Free Harddisk Cloning Solution

I am sure there are times you need to move all harddisk content over to another disk without the luxury of the time to reinstall.

Here is the free Home-Based solution just by using a <1GB Thumbdrive you can image your harddisk without buying software like Norton Ghost or Acronis.

Originally the software requires unetbootin to create a bootable thumbdrive but they have updated the tool to be able to self-create a bootable thumbdrive.

Download EASEUS Disk Copy from EASEUS.Unzip dc.zip to a location.

Then run to create the boot thumbdrive

After that plug in your source and destination harddisk, boot from thumbdrive then run disk copy and do a sector by sector imaging!

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Western Digital 320GB BEKT vs 320GB BEVT

Western Digital Scorpio WD3200BEVT

• Unfortunately my drive has failed so no direct comparison will be available. However I will run pretty commonly available tools (No Downloads required), to get the benchmark score so you can compare it to the BEVT in your laptop.

• 5400 RPM
• SATA 3 Gb/sec
• 12 millisecond seek time
• 8-megabyte buffer

Western Digital Scorpio WD3200BEKT

• 7200 RPM
• SATA 3 Gb/sec
• 12 millisecond seek time
• 16-megabyte buffer

First lets look at the built in test results for the Nvidia harddisk controller

Go Device Manager, under IDE controller you should see a Nvidia NForce SATA controller if you didn't then you did not install the SATA driver.
Go Nvidia website to download and install their Storage Controller Driver.

Test 1

Test 2

You can roughly gauge the performance by looking at the scores.

Next we run the WinSAT Detailed Test for more information how to run it see this post.

Note that I am running on Windows 7

> CPU LZW Compression 100.80 MB/s
> CPU AES256 Encryption 41.59 MB/s
> CPU Vista Compression 297.90 MB/s
> CPU SHA1 Hash 459.58 MB/s
> Uniproc CPU LZW Compression 49.88 MB/s
> Uniproc CPU AES256 Encryption 20.91 MB/s
> Uniproc CPU Vista Compression 148.67 MB/s
> Uniproc CPU SHA1 Hash 230.29 MB/s
> Memory Performance 5024.46 MB/s
> Direct3D Batch Performance 53.83 F/s
> Direct3D Alpha Blend Performance 48.67 F/s
> Direct3D ALU Performance 31.23 F/s
> Direct3D Texture Load Performance 25.06 F/s
> Direct3D Batch Performance 54.56 F/s
> Direct3D Alpha Blend Performance 56.36 F/s
> Direct3D ALU Performance 31.81 F/s
> Direct3D Texture Load Performance 22.06 F/s
> Direct3D Geometry Performance 41.83 F/s
> Direct3D Geometry Performance 19.16 F/s
> Direct3D Constant Buffer Performance 19.80 F/s
> Video Memory Throughput 2831.65 MB/s
> Dshow Video Encode Time 8.18464 s
> Media Foundation Decode Time 1.24666 s
> Disk Sequential 64.0 Read 67.82 MB/s 5.9
> Disk Random 16.0 Read 1.58 MB/s 4.0
> Responsiveness: Average IO Rate 3.65 ms/IO 5.9
> Responsiveness: Grouped IOs 10.44 units 7.1
> Responsiveness: Long IOs 15.29 units 6.9
> Responsiveness: Overall 159.52 units 6.6
> Responsiveness: PenaltyFactor 0.0

The values in red is what we are interested in.
So do the same on your machine to compare the results.

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Acer Harddisk Failure

Firstly, if the Harddisk came from an integrated OEM System, the warranty is honored by the OEM.

The warranty is not going to be the responsibility of the Disk Manufacturer unless the Harddisk is bought separately in a retail store, so if you run out of warranty you will have to buy a separate harddisk replacement by yourself.

Symptoms of Harddisk Failure:

• Windows hangs while Booting or takes a unusually long time.

• Windows hangs while shutting down.
  

• BIOS hangs while booting. (To restore normal booting from a normal harddrive simply enter BIOS and set Clear NVRAM to yes, Save and exit)

• Windows Event log report S.M.A.R.T(Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) Failure. (A S.M.A.R.T Failure report definitely predicts a drive failure while not all drive failure will definitely be detected by S.M.A.R.T)

• Linux Desktop suddenly colour corrupts and doesn't respond at all.

How to resolve:

1. Boot from a Linux Live CD and copy all your important data to an external harddisk. (Do not attempt to boot from the failing harddisk, it only makes thing worse)
2. If you have a desktop and the notebook harddrive uses a SATA connector you can simply plug your notebook harddrive to a connector, boot from the desktop harddrive and copy the data off the notebook harddrive.
3. If the notebook harddrive uses a PATA connector then you need a bridge.
   
4. If the harddisk has failed totally it is impossible to retrieve any data unless you go to a specialized data retrieval centre which usually cost a bomb.
5. Do not go to those small computer shops that claims they can retrieve data, because they do not have the actually tools to do a platter swap to retrieve the data or recondition the harddisk, they are only out to cheat your money)

Yes I was unlucky enough to encounter a harddisk failure however I managed to salvage all the data I needed to a new Laptop Harddisk.
The new harddisk is considered a upgrade from WD BEVT Scorpio Blue to WD BEKT Scorpio Black.

The new harddisk spins at 7200RPM instead of 5400RPM and has a 16MB Disk Buffer instead of a 8MB disk buffer.
It also comes with a 5year warranty instead of a 3 year warranty.
The slight price difference justified the upgrade purchase.
Oh, and by the way the BEKT reports a 5.9 score in Windows Experience Index.

WD 320GB BEVT

WD 320GB BEKT

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Disk Cleaning Scheduler

Hi, today I will be sharing a Disk Cleaner Scheduling Script I created.

I took parts of the Temp File Remover Script and combine it with Windows Disk Clean Up.

I also scheduled them to run once a week minimized.

Download it here for Vista
Download it here for Windows 7 (I decided to leave the Prefetch folder alone in Windows 7 since it handles itself well enough.
To install simply Download, Extract and Right Click, run Install.bat with Administrator Permission.

It will create a new Folder called "Clean Disk" in C:\windows (Due to the stupid spacing parsing problem with Program Files) then schedule the tasks.

You can delete the downloaded folders and zip files after that.

To uninstall, Download,Extract and simply Right Click run the Uninstall.bat with Administrator Permission.

I think this will be my final version.

Give your comments.

Thank You.

Edit:
I have updated the script to run as a System Task so the annoying popup that tell you it is cleaning up tempfiles no longer appears.

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Optimize Windows Vista Boot

What you should do to conserve and optimize disk space and boot time.

1) After download software like Firefox, after installation please delete the installer.

eg. Setup.exe

New Versions will come out and internet download speeds are so fast, so there is no point keeping it.

2) Do this weekly:
Start>> All Programs>> Accesories>> System Tools>> Disk Clean Up

Check Everything Except for Hibernation File.

Or download and install a autodiskcleanup script I created

CCleaner is a extra ware that does the same thing it uses System Resource hence I don't use this.

3) Open Control Panel >> Administrative Tools >> Services

Disable "SuperFetch"

Stop "Superfetch"

Reason being Superfetch isn't very efficient, very often it overfetches Programs you rarely use, increasing boot time as a result.

4) Clean temporary Directories.
They are:

C:\Users\{Your User Name}\AppData\Local\Temp
C:\Windows\Temp
C:\Windows\Prefetch (Delete the ReadyBoot Contents before ReadyBoot folder)
I have created a batch file to kill superfetch.
Download and run with Administrator permission here (Superfetch Killer)

5) Here is a Windows Batch File that clears useless file recursively in all directories.

Batch file is provided by mydigitallife

Open in Notepad to see the script content.
To Run, Right Click "Run as Admin"

Next run sdelete to zero the harddisk space and return all unused space

Use the command:

sdelete -c

After that do a Disk Defragmentation and Reboot

Using this method my Acer Aspire 4530 now boots in 5 Rolling Bars instead of the previous 18 &

My 5 year old Desktop has the following specification:

Intel Pentium 4 HT 2.8GHZ 512KB L2 Cache (NorthWood)

4GB DDR RAM 400MHZ

250GB WD 16MB Buffer Cache

875P Motherboard

Currently the dinosaur is running Windows Vista rather speedily so try it!

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How To Clear Up your Disk on Windows Xp and Vista

To Clean up your Disk it is actually very simple
There are only a few place where the junk gather

1. Take a Look at C:\

• You should only see the following 3 folders

1. Documents and Settings
2. Program Files
3. WINDOWS

The rest is either
Driver files loaded by OEM
Lazy users who refuse to save it to their home directory respectively
Programs which do not install by default to Program Files Directory (and the installer did not bother to redirect the program there he/she just keep clicking NEXT NEXT NEXT FINISH)

They are all deletable except for the Programs which is better to reinstall via Control Panel into the correct Program Files directory to keep it neat

For Windows Xp you can clear up on the following folders
You may encounter file in use because the operating system is currently using the caches so it is locked
If you encounter this you can just skip that particular file

• C:\WINDOWS\Temp

I need to elaborate on Prefetch
Prefetch is a place where the system cache certain programs so it can run faster
The official stand is that it is a self managing folder where rarely used program will get cleaned up automatically however you can still clear it up once it a while
After you clear up the system will need to prefetch again however there is no harm or any sort done
Also you will notice the system boots faster immediately after you clear Prefetch because Prefetch is loaded on boot so when it is cleared up it boots faster

• C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch

Next Open (Delete everything inside)

• C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Temp

At the end of it there is already a tool to clean up your disk
It is called Disk Cleanup
It clears all the above mention folders except Prefetch.

The following is a disk cleanup script from mydigitallife for Windows Vista

@echo off

cls

TITLE Windows Vista System Junk Cleaner v1.0

echo.

echo Windows Vista System Junk Cleaner

echo Version 1.1

echo.

echo (C) 2007 My Digital Life (www.mydigitallife.info)

echo.

echo This batch script is provided as is without warranty.

pause

echo.

echo.

echo Start cleaning and deleting Vista system junk?

echo (Press Ctrl-C and answer Y to terminate)

pause

cls

del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*.tmp

del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*._mp

del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*.log

del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*.gid

del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*.chk

del /f /s /q %systemdrive%\*.old

del /f /s /q "%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\cookies\*.*"

del /f /s /q "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\*.*"

del /f /s /q "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temp\*.*"

del /f /s /q "%appdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Recent\*.*"

del /f /s /q %windir%\*.bak

del /f /s /q %windir%\prefetch\*.*

del /f /s /q %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Download\*.*

rd /s /q "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temp\" & md "%userprofile%\Local Settings\Temp\"

rd /s /q %windir%\Temp & md %windir%\Temp

cls

echo.

echo Windows Vista System Junk Cleaner

echo Version 1.1

echo.

echo (C) 2007 My Digital Life (www.mydigitallife.info)

echo.

echo This batch script is provided as is without warranty.

echo.

echo.

echo Vista system junk cleaning and deleting completed.

echo.

echo Press any key to exit.

pause

Just copy the script onto notepad, save as diskcleanup.bat.

Run with admin permission.

As you can see the script is completely clean.

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Harddisk Temperature on Aspire 4530

HWMonitor currently does not detect Harddisk Temperature.

However HWiNFO32 does.

Here is a screenshot.

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Partition Manager

If you have disk partitioning issues and you need to do stuff like moving primary partitions around, I recommend Partition Master.

• Firstly, it is free.
  
• Secondly, it offers advance functions that rival the capabilities of payware.
  
• Thirdly, the Windows Interface is easy to use.
  

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Reformating & Disk Erasure of Harddisk

For some of you who seldom perform OS re installation you might not know the differences clearly.

First, reformatting is usually done when the operating system is corrupted beyond repair.

Usually when your machine is bogged down a lot of malware, reformatting solves the issue faster than finding fixes for each malware.

Personally, I prefer reformatting because certain types of malware corrupts System Files beyond repair.

What reformatting does is that it destroys the partition tables and recreate them.

In Windows it would be C:\ partition.

The old data is still present but it is no longer readable by normal methods as all the references to the old data is overwritten (It is like the content page is destroyed hence the book appears as new because all indexes are gone, the old data is still present but there is no link to access them properly) but this is a "as good as new" for end users who want a new OS installation.

Disk Erasure Tools is usually used by organizations with highly sensitive information.

Tools such as DBAN or Secure Erase removes all traces of data by overwriting the whole hard disk with other data.

Differences between DBAN and Secure Erase

• DBAN writes by Sector therefore when bad sectors are redirected data erasure maybe incomplete. However Secure Erase writes by Cylinders so complete data erasure is guaranteed.
• DBAN takes a longer time compared to Secure Erase.

Why is this so?

Secure Erase is the standard included by hard disk manufacturers to clear sensitive data as a feature requested by governmental organizations.

Quoted from the Data Sanitisation Tutorial

Complete eradication of user data off drives can be accomplished by running data Secure Erasure utilities such as the freeware “HDDerase” downloadable here. It executes the Federally-approved (NIST 800-88) Secure Erase command in the ATA ANSI standard, which is implemented in all recent ATA drives greater than 15-20 GB. A similar command in the SCSI ANSI standard is optional and not yet implemented in drives tested. Normal Secure Erase takes 30-60 minutes to complete. Some ATA drives also implement the standard Enhanced Secure Erase command that takes only milliseconds to complete.

It uses a standard ATA set hard disk native instruction set to wipe the entire drive quickly.

You might have heard that 1 or 2 pass of overwriting might not be enough to clean the hard drive however this is not true as nowadays hard disk comes in high density capacity.

For a similar sized hard disk 5-10 years ago it can only contain like 30 or less GBs.

Hence when you overwrite such high capacity hard disk it is impossible to recreate the original data.

An analogy I can think of would be you have 2 trays of coloured arranged sand, one fine, one coarse.

If you imagine each particle to be data, if I substitute half with sand particles of another colour randomly, the tray with the fine sand will look more messed up then the tray with coarse particles.

Sdelete is like a DBAN inside Windows.

What it does using the -c (clean command) is it takes all the unused hard disk space and overwrites them.

You can also use it to overwrite the data region for a particular file.

Usually when you delete something in Windows it only remove the reference to the file and marks the region from occupied to unused.

When you use sdelete, it will remove the reference to the file and overwrites the region with random data before marking it from occupied to unused.

I hope you understand more about hard disk from this simple introduction.

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How To Activate Acer Hidden Partition

Note: If you have Empowering Backup installed please burn the Disk Images before continuing as it is always good to have fall backs

The story goes:

You heard that Vista is slow and lousy so you have decided to "downgrade" to Windows Xp
So you happily install Xp and delete the original system partition and install a new Xp partition
However you smartly left the recovery partition intact.

A few week later you suddenly felt like trying out Vista
However to your horror you couldn't
You tried the famous Alt-F10 to activate Acer Disk to Disk Recovery (D2D) but it doesn't work although the recovery partition is fully intact
You wonder why?

The reason is the original boot record has been overwritten by the Windows Xp you installed over the special original Acer/Vista one so there is no way the boot record will activate recovery.

So I will show you how to activate the Recovery Partition in a few simple steps:

Before you proceed make sure you backup all your important data first

Step 1:
Download PTEDIT32 from here
PTEDIT is a special disk utility to re-mark partition to another type so it becomes bootable
(It should work on all Windows OS)

Step 2:
Extract it to a folder and Right Click run it with Administrator Permission otherwise it will not run (Xp users ignore the right click)



Step 3:
Look at the first entry that is your hidden partition PROVIDED YOU DID NOT ACCIDENTALLY DELETE IT if you did, I recommend you look here instead.
To double confirm check the size make sure it is small like the screenshot



Step 4:
Change the partition type to 07 from 27 (If the partition type is of another value, change to the same type as your system disk C:\)
Then make the changes.Reboot to take effect.



Step 5:
Open Control Panel>> Administrative Tools>> Computer Management>> Disk Management

Step 6:
Mark the partition as Active
Then Reboot disk recovery will start automatically


Please remember to burn a copy of the factory default image and driver disk as a backup after that using Empowering Backup, if you haven't already done so.

Alternatively you can do this

Using a command line

1. Open Command Prompt. (Right Click "Run As Administrator" For Vista)
2. Type:

• diskpart

1. At the DISKPART prompt, type:

• list disk

1. At the DISKPART prompt, type:
   

• select disk n (In this case it is disk 0)

1. At the DISKPART prompt, type:

• list partition  

Make note of the number of the partition that you want to mark as active.

1. At the DISKPART prompt, type:

•  select partition n  (Where n is a number. In this case it is partition 1)

To change partition type to NTFS just type 

• set id=27 override

1. At the DISKPART prompt, type:

• active

1. Reboot your computer

-From Technet Microsoft

New:

If you can't even boot into Windows, simply use another working computer download gpart iso image.
Burn to CD as an disk image you need special burning tools like Nero or Roxio.
Then boot from CD you burn by entering BIOS (F2 or Delete usually) select CD-DRIVE as the first boot device save and exit.
If you want to recover your data, plug in an external harddisk and start saving your information.
Then you should see something like this if you try to manage partition in gpart.

Assuming the first partition is your recovery partition, simply right click on it, select manage flags on the recovery partition.

Select it as "boot" then restart.

Word of Warning

Upon restart the recovery process will start immediately if you did not backup your data all is lost.

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Secure Delete

If you want to erase information on Windows I have a tool to recommend
It is Secure Delete from Sysinternals
Sysinternals Tool Suite is now part of Microsoft
Secure Delete is a free data erase program coded by Windows Guru Mark Russinovich

The advantages of Secure Delete is

1. No installation required
2. Part of a Windows OS troubleshooting suite
3. It is free
4. It is very easy to use however there is no fanciful GUI everything is done via command line
5. It is a Microsoft Product so no compatibility issues
   

First go http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx
I have linked Secure Delete software directly here
Or you can download the entire Suite (Inclusive of other tools) here

Download & extract to a folder like (eg.C:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite)

To add Secure Delete to Command Line do as follows:


Note: You need to ensure every entry is delimited by a ";"
As shown below

;C:\Program Files\SysinternalsSuite;

To use Secure Delete to delete files

1. Select Command Prompt or Type "cmd" in Run
   
2. Right Click "Run as Administrator"

Note:
You specify -p X where X is the number of times to overwrite the file so it can't be recovered

To clean the harddrive free space do as follows:


Again you can specify how many time you want to clean your C:\ by adding "-p X" to the command

Using SDelete

SDelete is a command line utility that takes a number of options. In any given use, it allows you to delete one or more files and/or directories, or to cleanse the free space on a logical disk. SDelete accepts wild card characters as part of the directory or file specifier.

Usage: sdelete [-p passes] [-s] [-q]
sdelete [-p passes] [-z|-c] [drive letter]

-c	Zero free space (good for virtual disk optimization).
-p passes	Specifies number of overwrite passes.
-s	Recurse subdirectories.
-q	Don't print errors (quiet).
-z	Cleanse free space.

Enjoy =)

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