Serial Numbers And Bar Codes On USB Flash Drives

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Typically, when it comes to USB flash drives, companies imprint or engraves them for promotional purposes, to endorse their business and increase their customers’ awareness or loyalty or even both. Also more and more companies use the preloaded digital data services as it is a convenient and cost friendly method to present their new products, services, prices or other promotional materials. This method of promoting is not new, but it still grows in popularity, as millions of branded USB flash drives are used as giveaways every year. Also, memory drives have become the default way to store, save or carry digital data for most of the market segments, from education or work to the regular home use. But all this popularity has a cost. It creates new opportunities, but it also creates new challenges.

English: Transcend USB flash drive (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

DVDs versus USB Flash Drives

As a professional photographer, there are any number of decisions you have to make throughout the course of a project, including how best to present the completed pictures to your client. DVDs have traditionally and consistently been the medium of choice when it comes to photo storage. However, DVDs are prone to getting scratched, warped, or even corrupted through use. It also takes a lot longer to upload pictures to a DVD, which can cause a significant time delay for you if you have a lot of projects on tap. On the other hand, USB flash drives are far more durable and portable. You can upload large blocks of information to them much faster than you can to a DVD. And pen drives can be used to share pictures from any device. Given the significant advantages of flash drives, it is little wonder why customers and photographers alike prefer them to DVDs.

Understanding Tiered Data Storage For Faster Retreival

In this digital world, data is a highly valuable commodity. For this reason, every business must make use of a data storage solution which is able to accommodate the tonnes of information you have and still ensure a high level of security. If you’re in the market for a data storage solution, it’s always a good idea for you to know more about tiered storage.

How much can you store in the cloud?

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Cloud storage is a model of networked online storage where data is stored in virtualized pools of storage which are generally hosted by third parties. Hosting companies operate large data centers, and people who require their data to be hosted buy or lease storage capacity from them. The data center operators, in the background, virtualize the resources according to the requirements of the customer and expose them as storage pools, which the customers can themselves use to store files or data objects. Physically, the resource may span across multiple servers.

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Computer Repair 101: Safety First

There are a number of easy computer fixes you can make on your own, such as switching out a hard drive. However, it's important to remember that a computer can hold a lot of electricity, even after it's unplugged. That's why it's important to follow a few simple steps to stay safe. Here are just a few safety rules to follow when repairing computers.

Always Unplug the Computer

You should never work on a computer without powering it off and unplugging it from the wall. This includes just removing the case to check wires. A computer can hold on to a lot of electricity, even after it's unplugged. This is especially true of the capacitors. For this reason, the computer should be powered down and unplugged for several minutes before beginning your work.

Remove Jewelry

In case the computer holds on to electricity, you need to make sure you have removed rings, bracelets and any other metal jewelry that may come in contact with the computer. This is especially true when working with power supplies that may have energy stored for longer periods of time after being unplugged.

Use a Grounding Strap

A grounding strap is exactly what is sounds like. The strap goes around your wrist and attaches to the ground. The strap prevents static electricity from ruining sensitive pieces of equipment, such as hard drives. Grounding straps can be found in most electronics stores and are relatively inexpensive.

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Place Internal Parts on a Static-Free Mat

If you will be removing parts from your computer, such as hard drives, you will want to place those parts on an anti-static mat to prevent damage. For example, if static electricity has built up on your carpet, you could damage the hard drive by placing it directly on the carpet due to the jolt of electricity that will occur when the metal of the hard drive comes in contact with the carpet.

Never Work Inside Monitors

Monitors are something you should never work on. These should only be serviced by professionals due to the high amount of electricity that stays stored in the monitor long after it's unplugged. Trying to repair a monitor when you don't know what you're doing can result in death.

There are many repairs that the average computer user can make. However, you do need to remember to take certain precautions to not only protect yourself, but your computer as well.

About the Author: Myong Morini is a computer repair specialist who advocates computer safety before anything else. He can help to recover deleted files, replace hardware, and remove viruses. If in doubt, seek the help of a professional.

Things to Consider when looking for Affordable Hard Drive

Hard drives are classified as non-volatile, random access, digital, magnetic, data storage devices. Introduced by IBM in 1956, hard disk drives have decreased in cost and physical size over the years while dramatically increasing in capacity and speed. Hard disk drives have been the dominant device for secondary storage of data in general purpose computers since the early 1960s^. They have maintained this position because advances in their recording capacity, cost, reliability, and speed have kept pace with the requirements for secondary storage.

One thing is for sure, the hard drive is something that no computer can be without. In fact, when you are looking to upgrade your computer or buy a new one you should use the hard drive as one of the most important considerations to follow. There are all types of affordable hard drives to choose from though. These will help to not only give your computer a place for its data to be stored but they will be useful in that you will not have to spend more money than you need to.

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The first thing to consider when finding affordable hard drives is the capacity of the hard drive. While larger hard drives have become the way to go for some computers these days the more affordable hard drives are going to be the ones that have lower levels of data capacity. A hard drive that fits 250GB of data will certainly cost less than that of an 800GB hard drive.

Another thing to consider for the affordable hard drive is the USB capability. Some hard drives will only be able to be used inside of the computer. Some of them can be read through a USB connection. This has turned into one of the most convenient methods of data storage on the market. Groups like Western Digital and Seagate have been making these, but it should be noted that the most affordable hard drives in this range are ones with lower capacity levels.

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Affordable hard drives will still have great data transfer rates also. Inner zone transfer rates for one of these cost efficient hard drives will be at around fifty megabytes a second and close to a hundred megabytes in a second for data at the outer zone.

There are various different places where you can find affordable hard drives. For instance, a typical computer hardware store will have new hard drives available for sale at different price levels so you can find one that will be in the range that you are willing to spend it on.

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Some independent computer hardware stores will have refurbished hard drives for sale. These have already been used but are cleaned up and restored so that they will work just like new. Even the higher end hard drives may be available in refurbished quality. This will mean that you can save a great amount of money on top quality products.

An outlet store will also have affordable hard drives. This is because these hard drives are sold individually to people who are looking to customize their computers. In addition, with no middleman involved money will be saved because of the small transfer costs. You can find an outlet store in your area through your local phone book.

A hard drive is something that you should use for your computer. By using the considerations of the hard drive in terms of the size, you want and by looking at various different stores, you can find affordable hard drives that your computer can use without you having to spend more money than you want to.

Computer Hardware Familiarization Part-3.

The computer hardware that you need to know is the DVD/CD/DVD-RW ROM Drive.  This is another standard feature components of a computer. These comes in the old IDE and the new SATA configuration. This drive is important  because this is where we put all our DVD disc for movie, application and many more if we want their content to installed or seen in the computer.

The DVD/CD/DVD-RW ROM Drive

CD-ROMs are popularly used to distribute computer software, including video games and multimedia applications, though any data can be stored (up to the capacity limit of a disc). Some CDs hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, while data (such as software or digital video) is only usable on a computer (such as ISO 9660 format PC CD-ROMs). These are called enhanced CDs.

Although many people use lowercase letters in this acronym, proper presentation is in all capital letters with a hyphen between CD and ROM. At the time of the technology's introduction it had more capacity than computer hard drives common at the time. The reverse is now true, with hard drives far exceeding CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray, though some experimental descendants of it such as HVDs may have more space and faster data rates than today's biggest hard drive.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Now we have come to the optional hardware part. I categories them as optional because the computer will work without these parts because they are already built-in of has become part of the computer motherboard. These hardware components are the Graphics Card or video cards, network card and the sound cards. But if you like to have a high type of these card you need to know be to be familiar with the add in separate type for each card.

A video card, display card, graphics card, or graphics adapter is an expansion card which generates output images to a display. Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors. Other modern high performance video cards are used for more graphically demanding purposes, such as PC games.

Video or Graphics Card

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia

Video hardware is often integrated into the motherboard, however all modern motherboards provide expansion ports to which a video card can be attached. In this configuration it is sometimes referred to as a video controller or graphics controller. Modern low-end to mid-range motherboards often include a graphics chipset manufactured by the developer of the northbridge on the motherboard. This graphics chip usually has a small quantity of embedded memory and takes some of the system's main RAM, reducing the total RAM available. 

This is usually called integrated graphics or on-board graphics, and is low-performance and undesirable for those wishing to run 3D applications. A dedicated graphics card on the other hand has its own RAM and Processor specifically for processing video images, and thus offloads this work from the CPU and system RAM. Almost all of these motherboards allow the disabling of the integrated graphics chip in BIOS, and have an AGP, PCI, or PCI Express slot for adding a higher-performance graphics card in place of the integrated graphics.

5 Reasons to Love the Pocket CD, Tiny and Transportable

1. Compact and Convenient

Slip it into a pocket; store it in a box on the desk or throw a pack in the dash compartment of the car and have a variety of data and music available, instantly. Just three inches in diameter, this multi-color, mini pocket disc provides the same CD-R quality as his big brother the 120 mm CD-R, but offers customers compact storage, convenience and quality sound.

2. Storage and Formatting

The portable, 21min/185mb storage capacity, leaves none of the waste of the larger disc. With a variety of colorful discs, the pocket CD-R is compatible with CD drives up to 32-x speed, recording up to 3 hours of compressed audio. It is compatible with mp3 formatting. Dictate meeting minutes with compressed audio, create digital video clips, or organize your schedule while traveling to and from appointments.

3. Maintain Memories in Small Bits

These technologically advanced digital-manila folders carry large amounts of information or music in small, easy-to-access mini CD-R technology. Cataloging all those birthday parties, holiday celebrations and family get-togethers, the pocket CD-R slides into the camera and stores in a wallet, eyeglass case, or paper clip holder, just as easily. Avoid editing CD’s, or scribbling all over the cases to separate work from play. Remove the clutter from the office with the pocket CD-R that is small enough to store in the desktop pen caddy.

4. The Business Card That Lasts

Create a business card pocket CD-R that will not break the bank. Load the card with graphics, digital video clips for sales merchandising and provide customers with a compressed audio sales or project prospectus with the push of a button. It fits easily into a laptop disc drive, allowing customers to access business information, phone numbers, email and site addresses from the little disc that stores in the wallet.

Similar in concept to the small, 33-rpm music record of the 50’s and 60’s; this little powerhouse fits in digital cameras, burns from a laptop and loads into a standard CD player. When traveling, it can be difficult to sift through standard size CD t's. The larger CD-R has its place but for small bits of data the mini disc is bet. With the pocket CD-R anyone can load a resume, individual projects and favorite music on convenient, 21 min. disc of storage-muscle that manages music, resumes, graphics and digital video clips for office or school presentation.

5. Separate Work and Play

It has never been so easy to show grandmother and grandfather the “G-rated” sections of the family vacation. The pocket Verbatim CD-R offers separate storage for those slightly “R-rated” photos that remind friends of great times on the last Las Vegas vacation. With the 120 mm/700mb CD-R, information can be difficult to compress and track. The large disc cases are lost or scratched, easily. The pocket CD-R stores anywhere, easily, decreasing the scratch and damage risk. Before the mini CD-R there was no way to store smaller bits of data or music without filling your desk, back seat or shelves with the large, shiny, discs of early compact disc technology. The pocket CD-R is a cost effective and convenient technological advance that travels well, stores easily and fits almost anywhere.

Christine Artesia writes on technology, finance and art.

Computer 101: What is a Personal Computer RAID System

Faster data transfer needs faster hard drive response time when reading and writing data on the platter. Also faster revolution per minute is required to maximize hard drive response so that we will be able to be crunching enormous files on our server and on occasions it can be real slow. So someone discussed we need quicker hard drives called raid. What is a raid setup on a PC system?

Like anything else it depends who you speak to.

Raid drive systems had their acronym explained as “Redundant Array of Individual Drives “and “Redundant Spread of Cheap Drives”. The acronym for that is the shortened term “RAID”.

Capacity, trustworthiness and performance are all significant for file servers or other computer systems when you're storing large or very important files.

It is commonly said that “It isn't if you hard drive won't be successful. It is at what point in time your drive will fail”.

Naturally if your hard drives fail regardless of whether you have backup the last bit of data which was being written onto the drive when the failure took place will be lost.

You can get much greater capacities, avoid losing info from disk failure, and do all this with the RAID (the acronym for the system).

Image via Wikipedia

RAID can now be done with standard available hard drives so that the cost is now within your price bracket for all of the benefits and reassurance RAID will give you.

RAID can be simply explained as putting the hard drives in parallel sequence.

The host adapter (often called the RAID system controller) sits between one higher stream (on the computer side) and a few lower rate information streams (on the drive side). When the computer writes to the disks, the host adapter takes high stream info and breaks it into many synchronized streams, one for each of the disks in process called “Striping “. On reading the data the host adapter takes the info stream from each disk multiplexes the sets of information streams and coordinates sending the resulting combined set of information onto the computer.

Image via Wikipedia

It's all a matter of redundancy which makes RAID such a nice thing in most cases.

There are six various levels of RAID functionality depending on your needs. “the level of data integrity and integrity you would like as well as the size of drive space you want.

First of RAID Level 0 which spreads the data across multiple disks. It's easy to get an analogous effect to the RAID Level 0 by having multiple disks and using the features in Windows 2000 or its successor Windows XP.

Since the information volume and rate to any explicit disk is a fraction of the total you may receive larger capacity and better performance from a RAID 0 setup than from any one traditional disk.

As well info can be obtained from multiple drives as once. This is often most handy in shared scenarios which may gain benefit from enhancements in speed, two examples which come to mind are game servers and peer-to-peer (P2P) file or music file sharing servers.

Image by boboroshi via Flickr

However since there is no grant for error correction or redundancy RAID 0 isn't a safe system for crucial info. Info will be lost on disk failure. Only use RAID 0 in eventualities where you need the extended disk capacity or performance gain though not reinforced info trustworthiness.

Second in sequence there's RAID Level 1.

In the same way that RAID 0 focuses only on storage space and performance with no concern at all on trusty info storage RAID 1, which us also called “Disk Mirroring” uses disks in pairs to save the files in a redundant manner.

One or two points.

One performance might be slower as it will take time for the host adapter to send the info and for the drives to draft it to disk,

Image by dannyman via Flickr

Secondly a user may remove or damage files which of course will be stored in that way on both drives.

Raid 1 hence offers better trustworthiness than RAID 0 or the conventional drive setups but doesn't give full security for your information or enhanced performance.

Next in sequence we have RAID Levels 2, 3 and 4.

Raid 2 adds one or more disks to hold inaccuracy correction codes with which lost info can be reconstructed.

Raid Level 3 is the same as RAID Level 2 but uses a faster code the maximum storage capability with Raid 3 might be moderately less.

Raid Level 4 is nearly the same as RAID LEVEL 3 but rather than “Striping” across disks is operates at a sector level, You now have the better situation of both a simpler, less intensive demanding system and as well as good information reliability. In addition performance might be boosted as large information blocks can be written quicker due to more coordinated writing to the drives in smaller “sector” areas.

Finally is RAID Level 5.

Raid level 5 is the same as the fantastic RAID Level 4 except that rather than dedicating a single disk to storing the info the data stream is striped across all the disks. You have larger performance with larger reliability for your personal computer systems.

A RAID setup may take some effort and training on your part.

Base your planning for your new RAID system on a careful analysis of your needs.

What is critical in your current position now? Disk size capacities, info trustworthiness and integrity, performance or a combination or all.

 

Computer 101: Self Back UP for Windows XP and Vista Continued.

Now to continue on this post for Windows XP and Vista users please see the picture below. Notice we need to select the backup destination by clicking on the CHOOSE A PLACE TO SAVE YOUR BACKUP: IT initially display the drive A which is the default setting. After clicking on i the menu on the side will display since the drive A is not the selected backup destination. If it is not there then click on the BROWSE button. In this picture one can see that the file-name for the backup has already been set and that it cannot be change anymore. 

After clicking the Cancel button the following picture will appear. From this picture the location of the backup destination can now be selected. Select my computer to see what devices is available for backup.

The Hard Disk Drive Part 2

As i mentioned on part1 of this blog. Your requirement is important in determining the size of your hard disk. I also mentioned the term IDE, EIDE and SATA, well this are just some of the technology involve in a total hard disk makeup. The other technology is the RPM or Revolution Per Minute.The WHAT?????. You see there are plates inside the hard disk, this circular plate is coated with a certain material that make it able to store your data. Now what is that material, you may ask. I will try to give a less technical explanation of that as i can. I need to maintain a less technical look for all this technical stuff so i can reach out to all the other people who does not need to understand a more technical terms and approaches. Now lets go back to the RPM. You see the plate inside the HDD needs to spin around in order to save and/or access the data or your information. If for somehow it cannot spin well then your hard disk is in a lot of trouble there something wrong with it and it needs to be replaced.

IDE Drive connector

The higher the RPM of your HDD the faster it can get your data. For example a hard disk with a 5400 rpm is slower than a 7200 rpm and vice versa. Other hard disk can have an RPM of 10,000. The standard rpm for regular hard disk is 7200. Also their is cost related, the higher the RPM the higher the cost of the hard disk. Yup that the truth of it, You may ask,what the different of a slower RPM than a faster RPM. Well in small files or simple application usage let says playing solitaire then there is not much differences in terms of performance of your hard disk. But as your requirement grows then you will begin to  notice that it taking a bit longer than the usual to get that files to run may favorite games or software, my music player suddenly takes longer to load, my computer seems a bit slower than before, and also a whole lot of things, you begin to notice.

Inside a typical Hard Drive

The RPM of the hard disk is also a factor in determining the overall speed performance of your computer. Its contribute to the the time your computer "BOOT" meaning the moment you press the ON switch on your computer it will do a self check. It examined itself to see if all the necessary parts for it to work properly is there and that they are working fine. Its check the keyboard if its connected and working properly, that why when you see the lights on your keyboard blinks it means its checking it and same  is true with your hard disk, because the hard disk is where the software the control the hardware that your computer to see if the hard disk is working fine and is properly configured. As soon as all of this is done, then its load the software that would control or use the hardware. Without the hard disk or if something is wrong with the hard disk on your computer then, the software will not load properly, but this is just one aspect of it. Whewwww there are a lot of them out there.

Okay back to the RPM of your hard disk, the size of the file or files that your intend to use is also a factor for a faster or slower RPM. You see the bigger the files, software and others, the slower its appear on your screen. This is the moment you click on that file the hard disk access it from the hard disk location. When it finds it then it load from the hard disk to the memory and then it appear on your screen. That the only time you can use that file. The faster it can access that location where your file is located the faster it can be loaded to the memory and the faster it will appear on your screen.

I hope i was able to help you in understanding the RPM and process the take place inside your hard disk and your computer when a files is accessed and how the RPM can contributes to the overall speed performance of your computer.