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Free File & Document Converters

Omniformat
Free document conversion utility for Windows, which allows dynamic conversion and image manipulation of over 75 file formats including HTML, DOC, XLS, WPD, PDF, JPG, GIF, TIF, PNG, PCX, PPT, PS, TXT, Photo CD, FAX and MPEG.

exe-eBook Creator
exe-eBook creator is a freeware ebook compiler for TreePad files. It enables you to create an executable (program) from a TreePad .tpd or .hjt file. This single “exe-file” contains the TreePad database as well as the TreePad Viewer program.

The advantage of an exe-eBook is that it can be distributed royalty-free as a single file, since both data and viewer program are contained inside the program. Furthermore, a TreePad exe-eBook runs directly without installing anything! exe-eBook creator can also compile password protected/encrypted TreePad files as exe-eBook. Additionally: exe-eBooks contain a search engine, an options screen, zoom function 10% – 1000%, history back/forward, etc.

An exe-eBook can contain plain text articles, formatted articles, images, tree node icons, hyperlinks.More information and download

Zamzar
Converts videos and other file formats online. It can converts files which are stored on your harddisk or convert files which are on the Internet (URLs).

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Free Executable Compressors

MPress
Freeware executable packer for PE32 (= Windows), PE32+ and .Net executable formats!

UPX
Free program which can compress Windows and Linux executables to 40% of their original size. Very fast and efficient program.

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Free Compression, Split and ZIP programs

HJ-Split (Freeware file splitter for a variety of platforms)
Why split files? Think of a file of 20 Mb, and try to send this to a friend. Using email this does not succeed, it is simply too large, and how to put it onto a floppy? HJSplit will enable you to split the large file into smaller chunks, which can be much more easily sent and stored. Later on these chunks can be re-joined using HJSplit itself or HJJoin.

HJSplit is available for a large number of operating systems:Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP, Linux, Java, OS/2, Windows 3.x, MS DOS, Amiga. For the MAC there is a compatible file joiner available.

Freebyte ZIP
A powerful freeware ZIP program with full Windows user-interface. It can zip and unzip files, create new zip files, directly view and sort zip file contents, make self-extracting archives, password protect and encrypt files, etc. etc. Runs on windows 95, 98, ME, 2000, NT and XP.

StuffIt
Mac file expander (program to open compressed files) for the MAC platform. Support for various file formats, like BinHex, MacBinary, zip, gzip, uu, tar. Lite version is freeware.

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Free Disk Catalogue Programs

Catfish
Small, free and automatic disk inventory program for Windows. For people who can’t remember what they put on their ZIP disks, floppies or CD-roms! We use it at Freebyte.

Cathy
A similar program (not only in name) to Catfish. Has searching capabilities based on file name, date and size. Customizable date format. Found files can be opened directly, if they are present. Only contains a small single executable file, meaning that no installation is needed. Runs on Windows.

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RAID Array & Server Glossary of Computer Terms (Letter F)

Failback
Restoring a failed system component’s share of a load to a replacement component.

Failover
A mode of operation for failure tolerant systems in which a component has failed and a redundant component has assumed its functions.

Failover Port
A fibre channel port capable of assuming I/O requests for another, failed port on the loop. During normal operation, a failover port may be active or inactive. Failover ports assume the same loop ID and, optionally, the same node from the failed port.

Failure
A detectable physical change in hardware, requiring replacement of the component.

Fault Tolerance, Failure Tolerance
The ability of a system to continue to perform its function even when one of its components has failed. A fault tolerant system requires redundancy in disk drives, power supplies, adapters, controllers, and cabling. Mylex RAID controllers offer high levels of fault tolerance.

Failed-drive mode
A mode of reduced-performance operation that a disk array is in after a drive failure.

Failover
The automatic replacement of a failed system component with a properly functioning one. Most often used in the context of redundant external array controllers. If one of the controllers fails, failover enables the second controller to take over the failed controller’s I/O load.

Fault tolerance
The ability of a system to continue to perform its functions, even when one or more components have failed

Fibre Channel
Technology for transmitting data between computer devices at a data rate of up to 2 Gbps (two billion bits per second), especially suited for connecting computer servers to shared storage devices and for interconnecting storage controllers and drives.

Fibre Channel is expected to replace the Small System Computer Interface (SCSI) as the transmission interface between servers and clustered storage devices. It is also more flexible: devices can be as far as ten kilometers (about six miles) apart. The longer distance requires optical fiber as the physical medium; however, fibre channels also work using coaxial cable and ordinary telephone twisted pair wires.

Flash ROM
Memory on an adapter containing software that can be reprogrammed without removing it from the board.

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RAID Array & Server Glossary of Computer Terms (Letter E)

ECC
Error Correcting Code, a method of generating redundant information which can be used to detect and correct errors in stored or transmitted data.

Embedded Storage Controller
An intelligent storage controller that mounts in a host computer’s housing and attaches directly to a host’s memory bus with no intervening I/O adapter or I/O bus.

External RAID Controller
A RAID controller in its own enclosure, rather than incorporated into a PC or server. External RAID controllers are often referred to as a Bridge RAID Controller. Mylex SANArray FL, FF, FFx, and Pro FF2 controllers are external RAID controllers. Compare with Internal RAID Controller.

Exclusive OR (XOR)
A process based on a mathematical algorithm that is used by RAID levels 2, 3, 4, and 5 to compare computer data (binary 0s and 1s) created by a write request or by a read request during a drive failure. The result of the XOR process is parity information that will be stored along with data for real-time recovery in the event of a disk failure.

External array controller
In contrast to bus-based array adapters and microprocessor-based array controllers, external array controllers reside in the external RAID storage enclosure. They connect to the host through a standard SCSI or serial (such as Fibre Channel) host adapter interface. These external controllers are similar to bus-based, microprocessor-based array controllers, in that they include an on-board microprocessor to offload all RAID functions (I/O commands and RAID operations) from the host CPU. They are usually used in midrange and high-end servers, especially in clustering environments.

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Seagate Introduces Constellation: All-Star Enterprise Hard Drives

The Constellation family includes 2.5-inch nearline hard drive with lowest enterprise power consumption and record-setting 3.5-inch 7200-rpm 2TB hard drive for nearline Tier 2 enterprise applications

Seagate  introduced its Constellation™ family ofnew enterprise storage solutions for Tier 2 nearline storage applications. The two new drive models, the 2.5-inch Constellation and the 3.5-inch Constellation ES hard drives, include a combination of features that enable high capacities, increased power efficiency, enterprise-class reliability, and data security. Both drives also include PowerChoice™ from Seagate, which decreases power consumption by up to 54% for record power savings in enterprise environments.  John Monroe, a research vice president at Gartner said:

“The need for greater storage capacity will continue to expand in multiple directions and dimensions, but there will be an increasing scrutiny of all storage system purchases, with an eye to decreasing power consumption, footprint, and cost per GB in unprecedented ways, Performance will not be ignored, but a flexible balance of capacity, cost per GB, power and speed will become more crucial in fulfilling end-user storage demands at varied price points.”

Constellation
The Constellation 2.5-inch hard drive is offered in capacities of 160GB and 500GB with both 3 Gbps SATA and new SAS 2.0 interface running at 6Gb/s speeds. As the first SAS 2.0 nearline drive, the Constellation hard drive enables larger external storage topologies, 100% faster data throughput and higher signal strength over greater distances – dramatically increasing storage scalability. The Constellation family will begin shipping this quarter.  Praveen Asthana, director of Dell Storage said:

“Dell recognizes that increased capacity and high-reliability are key to enabling further adoption of small form factor storage within the enterprise. With new capacities, small form factor drives afford customers performance and power gains within the same rack space, As an industry-leader in storage, Dell is pleased to partner with Seagate and be one of the first companies to offer the Constellation family of drives to our customers.”

Constellation ES
The 3.5-inch Constellation ES hard drive will be available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities, and with an enterprise-class SAS interface as well as a SATA version, and provides best-in-class capacity and performance. As the world’s only 7200-rpm 3.5-inch hard drive providing up to 2TB of storage, the record-setting capacity of Constellation ES hard drives are ideal for 3.5-inch based external storage architectures. With Constellation ES hard drives, customers don’t have to sacrifice performance in order to gain the highest capacities. The Constellation ES hard drive will ship in calendar Q3.

Todd Gresham, executive vice president and general manager of the Networked Storage Solutions Division for Xyratex said:

“Xyratex continues to work closely with Seagate to advance storage system innovation to meet both the performance and capacity-based market requirements, the new Constellation family of products complements Xyratex’s philosophy of delivering cost-effective enterprise-class, energy efficient storage solutions that help provide our customers the long-term investment protection they demand.”

With Seagate’s innovative PowerChoice technology, both Constellation hard drive models deliver the highest power-reduction savings ever offered in an enterprise-class HDD, and provide flexible, user-manageable options to deliver power savings without sacrificing performance, data integrity, or reliability. In addition, the Constellation family of drives are backed with field-proven, enterprise-grade reliability and rated at a full 1.2 million hours MTBF.

Delivering on Seagate’s commitment to add security features throughout its product portfolio, the Constellation family of drives are offered with optional self-encrypting drive (SED) technology and provide government-grade data security through the drive’s life cycle. SED technology makes drive retirement and disposal easy by eliminating the need for the numerous manual processes involved which are often incomplete, complex, expensive, or prone to error. For critical information that must remain secure, and because all systems are eventually retired, whether being relocated, re-purposed, or disposed of, the information on a Constellation SED hard drive remains AES-safe.

Seagate Unified Storage™ architecture delivers long-term business sustainability
Historically, the variety of drive interfaces, form factors and now, security solutions, can add complexity and increase costs for both IT professionals and OEMs. Making the wrong choice today creates storage islands in the data center with no easy path for upgrades – further complicating an already complex environment. The Seagate Unified Storage architecture converges best-of-breed technologies (Serial Attached SCSI, Small Form Factor and Self-Encrypting Drives) into a foundation for powerful yet simple storage that boosts business and operational efficiency while reducing cost and complexity.

The Seagate Unified Storage architecture delivers a storage foundation for companies that are proactively ensuring the long-term sustainability of their business through best-in-class IT practices. Companies will avoid the risk of impacting their own product quality, competitiveness, or profitability when their storage system infrastructure and data center footprint is optimized across power, cooling and performance density. Because the role of small form factor drives are important to the long-term efficiency and sustainability of any data center enterprise, Seagate will be extending this component into all tiers of its Unified Storage architecture in the future.

Sherman Black, senior vice president, Seagate Core Marketing and Strategy said:

“With tightening IT budgets, Seagate is committed to delivering enterprise-class nearline storage solutions that ensure business sustainability by optimizing resources, reducing environment, energy or social impact and satisfying customer requirements without compromising performance, these new Constellation HDDs provide business continuity in the data center by offering the highest capacities, the lowest power, and the latest in enterprise-class data integrity with SAS 2.0 and AES government-grade encryption.”

For more information about the Constellation family of drives, in addition to Seagate’s other enterprise storage solutions, visit www.seagate.com.

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RAID Array & Server Glossary of Computer Terms (Letter D)

Data Caching
Temporary storage of new write data or high-demand read data in solid state memory in order to accelerate performance. The cached data is later overwritten with newly cached data once it is either written to disk or deemed to be of low demand.

Demand caching
A performance caching technique in which the currently requested data is read in anticipation of another request before its allocated blocks are recycled. Reassignment of the blocks is done on the basis of least recently used (LRU).

Degraded Mode
A RAID mode used when a component drive has failed.

Disk
A non-volatile, randomly addressable, re-writable data storage device, including rotating magnetic and optical disks as well as solid-state disks or other electronic storage elements.

Disk Array
A collection of disks from one or more commonly accessible disk systems. Disk arrays, also known as RAID, allow disk drives to be used together to improve fault tolerance, performance, or both. Disk arrays are commonly used on servers and are becoming more popular on desktops and workstations. See also Array.

Disk Drive
A device for the electronic digital storage of information.

Disk Failure Detection
A RAID controller automatically detects SCSI disk failures. A monitoring process running on the controller checks, among other things, elapsed time on all commands issued to disks. A time-out causes the disk to be “reset” and the command to be retried. If the command times out again, the controller could take the disk “offline.” Mylex DAC960 controllers also monitor SCSI bus parity errors and other potential problems. Any disk with too many errors will also be taken “offline.” See also Offline.

Disk Traveling, Drive Traveling
A process that occurs when the drives are placed in a different order than the original order. Disk traveling can occur whether or not a drive has failed.

Disk System
A storage system capable of supporting only disks.

Drive Groups, Drive Packs
A group of individual disk drives (preferably identical) that are logically tied to each other and are addressed as a single unit. In some cases this may be called a drive “pack” when referring to just the physical devices. All the physical devices in a drive group should have the same size; otherwise, each of the disks in the group will effectively have the capacity of the smallest member. The total size of the drive group will be the size of the smallest disk in the group multiplied by the number of disks in the group. For example, if you have 4 disks of 400MB each and 1 disk of 200MB in a pack, the effective capacity available for use is only 1000MB (5×200), not 1800MB.

Disk/data striping
Spreading data evenly over multiple disks to enhance performance. Sometimes referred to as RAID 0, data striping actually has no redundancy scheme and, therefore, does not provide any fault tolerance (data protection).

Drive
Synonym for disk, hard drive, hard disk, disk drive.

Dual Active
A pair of components, such as storage controllers in a failure tolerant storage system, that share a task or set of tasks when both are functioning normally. When one component of the pair fails, the other takes the entire load. Dual active controllers (also called Active/Active controllers) are connected to the same set of devices and provide a combination of higher I/O performance and greater failure tolerance than a single controller.

Duplexing
Mirroring across two host adapters. Used only with software-based RAID storage systems (usually the embedded network operating system RAID software such as NetWare and Windows NT).

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RAID Array & Server Glossary of Computer Terms (Letter C)

Cache
A temporary storage area for frequently accessed or recently accessed data. Cache is used to speed up data transfer to and from a disk. See also Caching.

Cache Flush
Refers to an operation where all unwritten blocks in a Write-Back Cache are written to the target disk. This operation is necessary before powering down the system.

Cache Line Size
Represents the size of the data “chunk” that will be read or written at one time, and is set in conjunction with stripe size. Under RAID EzAssistTM, the cache line size (also known as Segment Size) should be based on the stripe size you selected. The default segment size for Mylex RAID controllers is 8K. See also Stripe Size.

Caching
Allows data to be stored in a pre-designated area of a disk or RAM. Caching speeds up the operation of RAID systems, disk drives, computers and servers, or other peripheral devices. See also Cache.

Conservative Cache
An operating mode in which system drives configured with the Write-Back Caching policy are treated as though they were configured for Write-Through operation and the cache is flushed.

Consistency Check
A process that verifies the integrity of redundant data. A consistency check on a RAID 1 or RAID 0+1 configuration (mirroring) checks if the data on drives and their mirrored pair are exactly the same. For RAID Level 3 or RAID Level 5, a consistency check calculates the parity from the data written on the disk and compares it to the written parity. A consistency check from Mylex utilities such as Global Array ManagerTM (GAM) or RAID EzAssistTM give the user the ability to have a discrepancy reported and corrected. See also Parity Check.

Controller
An adapter card, RAID controller, or other module that interprets and controls signals between a host and a peripheral device.