Primary/Secondary IDE Master

With a SATA DVD burner and 2 IDE drives, can I run primary/secondary masters? if so would it be more efficient than primary master/slave that I run now.

setup: SAmsung SATA burner, WD Cavier 120gb 7200rpm (OS) Seagate Barracuda 7200(storage) Abit NF-95 MB

I know that running a sata HD would be the best idea, but funds haven’t been made available for it yet.  And Yeah I know the NF-95 is anceint as well. I was just wondering if using both IDE ports would  speed up read write just a bit or not.

For the most part it won’t make a difference. The only time it would matter is if you are doing disk to disk copy. Reading a game file off a disk won’t have any differences same as saving a file. But IDE can only read/write to one drive at a time. So if you copy from one disk to another it will be faster if each drive was a master on a different channel.

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Tips For Choosing Remote Backup Softwares/Services

Tips For Choosing Remote Backup Softwares/ServicesThree tips for selecting a remote backup software

Do you want a do-it-yourself remote backup service instead of finding a backup provider which offers solutions? Please read on below and following these tips:

  • Is this software able to backup not only data files but also your Mysql / SQL / Exchange or other mail servers? Is it possible to run on your used server operating systems?
  • How will the remote location work? You prefer to store it on a NAS and in a smart way so that not every backup will be fully stored. You should look for software which can store it on NAS and keeps track of keypoint to files or even file blocks in its own database.
  • Which transfer types does this software uses? You don’t want to use the old FTP protocol. You want a different way, and at least it should be 100% secure. So look for way of transferring files with SFTP or with a SSL certificate.

Three tips to select a remote backup service provider

  • Search on your favorite search engine(Google is recommended) for tons of remote backup services. There are so many, first selection you should make is their website. Does it look professional enough? Is there a lot informations to be found on it? The first impression when you see the website of a backup provider could be the most important key for selecting the right remote backup service.
  • Where is the remote service located? I would suggest you look for a company located in your state or country. Reason: when something goes wrong or when you want to meet them for any reason possible, you don’t want to travel a lot. You should also find out in which country the backup data will be stored, because it is remote backup, it can be stored everywhere from Russian to England to the US. Important is that they store in a location which is not to far away from the location of the original data. Reason is that when you need to do a full data recovery you do want a possibility to pick up the data with an external hard drive or other medias instead of download many Tera bytes of data over you internet connection.
  • Ask for an real life meeting, contact by email or phone is not enough. Your backup is important and so will be the remote backup services you are going to select. Make an appointment, let them make a good impression to you.

I was working for over 10 years as an ICT engineer in several large firms. I was responsible for setting up a remote backup services for in-house usage. If you want more tips and how-to’s have a look at my website about remote backup services.

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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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