Pure Binary

Usually large quantity of data accumulates on the hard disk over time. These data may be digital photos, videos and MP3 songs and lots of other files with mysterious file names and extensions. Generally these are leftovers of old programs that were improperly uninstalled, temporary internet files from surfing session, and left over for music or videos editing sessions. All this not only devours lots of valuable storage space, but also causes system backups or defragmenting to take forever. So you must periodically do some spring cleaning. This would include inspection of many different folders and looking for particular files that are not needed. Of course, it is not an easy task doing this manually. The best known remedy to this is to use tools like HDCleaner or CCleaner (Crap Cleaner).

HDCleaner thoroughly searches the hard disk for potential memory hoggers and DLL files, duplicates as well known links, and then eliminates these. I have used this tool and it does its job fairly well.

To use HDCleaner, select ‘Clean hard drive | Go to’. Select all drives first within ‘Remove unnecessary files’ and confirm the same with ‘Search hard disk’. The tool tells you about all the useless files. It displays all files that are can be removed in the next window. You can delete those files and empty the Recycle bin. Though searching for the duplicates can be time consuming, but you can search selectively under ‘Options’. For instance, you can choose to search for duplicates by instructing HDCleaner to compare only the names or sizes of files. Once you have deleted the dispensable DLL files and incoherent links, the JKDefrag tool comes into play (http://www.emro.nl/freeware). This tool defragments your hard disk and rearranges the data on it.

Tags: Software Info, Tech Tips by Deepak
1 Comment »

Have you ever tried to format your USB drive or Pen drive to Format using NTFS format in Windows? Whenever you format your USB drive you do not get the option to format it with NTFS. You will get only FAT and FAT32. Even if you ask your dealers they would tell you that formatting a USB drive in NTFS is not possible. But today I will tell you how you can format it through NTFS file system. Actually I came to know about this method from a well known tech-magazine Digit October 2008 edition. I used this method to format my USB drive of Transcend (2 GB).

So here are the steps :-
Step 1: Open Windows XP/Vista/2000 (may not work with guest account and with Windows 95/98).
Step 2: Connect your Pen Drive to the USB port.
Step 3: Go to My Computer -> H: (where H: is your Pen drive)
Step 4: Right click on H: and select “Properties”.
Step 5: Select “Hardware” from tabbed menu and go to its “Properties”.
Step 6: Select “Optimize For Performance” (The default is “Optimize for Quick Removal”).
Apply and click OK.
Now you will get the option for formatting your USB drive in NTFS file System.

Tags: Tech Tips by Deepak
1 Comment »

Beta version of Windows 7 is released and as anticipated, Windows 7 seems to be just an improvement and buckets of new features over Windows Vista and not an innovation. If you have hardware and device drivers that works with Windows Vista then you can use Windows 7.

Features which attracts:

-First of all the User Interface is just awesome with enhanced taskbar has interactive thumbnails, which enables animation and interaction for minimized applications. You get the option of full screen previews of any minimized windows.

-Windows 7 will be shipped with Internet Explorer 8 as its default web browser. It supports extensive formats of media files such as MJPEG, MP3, sources for MP4, 3GP, MPEG2-TS, AVI, and new file sinks for MP4, 3GP, and MP3.

-Windows 7 is high in performance than all the Windows OS before and there is also improvements in Windows kernel that enable applications and services to scale efficiently between platforms. Performance of many features and APIs is improved in Windows 7 as against Vista. For laptop users, it has better battery performance this time.

-There is in built support for applications and devices, including music players, storage devices, mobile phones, and other types of connected devices. I was delighted with this feature as now I don’t need mobile software for my Nokia handset.

-For developers who want to create quality drivers for Windows the Windows Driver Kit (WDK) Version 3.0 provides the build environment, tools, documentation, and samples.

Though the above changes are being welcomed warmly but there are some issues which Microsoft has been ignoring from long before. Microsoft’s developers are no doubt the rare geeks but why innovation has been not given priority. Many features in Windows 7 are said to resemble Apple’s MAC. Moreover, the internet community is blaming Microsoft for steadying the web world due to its inferior web browser Internet Explorer which is used by most of the people on earth. Though according to me Windows 7 is a good OS than all the previous versions but Microsoft still has to prove a lot and shut the mouth of critics with is innovation. You can take a look to what other bloggers have to say on the launch of Wndows 7.

Tags: Software Info by Deepak
1 Comment »

If the title “Organic Hard Disks” sounds unreal to you then you are wrong. As we know that Hard Disks are the storage device and it retains the data. Just imagine how does our brain work. The nature uses proteins to help our brains to retain memory. Based on this fact the researchers in Japan have been able to demonstrate the data recording on a glass slide using a fluorescent protein, light and chemicals. They succeeded in demonstrating the basic operations like recording, deleting and reading the data on the biological storage device. According to them this organic device spatiotemporally photoregulates the recording, erasing and reading of data on solid surface using protein. Though the research is in its preliminary stage but there is no doubt that very soon we will be having Organic storage devices with huge capacity. Many other researches are going on to build protein chip. Possibilities are limitless but it would be really interesting to see what comes first.

Tags: Hardware technology by Deepak
No Comments »