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Does Flash Fragment?

The Maximum PC Staff — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 18:44:30 -0500

I recall that Maximum PC advises against defragmenting flash drives, such as the ones in an iPod. Does that include solid state drives, like in the Eee PC?

—Aaron

Defragmenting is a process developed for standard magnetic hard drives. Defragmentation tries to put all the data sectors for a file physically near each other on the disk, so the drive doesn’t have to seek all over the platter to find the whole file. Flash memory has different architecture, with no moving parts, and defragmenting doesn’t help it. In fact, because of the way NAND flash memory stores data (data is stored in blocks, and the whole block must be erased and rewritten to store any data on it), regular defragmentation can decrease the life span of the drive.

So, if your Eee PC has solid state memory, don’t defragment it. Diskeeper sells an SSD optimizer, but we haven’t yet tested its effectiveness.

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig? First, grab a fire extinguisher and douse the flames. Once the pyrotechnic display has fizzled, email the doctor at doctor@maximumpc.com for advice on how to solve your technological woes.

OCZ Prepares to Launch eSATA Flash Drives

Justin Kerr — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:26:35 -0600

eSATA ports are starting to become more mainstream in mid to low end motherboards, and OCZ thinks the time is right to start adding on non hard drive based peripherals. Its new lineup of memory sticks will do just that and come in 8, 16, and 32GB capacities. The new drives will both communicate and receive their power from the eSATA port. To ensure backwards compatibility they have also included a rear mounted mini USB connection which will allow users to plug the device into laptops or other USB only machines.

No official benchmarks are have been taken by us, but the company is reportedly boasting read speeds of up to 90MB/s, and writes speeds as fast as 30MB/s. No comment has yet been made on pricing, but it will likely be in the same ballpark as its USB brethren.

It certainly is an interesting idea, but I can’t help but wonder if this type of device is really necessary with USB 3.0 right around the corner. USB 3.0 has a maximum theoretical throughput of 4.8Gbps which would easily max out most flash memory keys several times over.

Would you be interested in an eSATA flash drive? Hit the jump and let us know.

Seagate eSATA External Hard Drive

Josh Norem — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 17:47:56 -0500

We’ve been waiting several years for eSATA (external SATA, that is) to show up. This month we’re happy to see the first eSATA drive actually arrive to market. If you’re looking for an external backup drive that’s much faster than a standard USB or FireWire drive, Christmas has come early.

Now, astute readers will probably say “Maximum PC, don’t pull my leg. You reviewed an external SATA drive back in June 2004.” OK, you got us on that one, but that CMS Velocity drive wasn’t a true external SATA drive (it didn’t adhere to the official eSATA specification).

The Seagate eSATA drive, however, is the real deal. It uses an actual external SATA cable, which is thick and shielded to protect against interference. The 5-foot-long cable plugs into the included Promise eSATA controller, which runs at SATA 3G speeds and rides the PCI bus.
The big news with this drive is that rather than riding the pokey USB or FireWire bus (as other external drives do), it runs on SATA, and the difference shows in the benchmarks. On average, the eSATA drive runs almost twice as fast as a comparable USB drive, in both read and write speed, which is incredible. Its access times are much slower than the same model internal drive, however, hovering in the mid-20 millisecond range.

There’s only one problem: We had trouble with the included backup software. It’s BounceBack Express from CMS, which we’ve found plenty capable in the past. But the UI has been revamped to give it a fresh look, and the new version crashed repeatedly on our test system.
Seagate’s eSATA drive is the fastest backup drive available, and you can even stack several drives on top of each other and run them in RAID array if you have an eSATA RAID controller. It’s hurt only by the fact that a single drive’s 500GB capacity is middling, and the software is buggy.

Month Reviewed: November 2006

Verdict: 8

URL: www.seagate.com

Maxtor One Touch III 100GB

Josh Norem — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 17:40:37 -0500

Maxtor has downsized its awesome One Touch Turbo desktop backup drive into this 100GB Mini model. It looks exactly the same as the Turbo, and it comes with the same excellent software.

The Mini uses a 5,400rpm drive with an 8MB buffer. Even though it has a lower areal density (the number of bits packed onto the drive’s platters—higher is better) than the Seagate drive, the Maxtor drive outperformed Seagate by a small margin in both our 5GB read and 5GB write tests.

The star of the show is the software, which is easily the most fully featured package we’ve ever seen for a drive this size. It lets you password-protect the drive, set folders to automatically sync, restore deleted files, and lots more.

Sure, the Mini delivers the least capacity in this roundup, but 100GB is enough for us. If you’re shopping solely for storage space, by all means get the Seagate; but if you want a drive for backup and syncing, it doesn’t’ get any better than this.

Month Reviewed: October 2006

+ PLATTER: Decent capacity, kick-ass software, and a sleek design.

- FATTER: Only 100GB.

VERDICT: 9
kickass=yes

URL: www.maxtor.com

Western Digital Passport 120GB

The Maximum PC Staff — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:46:50 -0500

WD’s Passport is an all-around decent product, with a lot of storage and handy software, but fails to distinguish itself from similar Maxtor and Seagate products in any meaningful way.

We have no beef with the Passport’s capacity, as 120GB is more than enough storage for us. We don’t even mind the formfactor that much. The chassis is the same size as Maxtor’s, and a smidge longer than Seagate’s, making it too big for a pocket, but just fine for refuge inside a laptop bag. The rounded edges look a bit odd to us, and we don’t like that we have to pull down a rubber cover to access the USB port.

As far as performance goes, it’s close enough to the other drives to call a draw. Where the drive fails to keep up with the Joneses is in the software department. Although the included WD Sync software seems quite capable in isolation, it pales in comparison to the software shipped with the other drives here. It’s more difficult to use, more limited in its scope, and not as user friendly as we’d like.

Month Reviewed: October 2006

+ PASSPORT, PLEASE: Great capacity; rubberized shell.

- PAPERS, PLEASE: Annoying USB port cover; so-so software.

VERDICT: 8

URL: www.wdc.com

Seagate Barracuda 750GB

Josh Norem — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 02:00:01 -0500

Big companies rarely take chances, and Seagate—the world’s largest drive maker—is no exception. It has always played second fiddle to Hitachi when it comes to the 7,200rpm hard drive capacity war, and even though Seagate drives are reliable and semi-speedy, they’ve never delivered industry-leading or even outstanding performance. Well, those days are over.

Seagate has shipped the world’s first perpendicular desktop hard drive, which shatters the capacity record, and is also the fastest 7,200rpm drive we’ve ever tested.

The tenth-generation 7,200rpm (7200.10 for short) Barracuda drive pulls out all the stops. While the rest of the hard drive world is still using longitudinal recording, where the magnetized bits are laid down on the recording media in a flat orientation, Seagate has already moved to a new, more efficient way of packing bits onto platters. In perpendicular recording the bits “stand” up, so they are oriented perpendicular to the recording media. Perpendicular drives pack more bits on each platter, allowing for massive increases in capacity, as witnessed by this drive’s unbelievable 750GB capacity (the next-biggest drive is a lowly 500GB).

The 7200.10 Barracuda sports a 16MB buffer, a SATA 3G interface, and four 187GB platters. During testing, the drive set benchmark records in several categories, including sequential read speed, IOmeter, a 5GB read, and Doom 3 loading. This drive kicks serious ass across the board. Not since the Raptor’s arrival have we seen such a hard drive smackdown. The speed doesn’t come without a price, however; the drive ran nuclear hot under load without cooling, and its application index score was lower than the WD400KD. (It was higher than the newer WD500KS, which means it might be time to revisit this benchmark.)

Folks, there’s a new 7,200rpm sheriff in town, and its name is Barracuda.

Month Reviewed: August 2006

Verdict: 9
kickass=yes

URL: www.seagate.com

Western Digital MyBook PE 500GB

Josh Norem — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:45:02 -0500

Most people don’t keep up with the backup drive game, and we don’t blame them. It’s about as exciting as a “You’ll never believe what happened to me last night in Oblivion” story. The Cliff Notes overview is that WD’s Dual-Option Media Center drive has ruled the roost for a long time. We loved its high capacity and somewhat-easy-to-use software, but what really set it apart from the competition was its front-mounted USB port and 8-in-1 media reader.

Apparently no one else loved it, though, because WD has ditched those amenities with its totally redesigned My Book: a book-shaped backup drive that delivers on its promises, but still can’t compare with its predecessor.

We tested the 500GB Premium Edition of the My Book, though it’s also available in smaller capacities. All Premium Edition drives offer two six-pin FireWire 400 ports, a USB 2.0 connector, a capacity gauge (the inner blue ring on the front of the drive), and WD’s backup software. A WD5000KS drive, aka WD Caviar SE 16, handles storage duties. It’s WD’s fastest 7,200rpm drive (and our favorite drive in this category), and it sports a 16MB buffer.

On the software side, WD has thankfully ditched the somewhat-arcane Dantz Retrospect in favor of backup software from Arcsoft that has a custom-designed and totally newb-proof front end. You can select specific folders for backup, or simply select “photos,” “videos,” or “music,” and it’ll scan your drive for the relevant file types and back them all up. You can schedule backups, password-protect individual backups, and quickly restore files by running the built-in restore program that Retrospect automatically attaches to each backup set. Nearly silent operation is the watchword for this drive; it even turns on and off automatically based on activity.

Our only complaint is that Retrospect lacks an option to save files in their initial format. Instead, it puts the files into compressed backup sets that you have to unlock using an included utility. It works perfectly, but we’d like the option to make one-to-one backups, so we could browse the backed-up files using Windows Explorer. With a front-mounted USB port and media reader this drive could have surpassed the previous WD backup drives. As is, it’s still a strong contender.

Month Reviewed: July 2006

Verdict: 8

URL: www.wdc.com

How To: Back Up Your Hard Drive

Michael Brown — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:00:48 -0500

What invaluable data is on your hard drive? Wedding photos? Financial records? Your saved games from Oblivion? Here’s how to preserve and recover those files in the wake of a disaster.

Backing up the ol’ hard drives belongs on that mental checklist we all maintain—the one titled “You Know You Should….” For most of us, data backup falls somewhere between “Floss Your Teeth” and “Call Your Mother.” These are the things you know you need to do, but that you just keep putting off ‘til maÃ±ana. You also know that it’s inevitable that your procrastination will eventually bite you in the rump.

Before it gets to that point, download the free edition of 2BrightSparks’ SyncBack software from www.2brightsparks.com, take 35 minutes, and follow this guide to backing up your hard drive. Floss your teeth while you’re waiting for the backup to finish; and when it does, call your mother. She worries.

1. Decide What to Back Up
There are two complementary approaches to backing up your hard drive: One is to create an “image” of the disk, and the other is to copy only selected files and folders. A disk image is a snapshot of an entire hard drive partition, less any empty sectors, and it includes the operating system, all your programs, and all your data. This can be useful, but it takes a lot of time and consumes an enormous amount of storage space. And if you’re moving to a new PC, the image from your old one is likely to be useless because it will contain device drivers for hardware that might not exist on your new machine.

Disk images can be a life saver, though, if you experience a catastrophic failure and you don’t want to go through the tedium of reinstalling and reconfiguring your operating system, application software, and all the device drivers your hardware requires onto a new hard drive. We recommend creating occasional disk images, using a program such as Symantec’s Norton Ghost.

But it’s even more important that you copy your data files—frequently—because you never know when disaster will strike. That’s the approach we’ll discuss here: using special software to make backups of all your documents, email, music, spreadsheets, videos, and so on; plus, any programs you’ve downloaded from the Internet.

Our backup method won’t restore any apps you’ve already installed, so make sure you save your original discs, as well as any patches and updates that you downloaded. It’s also important to store copies of all your licenses and serial numbers, should it ever be necessary to reinstall any of those programs. And don’t forget to back up your backup software; you won’t be able to restore without it!

2. Choose a Backup Destination
Once you’ve identified what you want to back up, you need to decide where you’re going to back it up to. Avoid using media, such as CD-R discs, that will require you to span your backup (spread it across more than one piece of media). Spanned backups take much more time because they require your intervention—to swap discs—during both the backup and the restore processes. Instead, use media that can accommodate your entire backup without spanning. An external hard drive that can be stored off site—in a different building or in a safe deposit box—is an ideal choice; another alternative is to copy the files to another computer on the Internet using FTP.

It pays to be paranoid: Creating more than one backup and storing each of them in different locations will provide added insurance in the event that both your original and your primary backups turn up missing, corrupted, or destroyed.

3. Create a Profile
The first time you run SyncBack, the software will ask if you wish to create a profile, which will appear in a toolbar the next time you run the software. Profiles give you one-click access to any customized backup and restore tasks you’ve created.

The freeware version of SyncBack offers two basic categories of profiles: Backup and Synchronization. A Backup profile does just what you’d think: It copies your files from one place to another. (Note: The freeware version of SyncBack does not perform incremental backups, a time-saving scenario in which only those files that have changed since the last backup are copied.) A Synchronization profile is useful if you regularly work on two PCs—a desktop and a notebook, for instance—and you want the data stored on each machine to mirror that which is stored on the other. For now, let’s set up a Backup profile and assign it a name.

The next step is to choose source and destination directories. The source will contain the files you wish to copy, and the destination is where you want those copies stored. We recommend that you back up everything in your profile directory under C:/Documents and Settings, except the Local Settings folder. SyncBack defaults to backing up any and all sub-directories within the selected folder; click the Sub-dirs drop-down menu for other choices. If you’d rather back up to another computer on the Internet using FTP, click on the Expert Mode button and then the FTP tab. (Expert mode will reveal a host of other options, too).

4. Run Your Backup
Click the OK button and SyncBack will ask if you’d like to perform a simulated run for this new profile. Click No to skip this step this time (you might want to explore this feature later). Select your newly created profile and click the Run button. SyncBack will now present a listing of all the files that are about to be backed up. Click the Continue Run button to start your backup. Hover your mouse over the profile name and a pop-up window will display your progress. When the program is finished, a success message will appear in the Result column. Congratulations! You’ve just backed up your hard drive!

For your next trick, consider using SyncBack to schedule automatic backups; that way, you won’t have to think twice about backing up your crucial data. Just remember to store your backups someplace other than your main drive, so you won’t lose both your original files and your copies should your drive die.

Recovering From a Disaster
Let’s say you fire up your PC one morning and the only noise you hear besides the fans whirring inside is an ominous clicking sound emanating from your hard drive. Your heart sinks into your stomach because you know your hard drive is toast. No worries, right? You backed up everything before you went to bed last night. You’ll just fire up SyncBack and…. Oh, that’s right, SyncBack requires Windows to run. Now what?

Assuming the rest of your PC isn’t affected by whatever calamity has befallen your hard drive, you can replace the drive. If you’ve created an image of the old drive using a program like Norton Ghost, use that software to copy the image (and the working copy of Windows) onto the new drive, and then use SyncBack to restore the most current versions of your data files.

If you don’t have a drive image, and you bought your PC preassembled, the manufacturer might have included a bootable recovery disc that can help restore even a new hard drive to your machine’s initial configuration. If you built your own PC and you don’t have a drive image, you’ll need to reinstall Windows from scratch. In either case, you’ll need to reinstall whatever other programs you’ve acquired in the interim—including, of course—SyncBack.

Restoring Your Files: Option One
After you’ve launched SyncBack there are two approaches to restoring your backed-up data. You could simply open the same profile you used to create your backup and click the Restore button, but this is risky and not always possible, especially if your hard drive was totally wiped out. A Restore operation swaps the source and destination directories: Your backup becomes your source, and the hard drive you’re restoring to becomes the destination. If there are versions of any files on your hard drive that are newer than those in your backup, it’s easy to overwrite those newer files by mistake.

Restoring Your Files: Option Two

We recommend creating a new profile to use when restoring files, to ensure that only the latest versions of files are copied to your destination folder. Click the New button, choose Backup, and click OK. Give the new profile a name and click OK. This time, your Source directory will be the folder containing your backup, and your Destination directory will be the folder you’re restoring to.

Choose the same primary option as your backup file, but click the Advanced tab. Under the heading “What to do if the same file has been changed in the source and destination,” click the button labeled “New file overwrites older file,” and click OK. Ignore the warning message and click OK. Click the Run button and your restore will execute.