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Recent Posts

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4301
Living Room / Re: SSD usage recommendations
« Last post by 4wd on February 22, 2011, 04:48 PM »
Security concerns, 4wd? It's simple: if you are going to toss out the SSD, put a hammer to it. Or, if the SSD supports the ATA "secure erase" command (and does it properly), that'd be safe.
-f0dder (February 22, 2011, 04:29 PM)

I wasn't specifically talking about EOL of the product, eg. you're silly enough to leave your laptop on display in the car or someone nicks your PC from home.

I thought one of the points of the article was that Secure Erase wasn't properly implemented in some controllers and there was no way you could verify it had done it.

“The danger, however, is that it relies on the controller to properly sanitize the internal storage location that holds the encryption key and any other derive values that might be useful in cryptanalysis,” the researchers wrote. “Given the bugs we found in some implementations of secure erase commands, it is unduly optimistic to assume that SSD vendors will properly sanitize the key store. Furthermore, there is no way to verify that erasure has occurred (e.g., by dismantling the drive).”

And that's even using drive encryption, at least with a HDD I can verify to a very high percentage that any data I wiped using one of the many secure wipe programs will indeed be unrecoverable to the general public.

I'll have to fully read the pdf but do they specifically mention any SSD controllers to either use or avoid?

Sorry, I know the random access will give the SSD the advantage over the HDD, I was just wondering if it was worth it in my case.
4302
Living Room / Re: SSD usage recommendations
« Last post by 4wd on February 22, 2011, 04:22 PM »
It's amazing, I was thinking of exactly the same thing re. the security of SSDs, a few months ago when there was a thread here about the merits of SSD for a new system.

I'm wasn't sure I was interested in going for SSD for my main system drive back then given the security concerns.  Now that they've been confirmed, I'm even less inclined.

After all a 150GB Velociraptor is the same price as a 64GB SSD and given that I don't have a pagefile, (which I wouldn't have with an SSD either), I'm wondering just how beneficial the SSD would be given I currently have a 50GB OS partition and the rest of the drive, (590GB), is given over to relatively infrequently accessed data.

Maybe I would be better off with a 'Raptor.
4303
Post New Requests Here / Re: Windows Shortcut transformation
« Last post by 4wd on February 22, 2011, 03:57 PM »
Forgot to test it on anything other than W7 x64, I'll have a look later today.

It looks like you're using XP ?

Were you trying to get to a folder on the Desktop ?
4304
Post New Requests Here / Re: Windows Shortcut transformation
« Last post by 4wd on February 21, 2011, 05:36 PM »
Here's a version that gives you the option of recursive copying, replicating the original folder tree in the destination.  That is, the original folder tree of the directory with the shortcuts not the folder tree of the directories with the real files/folders.

Just needs a nice GUI now  DONE :)

Now just got to find a nice icon.
4305
Post New Requests Here / Re: Windows Shortcut transformation
« Last post by 4wd on February 21, 2011, 06:04 AM »
Sorry, I know English isn't your native language but I'm still having trouble following what you need to happen.

Is there any chance you could give me a sample before and after folder structure.

eg. Can you do 'dir /b /s (source path) >src.txt' and then create the destination as you wish it to look and do 'dir /b /s (dest path) >dest.txt' and then PM me the two text files ?
4306
Living Room / Re: SATA III - why no better rating than SATA II ?
« Last post by 4wd on February 21, 2011, 03:15 AM »
I dunno if it's as much "protocol overhead" as it's about SCSI doing some things smarter, like (iirc) direct device->device transfers without involving the host controller.
-f0dder (February 21, 2011, 02:26 AM)

Yes sorry, protocol was probably the wrong word but the only one that came to mind.  SCSI does do things a fair bit smarter such as Disconnect/Reconnect, (though in these point-to-point connections I'm not sure how useful it is), etc.

BTW, apparently new Sandforce controllers to be released later this year will push up SSD bandwidth to 500MB/s...time to start putting away those pennies :D
4307
Post New Requests Here / Re: Windows Shortcut transformation
« Last post by 4wd on February 20, 2011, 09:25 PM »
Short2Real - Select a source directory and then select a destination - that's it.

It won't overwrite anything but it also doesn't check to see if the copy was successful, that said it seemed to work OK in my limited testing.

Code: AutoIt [Select]
  1. #Region ;**** Directives created by AutoIt3Wrapper_GUI ****
  2. #AutoIt3Wrapper_UseUpx=n
  3. #AutoIt3Wrapper_UseX64=n
  4. #EndRegion ;**** Directives created by AutoIt3Wrapper_GUI ****
  5. ; Short2Real.au3
  6.  
  7. $src = FileSelectFolder('Select source directory:', '', 7)
  9. $dest = FileSelectFolder('Select destination directory:', '', 7)
  11.  
  12. $scut = FileFindFirstFile($src & "\*.lnk")
  13. If $scut = -1 Then
  14.     MsgBox(64, "Short2Real", "No shortcuts found.")
  15.     Exit
  17.  
  19.     $file = FileFindNextFile($scut)
  21.         $details = FileGetShortcut($src & '\' & $file)
  22.  
  23.         If StringInStr(FileGetAttrib($details[0]), 'D', 1) > 0 Then
  24.                 DirCopy($details[0], $dest & '\' & StringLeft($file, StringLen($file) - 4), 0)
  25.         Else
  26.                 FileCopy($details[0], $dest, 0)
  27.         EndIf
  29. FileClose($scut)
  30.  
  31. MsgBox(64, 'Short2Real', 'Finished')

Above is superceeded, see here.
4308
Living Room / Re: SATA III - why no better rating than SATA II ?
« Last post by 4wd on February 20, 2011, 06:45 PM »
It's not really a con, after all the drive will transfer at 6Gb/s from it's internal buffer to the controller.  But after you've emptied the buffer then it has to get it from the mechanical section and that's where the bottleneck happens, (120ms later ;) ).

The only spec that's relevant in this case is Sustained Throughput, (or similar), and doesn't it strike you as interesting that WD and Seagate no longer seem to put theirs on the website, (not even for Enterprise).

Hitachi provide Media transfer rate in Mb/s, (Media being the physical platter), and Samsung provide Media to Buffer in Mb/s, (figures seem a little optimistic to me), and then you have to take into account protocol overheads for the SATA bus as the figures given are raw drive internal transfer rates.

I'd guess that at the moment the only reason SATA III drives are more expensive than SATA II is because the manufacturers are trying to recoup their SATA III drive chipset development costs.
4309
Living Room / Re: SATA III - why no better rating than SATA II ?
« Last post by 4wd on February 20, 2011, 06:31 PM »
TBH, I have no idea, I'm not even sure that if you use a SATA->SAS adapter that the SAS drive won't degrade itself to match the specs of the interface it's using.

It is a SCSI drive and as such has less protocol overheads than SATA - that will give an throughput increase if it was on a SAS interface all other considerations being equal between SAS/SATA.

But I guess if you put it on a SATA interface then it has to cope with the increased overheads of the ATA command set, it's performance would probably drop to the equivalent native SATA drive.

Maybe that's why you need 4 SATA ports multiplexed together, to overcome the performance loss of the protocol by increasing bandwidth ?

So you need to multiplex four sata ports to get a SAS connection?
-f0dder (February 20, 2011, 05:42 PM)

Oops! Just to clarify, a SAS drive will happily connect to one SATA port, the interface connector allows for it.  I just don't think you'll get near it's native SAS throughput because of the protocol considerations.
4310
Living Room / Re: SATA III - why no better rating than SATA II ?
« Last post by 4wd on February 20, 2011, 05:32 PM »
The fastest HDDs available, 15000 RPM Enterprise class, only get transfer rates near 200MB/s but you will need to use four (4) SATA III ports to get that since they're SAS interface.

And I don't think you want to pay for those :)
4311
Living Room / Re: SATA III - why no better rating than SATA II ?
« Last post by 4wd on February 19, 2011, 08:20 PM »
^ What he said +1

As for coolers, Noctua.  Here's a StaticIce search.

Noctua NH-U9B-SE2 - 90mm dual fans, friend has one on a AMD Phenom II 965BE, very quiet.
Noctua NH-U12P-SE2 - 120mm version.
Noctua NH-C12P-SE14 - If you want to go parallel to the CPU.

I use a Cooler Master Hyper TX3, (StaticIce),quieter than the stock but cycles up and down a bit - it would probably be better if it included a second fan but I was on a budget, AU$27 vs AU$80-95 for the Noctua.
4312
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Block/Unblock all network traffic button (one-click)
« Last post by 4wd on February 19, 2011, 05:22 PM »
Since no one had downloaded v0.21....

v0.25
Added - All Interfaces added, icon status has slightly different meaning: Green = Network connection, Red = No network connection
Added - RMB menu.
Fixed -  Occasional non-response, (hopefully).  Possibly due to not checking a variable for a specific value, (was checking for True/False).

REMOVED: Due to major screw up :)
4313
Living Room / Re: Rant: I hate cellphones
« Last post by 4wd on February 18, 2011, 10:31 PM »
They seem to know stuff all about me, I just go straight to the page kartal mentions.

I guess that means that Adblock+ and OptimizeGoogle are working plus I don't allow 3rd party cookies or keep any cookies beyond the current session.
4314
Living Room / Re: Does anyone understand the differences in the Western Digital drives?
« Last post by 4wd on February 18, 2011, 06:08 PM »
This Wikipedia articlew seems to indicate that you can switch the feature on/off in HDD firmware on even Consumer class drives because of the prevalence of chipset based RAID these days.

The article mentions a WD program to do it, WDTLER.EXE, and there's also WDIDLE.EXE if you want to change the Intellipark time.

I do wonder how important that really is as well because, as I said, I have 4 green drives operating in a RAID off a fairly decent RAID card for the last year with no problems (in a business environment).
-JavaJones (February 18, 2011, 03:00 PM)

It could be that the drives in the array have yet to experience an error severe enough that the RAID controllers error recovery is triggered.  Being a year old I would hope they're still reasonably reliable.

After having a search around various forums, it appears that WD, (don't know about Seagate ECR, Samsung CCTL, etc), have disabled the ability to toggle TLER in Consumer class drives from late 2009 - whether it's across the board, range or model specific I'm not sure.

Also that good RAID controllers seem to be able to handle Consumer class HDDs much better than cheaper RAID cards, I would also think any onboard based RAID controller is probably more tolerant of Consumer class drives.
4315
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Block/Unblock all network traffic button (one-click)
« Last post by 4wd on February 18, 2011, 05:17 PM »
Ah, I had it do it that once but could never get it to repeat it so wrote it off as some weird conflux of tongue position and astrological star positions.

EDIT: I think I found it - seems to happen if you initiate events too close together.  I've put a 5 second pause between event polling and it seems to have stopped it.

I'll try and get the RMB menu version up today, (that's my today, not yours), hopefully.
4316
Living Room / Re: Rant: I hate cellphones
« Last post by 4wd on February 18, 2011, 12:22 PM »
http://www.youtube.c.../watch?v=dgbIQNJqOrM
-Paul Keith (February 18, 2011, 10:59 AM)

That explains it then, I've always selected to use my own security question on any account that gives you the option.

Maybe that also highlights how insecure the 'standard' security questions are.

<Slightly OT>
The Australian Governments' Medicare site asks for the answers to five (5) security questions which it will randomly ask for the answers to two of at random times as you access online.   Good idea except I can only remember the answers to 2 or 3 of them, so I have to keep refreshing pages occasionally until the right questions come up.  If they let me choose my own I'd have a better chance of remembering.
4317
Living Room / Re: Rant: I hate cellphones
« Last post by 4wd on February 18, 2011, 10:55 AM »
So it's been a while since I created a Gmail account. Lo and behold as soon as I hit the account creation menu it was asking for mobile phone number verification. Oh ****
-Paul Keith (February 18, 2011, 07:20 AM)

I have a question: What account creation menu?

I just created a GMail account and it didn't ask for a mobile number.
4318
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Block/Unblock all network traffic button (one-click)
« Last post by 4wd on February 18, 2011, 12:14 AM »
Strange, I can't replicate the problem here.

Can you try it again on the unused port and before you have to kill it can you see if devcon.exe appears in Task Manager or just NICToggle.exe.

Also, have Network Connections open and see if you can see the connection toggling between Enabled and Disabled.

Oh, and the contents of the ini file thanks.
4319
Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Block/Unblock all network traffic button (one-click)
« Last post by 4wd on February 17, 2011, 11:38 PM »
OK I just tried it.  First, I don't get an error anymore.  It seems to work fine, but it's a little unstable.  My computer has to local area connections.  I chose the first one and it was the one I wasn't using.  I clicked on the icon, and it turned red.  I clicked again, and nothing happened.  i right clicked, and it seemed to just be frozen.  i had to kill it.  Then I ran it again, I right clicked, changed to the other connection.  I clicked, it turned red, and my connection was off.  Great!  I clicked again and it was back on.  Great!  Then...I didn't know how to exit.  It needs an exit.  If I were you, I'd make the right click bring up a menu, that says:
Change Connection
Exit

That's about it.  There's some crashing, but it works overall...and add an exit.
-superboyac (February 17, 2011, 11:26 PM)

To exit: Right-click to bring up the select connection window, then just close it, (not Save).

But I'll change it to a Config menu just to be a conformist  :(   ;)

With the two connections:
Is the one that caused the lockup connected to a network, (ie. it has a cable and choose between networks to connect to) ?
Or, is it just an unused network port ?

I'll have to plug another NIC into my machine and have a play.
4320
General Software Discussion / Re: Why am I having a frozen screen trying to install Windows 7?
« Last post by 4wd on February 17, 2011, 11:00 PM »
Once you know those two things then what I would do is:
1) BIOS settings for the particular ports should already be AHCI but it doesn't hurt to check.
2) Download the 7 x64 AHCI driver for the Intel SATA ports from ASUS and copy the contents of IMSM_V8901023\Driver\Disk to a flash drive.
-4wd (February 17, 2011, 07:00 PM)

Just on the odd chance that the directory structure has changed, make sure that there is a txtsetup.oem file as that is what Windows setup will be looking for.
-Stoic Joker (February 17, 2011, 10:25 PM)

Yep, txtsetup.oem in both the x86 and x64 directory  :Thmbsup:

DANG! Should mention that directory structure was for the current Intel archive for the P5Q.

(I'm sure SJ or f0dder will hit me if I screw up :) ).
-4wd (February 17, 2011, 07:00 PM)
 ^--- See

Thanks so much.
-superboyac (February 17, 2011, 09:02 PM)

You're welcome.....now get your a**e over to the Block/Unblock network thread and tell me if it works.  :D
4321
Living Room / Re: CPU Question: More Mhz per core or more cores?
« Last post by 4wd on February 17, 2011, 09:23 PM »
Could try this: Paragon Virtualization Manager 2010 FREE License Key

The registration page is still there.
4322
General Software Discussion / Re: Why am I having a frozen screen trying to install Windows 7?
« Last post by 4wd on February 17, 2011, 07:00 PM »
Not really OT so may as well stay public, (I'm sure SJ or f0dder will hit me if I screw up :) ).

Before you do anything, I would really recommend you do a HDD image or at least an image of the XP partition/MBR and make sure you have a bootable recovery disk for your imaging software AND that it works.

First off, specifically, which ASUS P5Q motherboard, ie. the 'P5Q', P5QL-EM, P5Q Deluxe, etc, and what SATA port is the system drive plugged into, eg. the P5Q has Intel hosted SATA ports (6) and Silicon Image hosted SATA ports (2).

Once you know those two things then what I would do is:
1) BIOS settings for the particular ports should already be AHCI but it doesn't hurt to check.
2) Download the 7 x64 AHCI driver for the Intel SATA ports from ASUS and copy the contents of IMSM_V8901023\Driver\Disk to a flash drive.

This part's from memory:
3) Leave the flash drive plugged in and boot the Win7 DVD, IIRC, when Setup sees it needs more drivers it will automatically scan attached media: flash drives, CD/DVD, floppy, etc.  Or if it's connected to the internet you'll be given the option to download any updated installation files, use that if you're not sure.
4) Select Custom installation so you can choose the partition to install on.
5) That should be it.

Windows will recognise the earlier installation of XP and you'll have an option in the boot menu to select it, Older Windows System or something like that.

If you find that the installation is taking more than an hour, (CPU/RAM/HDD speeds affect it but not too much), then it's likely that the AHCI driver wasn't loaded.

The Intel P45 chipset should be pretty well supported by drivers already on the DVD, it's been around a while.

If you want to check beforehand you could download the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor and run it under XP, it should highlight any problems with devices - it checks for both x86 and x64 compatibility.

EDIT: Dear God my grammar's getting bad....must be old age.
4323
Living Room / Re: USB 3.0 stick - anyone taken the plunge?
« Last post by 4wd on February 17, 2011, 06:35 PM »
It came formatted Fat32.
-MilesAhead (February 17, 2011, 05:15 PM)
Bummer :o But that's not something you can't easily fix.
-Ath (February 17, 2011, 06:22 PM)

FAT32 is the base compatibility format, it'll work on Apple, PC, Linux, PVR, STB, Media Players, pretty much everything without doing anything - I've yet to see a flash drive that doesn't come formatted as FAT32.
4324
Living Room / Re: Does anyone understand the differences in the Western Digital drives?
« Last post by 4wd on February 17, 2011, 05:53 PM »
Possibly a couple of other things to mention, (or maybe not if no-one's bothered :) ), that differentiates Consumer from Enterprise:

Enterprise drives usually have higher IOPSw, (as you would hope if they're in a server environment), and a shorter error recovery time, (TLER).

Here's a WD document, (PDF), to explain the last bit: TLER

JavaJones: do you have any sensible information on the "dual cpu" thing that some WD drives have? I've seen it mentioned a few places, but haven't found anything on it, except it being used as fluffy marketing snake-oil.
-f0dder (February 17, 2011, 05:00 PM)

This might help: Dual-Processor Hard Drives – All Good Or All Hype?
4325
General Software Discussion / Re: how to make every app portable?
« Last post by 4wd on February 17, 2011, 05:25 PM »
Threads here which may be of interest:
Cameyo
JauntePE and others

I'd give Cameyo a try since JauntePE is no longer developed.  EDIT: My mistake, I really should keep up with these things.

Note, these are application virtualisation - if you want a completely portable application they have to be coded that way from the start AFAIK.

By the way, this has no right being a word:

Portablization
-timns (February 17, 2011, 03:02 PM)

Damn straight!  It's Portablification.

 :P
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