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--- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) --- --------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 1) Bad Advice From Reputable Source?
To me, the main benefit of partitioning is that it lets you segregate your data into chunks that more or less fit your backup media. Villazon uses an external drive as his backup, and so he backs up everything at once; that's fine. But as we've discussed here in previous issues, any malware that eats his main drive could also eat his external drive; any mechanical or physical problem (lightning strike or other electrical surge, fire, flood, theft...) that destroys the PC will probably also affect the external drive. So, working backwards, I think his is a poor choice of backup medium; and therefore his arguments in favor of throwing everything into one humongous partition also fail. He's putting his data at risk, needlessly. Of course, maybe his PC doesn't contain important or hard-to-rebuild data. If that's the case, then the whole impetus for backup is much reduced. If a PC's mostly just a toy, who cares if you lose what's on it? But if the PC contains valuable stuff, then you want to back it up in a way that preserves the backups even if, say, the house/office burns down or is otherwise compromised. That then leads back to the wisdom of partitioning. As for defrag, it's mostly a speed thing. I recall from my days of formal testing at Byte and WinMag and such that you need PC speed differences of 20% or so before *everyone* can see and notice them--- lots of people just aren't that sensitive to smaller differences. But *most people* (not all--- but most) can sense 15% differences; well-attuned and experienced persons will sense 10% differences; and professional-level sensitivities can discern speed differences down to single digits. So, where you are in this spectrum of sensitivity will determine how much you value the speed increases of things like defrag. Here's a weird analogy, but bear with me, as it makes the point clear: A minority of humans--- about 20-25% or so--- have extra taste buds. Scientists call them "supertasters" ( http://tinyurl.com/enfyn ) not with any sense of superiority, but simply to describe the extra sensitivity to tastes they have. Supertasters sense *all* tastes more intensely than the other 75% of the population, and can actually taste some things that most people simply cannot. It's why some people dislike vegetables, for example: To supertasters, foods like asparagus, broccoli and such are *extremely* bitter and even repulsively sulphurous. Yet 75% of people can eat and enjoy exactly the same foods prepared in exactly the same ways: The tastes that supertasters find so off-putting are, to most people, simply undetectable. This leads to odd effects, where some non-supertasters view supertasters as moral failures or childish persons: "Grow up and eat your vegetables!" Those non-supertasters assume that everyone is just like them--- if something tastes fine to *them,* then it must be fine for everyone, right? Nope: The same foods can taste radically different to different people. It's not a right or wrong thing; it's just a matter of how many taste buds you were born with. Back to defrag: If you're a person sensitive to single-digit speed differences, you'll easily--- *easily*--- sense the difference between file activity when the disk is defragged versus badly fragged. But a person sensitive to only 20% or greater speed differences might not notice anything. And, frankly, some who do notice just don't care. That's perfectly fine--- to each his own. But I personally prefer smoother operation (yes, I'm one of those annoying single-digit geeks--- and I bet a lot of you are too! <g>). I also hate to sit there waiting for my PC to do something. Even if it's just a half second needless delay for each major file operation, over the course of a day, it's like a pebble in the shoe: Not crippling, but very annoying--- especially when it's so mindlessly simple to remedy. Just defrag regularly, and all those little delays--- those little pebbles--- go away. But again, some people don't notice, or care. For them, defrag may indeed be a waste. Defrag goes beyond speed, though: In (admittedly rare) cases of catastrophic data loss, it's much, much easer to try to dig data off a defragged disk than to try to find the pieces scattered across a messed up disk. Now, this hardly ever comes into play--- it's only happened to me twice in 25 years--- but when it does, it's the difference between a do-it-yourself data recovery taking a couple hours or maybe having to send your drive off to a data-recovery service, along with a check for some unknown amount of money, but often reaching into the thousands of dollars. But here too, this only matters if there's important stuff on your PC--- stuff you don't want to lose, such as business records, tax or banking records, family photos, and the like. If there's nothing all that important on your PC, then who cares what happens to it? Sure, let it be sloppily backed up. Let it frag itself into unrecoverability; it doesn't matter. I guess Luis Villazon falls into the latter category; and also is one of those people relatively insensitive to speed differences; the PC equivalent of a "non-supertaster." That's fine, for him. But there are many, many of us who do have valuable stuff on our PCs, and who do and can sense speed differences. For us, rational partitioning, good backups, and regular defrags make a real and meaningful difference. So: His advice is way off the mark for me--- and maybe for you, too. But it's your shot to call, not his, or mine! (And hey, I'll also admit it: I'm a supertaster, too. <g> I'll defrag my PC, but I'll skip the brussels sprouts, thank you.) Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) --- --------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 2) New, Free, Graphical Partitioning Tool
Excellent, Bruce: Looks like a nice tool! A small caveat: Note the version number, which is below "1.0" While it's always smart to make a backup before using any partition tool, it's especially important when the tool is young, as this one is. But it looks super so far--- and a free self-contained partition tool with a graphical front end is a very nice addition to the toolbox. Click to email this item to a
friend 3) What's On Those Old CDs?
The keywords you need are "catalog" and "index." Searching with those terms will turn up many, many tools that will catalog the contents of disks (hard, floppy, CDs...) and store the information in a variety of formats. And, just as you asked for, some will leave the master catalog on your main system so you can look things up without having to load each CD: You can look up a file and the catalog will tell you it's on CD #31 (or whatever). Here's a collection of free cataloging tools: And there are lots more here: Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList S.E. Free! ) --- "Hi Fred, I was receiving your free
newsletter for a while and --------------( the above is an advertisement )-------------- 4) Drive Size Limits
Hard drive have two main size limitations: There's a hardware and a software component. First, the BIOS has to know what to do with the hard drive. When the first PC hard drive came out, there was exactly one model: It had 312 cylinders, 4 heads and 17 sectors per track and was pre-configured to 10.9 MB (that's MB, not GB) in capacity. That was the only choice, so those specs were hard-wired into the BIOS. Later, when a few other drives came out, each was then assigned a unique identifier ("type 22," or some such). You'd enter the drive's identifier into the BIOS, and the BIOS would then know how to talk to that specific hard drive. After a few years, things got a little more automatic, but still often relied on certain built-in assumptions about the maximum number of heads, platters, and such a drive might have. The drives available today were unthinkable in those days; and there's literally no way to manually enter the parameters of, say, an 80 GB drive into a system designed to handle maybe a 20 MB drive at most. Similarly, today's drives can communicate to a modern BIOS much more directly, and don't use simple, preset "type" identifiers. But an old system that needs to be told, explicitly, what drive type to use simply won't know what to do with a new drive. Relatedly, there can be fundamental mathematic limitations on how much data an old system can access: If a new hard drive has more data addresses than the hardware can generate, it's not gonna work: Those higher addresses are simply invisible to the hardware. This became a huge issue starting about 10 years ago (and is still an issue for some older hardware today): It's known as "The 1024 Cylinder Barrier" or (same problem, different name) "The 528 MB Barrier." It's a mathematical limit in older systems imposed by the number of software bits available for defining a drive's geometry--- the number of heads, cylinders and sectors. In simple terms, a drive can be simply too big for the BIOS to handle on its own. That segues into software, which can have exactly the same kind of mathematic limitations. The old DOS FAT12 system, with a 12-bit addressing scheme, could only handle drives to 16.7MB in size; DOS3 brought this to 33.6MB; DOS4 to 134MB; Fat16 has a 2.15GB maximum; FAT32 a 32GB max; and so on. You also can run into problems with non-OS software: The Win98 Format tool, for instance, maxes out at 64GB due to its own, separate internal limits. OK, that's all fairly arcane, and I've compressed and simplified thing a lot in the name of brevity. If you want the full, gory detail, see http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm and http://www.google.com/search?q=maximum+hard+drive+size+windows . What does it all mean for Alun, and readers like him? If the PC is very old--- and Alun, it sounds like yours may be--- it may need a BIOS update or replacement to overcome fundamental limitations there (see http://www.google.com/search?q=replace+bios ). Many drive makers also offer "drive translation" or "dynamic drive overlay" software that can fool an older BIOS so that it doesn't know it's talking to a drive larger than it can handle on its own. Although this kind of software adds a level of complexity to things, it's often the fastest way to get a new drive running on an old PC. (See http://tinyurl.com/plsyy ) Other software limitations are more easily gotten around by replacing the software with newer versions--- a new version of Windows, or Linux, or whatever. USB drives connect through the system BIOS and the OS, so they'll inherit the same basic limitations as other drives on the system. But a shared drive, including NAS drives ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-04-03.htm#1 ) is controlled by the hardware and software that's offering the share, and not by those connecting to the share. So, a file server or network attached storage or a large shared drive on another PC are all ways to deliver large storage to limited, older PCs. Here's another out: You can divvy up a larger drive into a number of logical drives or partitions below whatever the system limit is, and the system will be happy. For example, if your system will only "see" 40GB at a time, you usually still can use a 120GB drive, as long as you format it as three separate 40GB logical drives. This actually connects nicely with items #1 and #2, above: It's another reason why partitioning can be a good thing; and another reason to grab a tool like "Partition Logic," which can operate outside whatever limitations a given OS may have. You know, this kind of problem seemed to go away for a while when XP came out because XP will handle drives up to 2.2 terabytes in size. That seemed pretty big at the time. But a terabyte isn't what it used to be. ( See http://tinyurl.com/s5fuu ) So, some modest number of years from now, we'll be bumping up against the 2.2TB limits, and will need 64-bit hardware and software to raise the ceiling to the next level... on and on and on! <g> Click to email this item to a
friend 5) Excellent, Free Add-Ins
Nice, Mark. thanks. That whole site is a gem, and we've mentioned parts of it before. That page offers not only the Regedit add-in, but several others, too. I grabbed 'em, and maybe others will want to as well. Click to email this item to a
friend 6) Is This Newsletter Interesting? Useful?If you think the LangaList is a worthwhile read, maybe a
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friend 7) Temperature Tools For Dell and Other NotebooksWe linked to a number of different, temperature monitoring tools for PCs and laptops in "Free Temperature Tools" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-03-30.htm#2 ), but Dells are different, with some proprietary hardware. Standard temp tools may not "speak" Dell. Speedfan, mentioned in the link above, knows about the Dell weirdness, but still may not work OK. In fact, I have a new Dell laptop, and Speedfan could sense the temps, sort of, but wouldn't control the fans reliably. So I went looking and dug up the free "i8kfan" ( http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/ ), so named because it was originally designed for Dell's Inspiron 8000--- i8k. But it actually works on other Dells too, including: Inspiron 9100 A related freeware tool on the same site, SpeedswitchXP ( http://www.diefer.de/speedswitchxp/index.html ) is a "CPU frequency control for notebooks running Windows XP," and works on more than just Dells. It has a number of dynamic and set CPU speed modes that let the CPU throttle up and down on demand and as needed, or stay at a given speed. The idea is that, by running the CPU only as fast as needed for a given load, you reduce heat all the time and extend battery life when running on batteries. I haven't used my new laptop enough to know if they're helping battery life, but with the combination of Fanspeed's control of the fans and SpeedswitchXP's control of the CPU, my laptop is running as much as 20-30 degrees F cooler than it was before (call it 10-15 C cooler); and without the fans having to come on as much. It's *very* impressive software performance, and I have to believe it's extending the life of my new laptop. So, no matter what hardware you have, there's probably a thermal tool out there that can help. Check 'em out! Click to email this item to a
friend 8) They Loaded The CodeDo 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 "Uh oh" Carla Jewels French Quarter Pens Mid Hants Railway Jason J. Thomas’ Weblog East Devon Computer Helpdesk Howling Wolf Computers Easychange Homemade Computer Tutorials Karl's PC Help Forums Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) --- --------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 9) "Index" = "Oink?"In "Feed Me! Feed Me Now!" ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-03-30.htm#9 ), we discussed software that was consuming a reader's CPU cycles. Here's another instance:
I usually turn of the index service, too: It's a definite pig. ( http://www.google.com/search?q=cisvc%2Eexe ) With enough RAM and CPU power, I find brute-force searches adequately fast, and they don't have to churn away in the background building and rebuilding indices. I currently use "Advanced Find and Replace" http://www.abacre.com/afr/ and Search and Replace for Windows http://www.funduc.com/srshareware.htm as my primary local search tools. There are many other good tools, too. Click to email this item to a
friend 10, 11, 12, 13, 14) Plus! Edition Only:Today's LangaList Plus! Edition contains about 40% more content including:
The Plus! edition is only pennies per issue, and comes with a MONEY BACK Click to email this item to a
friend --- ( Your Clicks On Ad Links Help Keep The LangaList Free! ) --- --------------( the above is an advertisement )------------- 15) Just For GrinsA few weeks back, we discussed wax cylinder recordings--- state of the art from 100 years ago--- the iPod of its day. ( http://langa.com/newsletters/2006/2006-03-27.htm#15 ) Turns out that technology lingered in use way, way beyond what I'd heard of:
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