defining "grin" as "show teeth, esp. in amusement or pain or in forced or unrestrained or vacant smile." Because of this, many UK readers suggested I change the name of this item to "Just for Smiles" or "Something To Ponder" and suchlike. But I speak US English, and the American Heritage Dictionary defines "grin" as, "to smile broadly, often baring the teeth, as in amusement, glee, embarrassment, or other strong emotion." Clearly, when the word crossed the Atlantic (to the US, at least), it lost its connections to the more negative root words. Interesting. And although I have no citation for this, I believe that the phrase "just for grins" originated as an American Southern colloquialism; meaning "for a lark" or "for fun" or "for the hell of it." So I don't think I'll change the name of this item; and instead hope that this brief foray into linguistics has clarified what the heck I'm trying to do here. In any case, I think this particular horse is well and truly dead. 8-) So now that's we're all on the same page, here's a wonderful little satire on the RIAA lawsuits, which I hope provokes a grin, in the US sense of the word, with nary a mutter, grunt, groan or howl to be heard:
Thanks Iain! Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) ---
--------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 11) Plus! Edition Highlights:
Plus! edition subscribers not only get much more content in every issue (like the above), but also have access to a private web site with over 100,000 words of special content and features not found in *any* issue of the newsletter; along with dozens of private downloads and much more--- all for just $1 per month! Check out: http://langa.com/sendit.htm/plus.htm Click to email this item to a
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