USBDeview - Application that Views all installed/connected USB devices on your system.

Nowadays USB is something so common that we tend to forget that many years back, we were all using serial and parallel ports for printers, modems, scanners, mouse and etc… USB was devised to help retire all serial and parallel ports since these were not standardized and required a multitude of device drivers to be developed and maintained. It was troublesome because if you didn’t get it running, you have to troubleshoot it and then restart your computer hoping that when you get in to Windows, it’ll work. Otherwise you’ll have to go through the step of fixing and rebooting.

USB can connect computer peripherals such as mouse devices, keyboards, PDAs, gamepads and joysticks, scanners, digital cameras and printers. For many devices such as scanners and digital cameras, USB has become the standard connection method. USB is also used extensively to connect non-networked printers; USB simplifies connecting several printers to one computer. In 2004, there were about 1 billion USB devices in the world. Imagine that! USB ports can be very dangerous because Windows offers NO protection at all.

Think about this, when you walk off from your desk for a cup of coffee, anyone in your office can walk to your desk, plug in their USB flash drive to your office computer and copy your personal data, or your work project. Of course you can lock your computer but you cannot guarantee that you’ll lock it without fail whenever you’re out of your desk. There are also U3 smart technology on some USB flash drive that can autorun programs when it’s plugged in. There are ways to hack the U3 USB flash drive to let it autorun programs you desire. It is possible that when a hacked U3 USB flash drive is plugged in, it automatically extracts all your username, passwords and sensitive information within seconds.

So now you know the danger of USB ports but I won’t be talking about security it today. Before securing it, you first need to know what kind of USB device you’ve plugged in before on your computer. With USBDeview, you can lists all USB devices that currently connected to your computer, as well as all USB devices that you previously used.

For each USB device, extended information is displayed: Device name/description, device type, serial number (for mass storage devices), the date/time that device was added, VendorID, ProductID, and more… USBDeview also allows you to uninstall USB devices that you previously used, and disconnect USB devices that are currently connected to your computer. You can also use USBDeview on a remote computer, as long as you login to that computer with admin user.

USBDeview is released as freeware and it works on Windows 2000/XP/2003. Windows 98/ME is not supported. As for Vista, it’s not mentioned but no harm trying. If you see a USB device especially USB flash drive that has been plugged in but you don’t remember or recognize it, you must be cautious and change all your passwords to prevent unnecessary problems.

How To Test Read and Write Speed of USB Flash Drives with USBDeview?

Two years ago I was looking for one of the fastest USB flash drive and after checking a lot of reviews, I found out that it was Corsair Flash Voyager GT. I bought it and was very satisfied with it. Honestly I did perform any speed test to confirm that it is one of the fastest because I can feel that it is faster than my other USB flash drives (PenDrive, SanDisk, Kingston) whenever I copy files to my Corsair USB flash drive.

Today I was browsing Nirsoft’s website and found out that one of the tool called USBDeview that I always carry along with me has been updated and a new SpeedTest feature has been added. I normally only use USBDeview to find out what USB device has been used on a computer and to uninstall the leftover USB device but now I can find out how fast is my USB flash drive. The best part is, I can even submit the speed test result to Nirsoft’s website after testing so me and other people will be able to easily compare the speed of many USB flash drives.

USBDeview’s interface is still the same when I reviewed it. To test the speed of your USB flash drive, plug the drive into your computer, and run USBDeview. Right click on the USB flash drive device listed in USBDeview and select SpeedTest. Alternative you can also use the hotkey Ctrl+T. When you see the SpeedTest window, click the Start Test button to start the speed test.

USBDeview will start writing a large file into the USB flash drive, and then reading back the same file to getting the read speed. Do take note that you need at least 100 MB of free disk space in order to successfully make this speed test. After a few seconds you should get the read and write speed in Megabyte per second. Finally, you can publish the test result by clicking the Publish Test Result button. You get to enter a more detailed description of your USB flash drive and also your name. The speed test result page is HERE

According to Nirsoft, this speed test is made with sequential read and write operations. When using multiple small files, the read/write performances are usually much lower than sequential read/write. This speed test may not be 100% accurate but the results page does give us some idea on the read and write speed on a lot of USB flash drives.

Links:

Download USBDeview

USBDeview Homepage

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Free Online OCR - A website that extracts text out of scanned documents.

Free Online OCR lets you convert paper documents or images into editable and searchable files. The software has been specially designed to achieve high recognition accuracy even with low quality documents such as faxes and screenshot.

The online OCR software can save the result in any of the most popular file formats: DOC, PDF, RTF and TXT.

Online OCR can handle images in any of the popular image file formats such as JPG, BMP, TIFF and PNG. It can also process PDF files.

PDF files often contain an image of a scanned document. This makes it impossible to search the file or index its content. Our online OCR will extract the image from a PDF, convert it to text and save the result in searchable PDF, DOC, RTF or TXT.

The output files keep the original layout and formatting of the processed documents, including images, bullets, fonts, styles and sizes.

Often when you scan a document it will rotate a bit making it difficult to process. The Online OCR service will automatically detect such pages and preprocess them to straighten them before the OCR process.

Free Online OCR creates PDF files where the text information is inserted in a separate invisible layer, making it possible for you to search and index the file. The original image is preserved as an image layer in the PDF.

Visit the website Here

Source: free-online-ocr.com

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All about HDD and SSD

 SOLID STATE DRIVE (SSD) 

A solid-state drive, sometimes called a solid-state disk or electronic disk, is a data storage device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data persistently. SSD technology uses electronic interfaces compatible with traditional block I/O hard disk drives. SSDs do not employ any moving mechanical components, which distinguishes them from traditional magnetic disks such as hard disk drives (HDDs) or floppy disk, which are electromechanical devices containing spinning disks and movable read/write heads. Compared to electromechanical disks, SSDs are typically less susceptible to physical shock, are silent, have lower access time and latency, but are more expensive per unit of storage. 

HARD DISK DRIVES (HDD) 

A hard disk drive (HDD; also hard drive, hard disk, or disk drive) is a device for storing and retrieving digital information, primarily computer data. It consists of one or more rigid (hence "hard") rapidly rotating discs (often referred to as platters), coated with magnetic material and with magnetic heads arranged to write data to the surfaces and read it from them. Hard drives are classified as non-volatile, random access, digital, magnetic, data storage devices. 

Comparison of SSD with HDD 

(1)Storage capacity

• In 2011 SSDs were available in sizes up to 2TB, but less costly 64 to 256GB drives were more common.
• In 2011 HDDs of up to 4TB were available. 

(2)Read/write performance symmetry

• Less expensive SSDs typically have write speeds significantly lower than their read speeds. Higher performing SSDs have similar read and write speeds.
• HDDs generally have slightly lower write speeds than their read speeds. 

(3)Weight and size

• Solid state drives, essentially semiconductor memory devices mounted on a circuit board, are small and light in weight.
• HDDs are relatively large and heavy, 3.5" drives more so than 2.5" and 1.8". 

(4)Noise (acoustic)

• SSDs have no moving parts and therefore are silent.
• HDDs have moving parts (heads, actuator, and spindle motor) and make some sound; noise levels vary between models, but can be significant. 

(5)Random access time

• SSDs are about 0.1 ms - many times faster than HDDs because data is accessed directly from the flash memory
• HDD ranges from 5–10 ms due to the need to move the heads and wait for the data to rotate under the read/write head 

(6)Data transfer rate

• SSD technology can deliver rather consistent read/write speed, typically ranging from about 100MB/s to 500MB/s, depending on the model. When SSDs access individual smaller blocks, performance is reduced. In general, the speeds are continuously improving. 
• Once the head is positioned, when reading or writing a continuous track, a HDD can transfer data at about 100MB/s. Data transfer rate depends upon rotational speed, which can range from 4,200 to 15,000 rpm. 

(7)Temperature control

• SSDs do not usually require any special cooling and can tolerate higher temperatures than HDDs.
• According to Seagate, ambient temperatures above 95°F (35°C) can shorten the life of a hard disk, and reliability will be compromised at drive temperatures above 55°C or 131°F. Fan cooling may be required if temperatures would otherwise exceed these values.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

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How to format USB Drive & Memory Stick with NTFS?

If you have ever tried to format a USB thumb drive or memory stick, you may have noticed that the only options you get are FAT and FAT32 file systems. This is the default behavior in Windows XP. However, with some slight tweaking of settings, you can actually format your removable storage devices in NTFS format, including external hard drives, etc.

Of course, there is a reason why Windows defaults the formatting of removable storage to FAT and FAT32. There are actually a few advantages and disadvantages to formatting a USB drive in NTFS format, so we’ll go through those before actually talking about how to do it.

The advantages of enabling NTFS of removable storage devices are mostly security related. For example, an NTFS file system lets you to add allow and deny permissions on individual files and folders for specific Windows users, something you cannot do in the FAT file system. But that’s not all in terms of security. You can also encrypt files using Windows XP’s built-in encryption.

Other benefits include the ability to compress files and therefore save space on your USB drive. You can also set disk quotas and even create partitions! Formatting USB drives in NTFS has several advantages that would be good if you need to use some of these advanced features, i.e. for your IT department or if you’re just paranoid!

However, there are also a few drawbacks to using NFTS on a USB drive. Firstly, there is a lot more writing to the drive that is required when using NTFS and therefore your access to the device will be slower. Will it make a major difference that would prevent people from using it? Probably not, but it’s something to consider. Also, versions of Windows older than 2000 cannot read NTFS file systems, nor can most Linux systems.

The other major downside is that if you encrypt your files on the USB drive, you will not be able to open them anywhere else. Actually, this can be considered a downside or an upside depending on what you want to do. If you want to secure your USB stick so that only your user account on your one computer can open the files, then encrypting is perfect. If not, then do not encrypt the files.

How to format USB drive with NTFS?

First, connect your USB device to your computer. Then right-click on My Computer from the desktop and choose Manage.

Next click on Device Manager and then expand out Disk Drives. You should see your USB drive listed there as “Generic USB 2.0 USB Drive” or something similar.

Now right-click on the USB drive under Disk Drives and choose Properties. Then go to the Policies tab.

Now you will see two options, the “Optimize for quick removal” selected by default. Go ahead and change that by selecting the “Optimize for performance” option. This enables writing caching on the drive and therefore allows you to format it as NTFS! Sweet.

That’s it.

Now click OK and then go to My Computer. Right click on the drive in My Computer and choose Format. In the File System drop down you will now see the option for NTFS!

You can now secure your USB flash drive or external USB hard drive in any way you like! Enjoy!

Source: google.com

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