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CD and DVD utilities

CD DVD UtilityMagic Disk
Virtual CD/DVD driver. With this program you can access or mount an ISO image as a virtual CD/DVD drive just like any regular CD/DVD drive. Supports multiple CD/DVD image formats, including: iso, bin, cif, nrg, etc. Freeware for Windows.

Burn4Free
Free DVD and CD burning program for Windows.

BurnCDCC
This freeware utility can be used to burn an ISO file to a CD/DVD disc. Useful e.g. when you have downloaded a Linux OS installation ISO file from the Web.

IsoBuster
CD and DVD data recovery tool. It supports all CD and DVD formats and all common CD and DVD file-systems. Not free.

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CD Optical Storage Glossary of Computer Terms (Letter C)

Cache
Pronounced “cash”. An external or internal reserved portion of a computer’s electronic memory Random-Access Memory (RAM). Frequently used information is stored in the cache so that your computer can get the information more quickly.

CD
The 12cm (4.75 in.) optical read only disc used for digital audio, data, and video storage and retrieval in various computer, audio, and video systems. CDs are produced using a number of processes to store information for optical retrieval. see: WORM, WREN, CD-ROM

CD- DA Track
a track on a compact disc containing audio information encoded according to the CD-Digital Audio specific

CD-I
Compact Disc Interactive. An interactive audio/video/computer system developed by Sony and Phillips for the consumer market.

CD-ROM
Compact Disc Read Only Memory. An adaptation of CD technology for use with general digital data. CD-ROM discs are “pressed” in an injection molding process from a master mould to create the data tract. Then they are coated with a reflective material and sealed.

CD-ROM XA
Compact Disc Read Only Memory Extended Architecture. A format for recording compressed digital audio at lower qualities, allowing capacity increases on a single CD from four to 19 hours.

CD-RTOS
Kernel: the nucleus of CD-RTOS, which is responsible for service request processing, memory management, system initialization, multi-tasking, input/output management and exception and interrupt processing.

CD-RTOS

Compact Disc Real-Time Operating System. the name of the operating system used in CD-I players.

CD-WORM
Compact Disc Write Once Read Many times. A type of CD-ROM disc named for the process used to create data on the disc. CD-WORM Discs perform identically as CD-ROM discs. The difference being a laser is used to “burn” the reflective layer to create the data tract. The cost of ” WORM Burning” is considerably less than glass master production for a single disc.CD-WORM Disks can be used to transport CD-ROM s for mastering and replication.

CD-WREM
Compact Disc Write Read Erase Memory. A data storage system commonly referred to as “Magneto-Optical”. It incorporates laser technology to “Burn” a magnetic layer on the disc, this produces a reflective surface that can then be read. This magnetic layer can be burned many times giving the medium read, write, and write over capability not found in CD- ROM & CD-WREM. This advantage comes only with considerable cost for Drives and Disc Cartridges. As a result this technology has not caught on in the home consumer market. It has great potential for multimedia, pre-press publication, and other digital graphic applications.

chroma keying
facility to replace selected colors in a video image with others that allows the creation of different scenes against the background. Some video boards contain such capabilities.

Chrominance
signals of an image system that represent the color components of the image such as hue and saturation. A black and white image has chrominance value of zero.

Clipart
Stock digital images in various subject matter and format for use in multimedia productions or anywhere graphics are needed. Rights to use, pricing, and quality vary from one manufacturer to another.

Clone
To duplicate a portion of an image to another location. This is a cornerstone to the editing of digital images. This effect is useful in the process of retouching photographs.

CLUT
Color Look-Up Table. A table containing all the colors that may be used in a particular picture. Each entry provides an RGB value. The picture may then be encoded using the table entry addresses rather than the direct RGB value.

Color balancing
The process of tuning the overall color cast of an image or selection

Compressiona
digital process that permits data to be stored or transmitted using less than normal the number of bits. Compression is critical for displaying audio and moving video fast enough on desktop computers. Some compression standards for still images are formulated by JPEG, for moving video by MPEG, and for telecommunications transmission by CCITT.

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CD Optical Storage Glossary of Computer Terms (Letter B)

Bitmap
name for a family of image file-types composed of dots (pixels). Bitmaps have attributes specifying color format, resolution, header, bit order, and other variables. A checker board is a good conceptual model for a bitmap image.

Blur
To distort the current selection or image by reducing contrast along object lines with gradients.

BPP
Bits Per Pixel. An acronym for the number of bits used to represent the color value of each pixel in a digital image color format. Example: CMYK=32bpp, RGB true color =24bpp,256 color & grayscale=8bpp, 16color=4bpp, Black and White line art=1bpp.

Brightness & contrast balancing
The process of adjusting the density and intensity of an image.

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Best Disk Image Softwares 2009

This is the list for the most popular Disk Image sharewares worldwide. And also you can find the Disk Image Freewares from another post in my blog.

1. Shareware: Acronis True Image
Version: 2009
Acronis True Image Home 2009 is an award-winning backup and recovery solution for a good reason: it protects your PC after just one click and allows you to recover from viruses, unstable software downloads, and failed hard drives. Create an exact copy of your PC and restore it from a major failure in minutes, or back up important files and recover them even faster.

2. Shareware: Drive Backup
Version: 9.0 Pro
Protect your hardware, undo software malfunctions or crashes, and safeguard your data with our latest Drive Backup 9.0 Personal Edition. This feature-rich software easily restores your system whenever disaster strikes, and optimizes storage utilization to keep your system running at top speed.

Along with reliable entire disk backup, this powerful application provides you with a new approach to file backup and enhanced recovery tools. Use its Smart Backup to free up disk space.  You can now recover/restore your PC or laptop with our handy bootable, portable rescue USB flash drive.

3. Shareware: OO DiskImage
Version: 3 Pro
Create images and restore entire systems quickly and easily. All the standard and professional features are combined into one single product. You can adjust all the functions to suit your requirements, with options that range from fully automatic to individually customized. Thanks to an improved user interface, it’s now possible to create and manage images even faster. Creating images on a regular basis is really the best way to protect your data from being lost unexpectedly – with O&O DiskImage 3 Professional Edition, you are fully equipped to face any emergency!

4. Shareware: Norton Ghost
Version: 14.0
Protects your computer with advanced backup and recovery. Full system backup (disk image)—Backs up everything on a hard drive or partition.

5. Shareware: R-Drive Image
Version: 4.4
A potent utility providing disk image files creation for backup or duplication purposes. A disk image file contains the exact, byte-by-byte copy of a hard drive, partition or logical disk and can be created with various compression levels on the fly without stopping Windows OS and therefore without interrupting your business. These drive image files can then be stored in a variety of places, including various removable media such as CD-R(W)/DVD, Iomega Zip or Jazz disks, etc.

6. Shareware: Image for Windows
Version: 2.25
An affordable, reliable drive image backup and restore solution that provides an easy and convenient way to completely backup all your hard drive’s data and operating systems. Your backups can be saved directly to external USB and FireWire™ drives, to internal or network drives, and even directly to CD or DVD. The Image for Windows package includes an easy-to-use MakeDisk wizard for creating a recovery boot disk. To restore your data and operating systems back to the way they were when the backup was created, simply boot the recovery disk and restore the partition(s) or drive(s) you need to recover. It’s that easy.

7. Shareware: Exact Image
Version: 2009
Protect your data from accidental loss and restore the whole system in case of OS crash with 7tools Exact Image 2009.

8. Shareware: DFSee
Version: 9.xx
This is a ZIP file with the latest ISO image for the bootable CDROM, plus a small program that is used to add your existing registration key to this image. Instructions to use this program and burn the CDR are included in the ZIP file as well.

The bare ISO image contains a temporary key, expiring about 60 days after release. If you have a registration, it is advised to burn the ISO to a CD after adding your own key with the supplied utility.

9. Shareware: Active@ Disk Image
Version: 3.2
Software that makes an exact copy of any PC disks (HDD,USB,CD,DVD,Blu-ray etc. . . ) and stores it into a folder. The disk images may be used for backups, PC upgrades or disk duplication purposes.

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File Formats and File Extensions

Dot What!?
Database of file format extensions, mainly for Windows, but also Apple Macintosh and Linux.

File formats and their Extensions
Large list with thousands of file formats.

File-Extensions.org
A search engine and large list of file extensions. Each file extension comes with an explanation on the way it is used today.

FileExt
Search engine for file extensions. It will find the type of file a file-extension represents and/or the program using that file type.

The Graphics file formats page
Graphics file formats, programming code, FAQs, etc.

Webopedia
Data formats and their file extensions.

Wotsit
Information on hundreds of different file types and all sorts of other useful programming information; algorithms, source code, specifications, etc.

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The Relationship between Data Recovery and Computer Forensics

Data Recovery & Computer ForensicsData Recovery is a process of recovering the data from hardware or software components after various data disasters. Data access becomes void after some disaster and special data recovery techniques are usually needed to access this lost data again.

Computer forensics, also called cyber forensics, is the application of computer investigation and analysis techniques to gather evidence suitable for presentation in a court of law. The goal of computer forensics is to perform a structured investigation while maintaining a documented chain of evidence to find out exactly what happened on a computer and who was responsible for it. A computer can be the target of the crime, it can be the instrument of the crime, or it can serve as an evidence repository storing valuable information about the crime. Moreover the hard disk is the core carrier of all important information. In some sense, hard disk is a very precise micro-computer. Only with the normal running of the micro-computer, can we access to the OS,

Data recovery can be a vital aspect of Forensic Examinations since some drives may be corrupt and impossible to image.

The reasons which cause the hard drives corruption/impossible to image:

1. Logical Malfunctions:
• Accidental Disk Format
• File Deletion
• Partition loss or corruption
• Lost or Missing files and folders
• Re-formatted or re-partitioned drive

2. Physically Malfunctions:
• PCBA malfunction
• Motor/bearing failure
• Parking element failure
• Platter surface scratch
• Head Problem
• FW problem

How to using data recovery skills & tools to assist computer forensics work?

1. To the Logical Disk Crash problems: there are many famous computer forensics software in the market, such as Encase, X-Ways, FinalForensic, F-Response and so on. They are very good at data retrieval, analysis, auto-report and data archiving. With the development of science they will be more professional.

2. To the Physically Bad Hard Disk problems:

PCBA malfunction: You just need to find an identical donor hard drive which has the same model number, at least first 3 digits of Serial Number and PCBA version number, the best the motor number. And then swap the PCBA by using professional tools, such as ACE: PC-3000; SalvationDATA: HD Doctor Suite, etc.

Motor/bearing failure: You can exchange the platters and head stack to the hard drive which has good motor/bearing by using the professional tools. In my opinion the HD HPE PRO is the best choice. You also need to find the identical donor hard drive.

Parking element failure: Exchange the failed head stack with a donor hard drive by using HD HPE PRO.

Platter surface scratch: Bad sectors are a common problem we faced during traditional imaging. It will cause system death, HD irresponsive, even directly destroyed during image process. To the problem, you should use the disk imaging tools, such as: ACE: UDMA DE; SalvitonDATA: Data Compass; DeepSpar: Disk imaging, etc. These tools can help you retrieve the data from partially damaged bad sectors.

Head Problem: The head stack is totally damaged: You should swap the head stack with a donor hard drive by using HD HPE PRO.

FW problem: ACE: PC-3000; SalvationDATA: HD Doctor Suite can help you repair the damaged firmware or the firmware module disorder.

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Free Computer File Management Utilities

Attribute changer
This application is designed to automate mass changes to file and folder attributes. It add’s itself to the context menus for folders and drives. You can establish filters and exceptions to fine tune the search process.

Fast File Renamer
A free program which can help you with the tedious task of renaming large numbers of files. It can be used by anyone who needs to keep large collections of files organized (such as mp3 files, image and graphics files, web-site-related files, system files).

FreeCommander
Free dual-pane Windows-Explorer replacement.

Media Convert
Free online media-file converter. Converts sound, video and text files to other formats.

ShellGem
A small free program that makes moving and copying files in Windows 95/98 easily. Once you install it, just right-click-drag any file, and ShellGEM opens a list of the drives on your system. You can then move through an unfolding tree of your system’s folders (no clicking required), and move or copy the file wherever you want.

The Rename
Program that allows you to rename a batch of files simply and quickly with many options.

Total Commander
Not free. A highly recommended shareware Explorer replacement program for Windows. Improved access to your local files through a two-pane interface, convenient access to remote FTP sites, access Zip files as directories, enhanced search, quick view, etc. Much better than the standard Windows explorer.

UnLock IT
Freeware program which enables you to unlock the files that are locked by some processes in your system. For Windows.

xplorer2 lite
Free file manager for Windows.

XXCopy
XXCOPY is a powerful superset of XCOPY using the same syntax. Command-line program for DOS and Windows.

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CD Optical Storage Glossary of Computer Terms (Letter A)

Access time
In mass storage devices, the time elapsed to read or write to or from a device.

Additive color system
A color reproduction system in which images are reproduced by mixing appropriate amounts of red, green, and blue lights.

Animation
A synchronized sequence of graphics that conveys action.

Antialiasing
The process of reducing the visibility of jagged edges by using gray scale pixel values to smooth and feather contrasting intersections of bitmapped objects.

Application
A computer program written for a specific purpose.

Aspect ratio
The ratio of width to height of an image. The standard aspect ratio of broadcast television and most computer displays is 4:3. The 35mm slide standard is 3:2.

Asymmetric system
A video system that requires more equipment to store, process, and compress a digital image than it needs to decompress and playback. Intel’s DV I and Phillips/Sony’s CD-I systems are asymmetric in full fidelity mode.

Audio track
A CD- DA track with digital audio samples encoded as 16 bit numbers.

Audio
Sound portion of a video signal. or separate sound used to; annotate objects on frames including text, graphics, animation and still images.

Authoring language
A high- level programming language using English or mnemonics and simple commands specifically designed for developing multimedia applications. Often included as a subset of an authoring system.

Authoring system
A software product designed to allow users without specific programming skills to develop and test multimedia applications.

Averaging
The process of smoothing the selection or image by averaging the values of the surrounding pixels over a specified radius.

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Free Hard Drive Erasing Tools

If you need to remove sensitive data totally from your harddisk, simply deleting these files is not enough! Using advanced methods, it is even possible to recover data that’s been overwritten, unless it has been overwritten using carefully selected platterns!

Operating systems usually do not totally delete the file, but just mark the file as being ‘deleted’ so it can not be accessed when you view the contents of a directory. This means that you can not see the file anymore with normal tools, but specialized recovery tools can still access your data.

To prevent this from happening, you need to totally erase your files, using one of the specialized data removal tools you can find in this section. These removal tools totally erase your data by replacing the contents of your files with effective data-patterns before deleting them the normal way.

After Work
Free Windows utility which can be used to wipe sensitive data from your computer, such as: temporary internet files, IE history, visited sites, opened documents, started programs, temporary registry values.

CleanDisk
Non-free. Total deletion of files, clean the Windows swap file, clean temporary files. Contains disk viewer to view the real contents of your disk including ‘deleted’ entries. Suitable for Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000, WinXP.

Eraser
Freeware for Windows. Eraser can remove sensitive data from your hard drive by overwriting it with carefully selected patterns. You can drag and drop files and folders to the on-demand eraser, use the convenient Explorer shell extension or use the integrated scheduler to program overwriting of unused disk space or, for example, browser cache files to happen regularly, at night, during your lunch break, at weekends or whenever you like.

HandyBits file shredder
Freeware for personal, non-profit use. Can overwrite files with random data up to 15 times. Multi-language support, integration with Windows Explorer, with icon on desktop to use as recycle bin, etc.

How to destroy a CD or DVD
Don’t just throw away your CD’s and DVD’s when they contain personal or sensitive data. First you need to make sure that the data is unretrievable.

KillDisk
Harddisk, floppy and partition eraser. Free and non-free editions are available.

No File Recovery
Free disk wipe utility for Windows.

SuperShredder
Freeware. SuperShredder gives you the ability to delete files using not only common methods such as Gutmann and NISPOM (DoD), but can be completely customized to give you all the security and/or performance you may need. It can receive files via drag-and-drop onto the application or the icon, selecting files from inside the program, command line, and can even add a shortcut to your ‘Send To’ menu inside the Windows Explorer so it’s simple to delete files in a secure and convenient fashion.

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Free Remote File Storage/Sharing/Backup

The services listed in this section enable you to backup, store and/or share your files on the Internet for free.

4shared.com
1 Gigabyte of free space to share files.

DriveHQ
Free 1Gb of remote storage space including FTP access and file-sharing. The non-free plans range from 2 Gb for $ 2.99/month up to 20 Gigabytes for $19.99/Month

File Hamster
Free real-time backup and archiving of your files while you work, monitor specific files on your hard drive and automatically create incremental backups, etc.

FLASHspace
Remote storage space which presents itself as simply another disk-drive inside your Windows computer (no software needs to be installed).The 50 Mb package is free. The non-free packages start from $ 2 per month for 500 Mb.

Huddle
1GB of free file storage space.

I(2) Drive
500 Mb storage, 1 Gb transfer for $ 9.99 per month

Internet Virtual Storage
A list of sites providing internet based storage solutions, i.e. remote virtual hard drives or remote virtual storage space, both free and commercial.

myDataBus
5 Gigabytes of free file storage, maximum file size: 500 Mb.

Orbitfiles
6 Gigabytes of free online file storage, backup and file-sharing.

Sharemation
5 Mb of free file storage.

Webdrive.dk
100 MB free space, share folders with other users, access zip files online.

Xdrive
Non-free, 15 day free trial. Integrates with the Windows explorer as an extra drive. 5 Gb secure storage for $9.95 per month; 25 Gb Xdrive work-group storage for $ 99.95 per month.

Yahoo Briefcase
30 Mb of free files storage. Save Yahoo! Mail attachments directly to your Yahoo! Briefcase.

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