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I've been using Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2009 Suite for the last six months. For $50, you get a very comprehensive hard drive toolbox. It'll do everything on your list, and more. It provides for Linux/DOS and Windows PE CD/DVD boot environments. Documentation is excellent. I've used it for...

Simple 3-column Excel spreadsheet should work fine, which would be easily sortable by either word, date or source column.

I experienced similar symptoms recently - Windows launched normally, but strange behavior when I tried to launch apps. Scanned the system thoroughly for malware, including rootkit scan. All indications were that nothing was wrong with Windows. Eventually - I discovered that after Windows...

I tried an earlier version of Advanced System Care, and soon removed it. The ASC approach was essentially "trust me, just push button to make things better". There was little choice of what operations you wanted performed or to skip any operations you didn't want performed. There was also no...

Google 'partition manager' for apps, both free and paid, that will allow you to manipulate partitions (create, resize, wipe, etc.). Acronis offers DiskDirector for partition management. I can recommend Paragon HD Manager 2009 Suite, which combines full image backup/restore features with full...

The best material I've found is the pleated furnace/AC filters found in Home Depot, Walmart, etc. It usually comes in large sizes (20" X 20", etc.), but is easily cut to required size with scissors. My case flow is front-to-back, and I surface-mount a 5" X 6" piece in front of the input fan...

Easiest way I've found to take out aluminum rivets was to use Dremel cut-off wheel to grind down rivet heads, then the rivets are easily pushed through. Light pressure on the cut-off wheel to prevent breaking it. Wear eye protection. Hope this helps!

These are some general conclusions I reached after modding my case for best combination of quiet and cooling of all components: - Front-to-back cooling was most effective, assuring sufficient air-flow to all components. - Side-intake tends to short-circuit air flow, resulting in HDs sitting in...

Women's elastic hair bands work well for drive-suspension. They're commonly available in the 'beauty' section at Walmart, Rite-Aid, etc. My drive sits in cradle of two of these hair bands. Hope this helps!

That's the attitude! My drive cage was 'unremovable' - until I punched out the 21 rivets that retained it.

I'm using Paragon HD Manager 2009 Suite, which combines image backup/restore functions with full partition-management functions. For image backup/restore only, Acronis TI10 and Terabyte IFW/IFD have worked reliably. I regularly image two critical partitions to protected partition on my main...

The drive cage is so narrow that it would be difficult to isolate the drive(s) from touching the sides of the drive cage in horizontal orientation - and it looks like the drive cage is not removable. I would suggest considering suspending the drive(s) in vertical orientation, leaving you lots...

Google for a review of the actual drive model, either a full review or user-review (Newegg, etc.). SATA rating means nothing. What you should look for is actual practical measured numbers for data throughput, random access time and burst speed from an actual drive benchmark such as HDTach...

I use a combination of partition-imaging and drive-cloning. I get by nicely with a multi-partition main drive of 250GB size. The OS and Critical Data partitions are imaged frequently to a protected backup partition. The main 250GB drive is periodically raw-cloned to a removable 250GB...

I'd first look for something that's touching the fan blades. If nothing internal to the drive cage, check for cable/wire in back of the drive cage that's protruding through the back of the fan grille. It seems that such contact should produce a high-pitched buzz, frequency-dependent on the...

I highly recommend the StarTech HSD100SATBK Trayless SATA Drive Bay as a removable-drive solution - if you don't want the second drive residual. The bay physically resides in a 5" case bay, with SATA and 5V power to the device. The physical SATA drive becomes a plug-in device. 'Trayless'...

. That statement from my post is false. eSATA throughput is better than USB throughput, but eSATA throughput simply can't match native SATA throughput. For an application such as raw sector-by-sector cloning of my 250GB drive to another target 250GB drive, the difference in throughput...

Rubber bands are acceptable for a very temporary solution, but rubber material will decay and fail within weeks. A good commonly-available elastic is women's fabric-covered elastic hair bands, found in the beauty section at Walmart, drug stores, etc. My drive rests in a simple cradle formed...

Intuitively, an English-speaking person would think that the term 'merge' is synonymous with 'combine' - but in partition-management-speak the Merge function does exactly what you described. That's exactly what my Paragon PM software Merge function would do. You could try to recover data...

Check the free utilities offered by your HD manufacturer. They all do pretty much the same thing: - Scan for weak block read. - If weak, attempt to read the data and write it to known-good block. - Mark the bad block to prevent re-use. Hope this helps!

Apparently, different BIOSes respond differently with regard to drive-recognition - no problem with your laptop, big problem with your PC. I seem to be alone in my problems with drive-recognition with the blacX docking station, probably due to my Biostar BIOS. Switchable power for external...

Regarding power to the external drive, power to the drive is usually provided by the PS in the housing itself. The external housing must be powered on. I had initial problems getting my external SATA drive recognized when plugged into a Thermaltake blacX via eSATA cable. My motherboard has no...

It might help to force recognition of the drive by directly connecting external drive to the PC. Physically remove the drive from the external enclosure and connect the drive directly to the PC, forcing recognition by 'found new hardware' Windows function after boot. The 'found new hardware'...

You need partition-management software to manipulate partitions. There are multiple choices of both free and purchased partition managers - just google 'partition manager' and read up on the choices. Since you have some version of Acronis installed, you'll want to pick an app that boots...

Thanks for the info on HotSwap, zolointo. My mobo does not support hot-swapping either. Waiting for delivery of: - Seagate internal SATA drive. - Thermaltake USB/eSATA docking station. - SATA/eSATA cable/bracket (no eSATA port on my mobo). I have Paragon HD Manager 2009, currently used...

I use Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2009, a suite of tools with rich partition-management features combined with partition image backup/restore. Easy to use and reliable. Paragon has other disk-management apps, as does Acronis. There are free partition-management apps as well, but I haven't...

You really have no discrete control of how the WD6400AALS uses it's internal dual platters. Drive firmware controls discrete platter assignment. From your post, your intent seems to be to employ multiple partitions on your single hard drive: You have complete control of: - Number of...

Just switched to Ultimate Defrag (from Perfect Disk 7). The advantage is not simply faster defragging (it is faster), but very broad flexibility in defrag methods and flexible placement of files/folders/archives for best access strategy. You can, for example optimize simply based on...

Most HD manufacturers offer free utilities that will quickly transfer complete disk contents, including multi-partition structure. If you have multi-partitions, the utility will offer choice of auto-resizing partition size for the larger HD or manual size selection. Download, write to floppy...

I've read the reviews for the Samsung 2232BW monitor, but I see Best Buy now list a new variant: the 2232BW+. Does anyone know what features are different in the + version? I did a web search, but not even Samsung lists a + variant for this monitor. Thanks for your attention!

DVDFab Platinum gets recommended often as the best paid program. If I were buying one program for backing up DVDs, this would be it. Outstanding flexibiltiy - backup any title to any media device. For a free decrypter, DVDFab HD is probably the best - simply because it's freqently updated for...

The three cloning utilities I've used have all performed essentially identically: - Western Digital WDDIAG. - Maxtor utility. - Acronis TI10 clone function. All allow cloning of multi-partitioned HDs, from smaller-to-larger and larger-to-smaller (so long as there is sufficient unused space...

Most HD manufacturers offer free utilities to clone the content - and partition structure - of one hard drive to another. Cloning a smaller drive to a larger drive and cloning a larger drive to a smaller drive (assuming there is enough free space on the destination drive) is accomodated...

Currently using this combo (main movie only) - DVDFab HD Decrypter for decryption. - DVDShrink for clipping intro and trailer to reduce size for less compression. - Nero 6 OEM for burning. DVDFab HD Decrypter is updated frequently, as new copy protection schemes appear. DVDShrink, by...

I use furnace filter media, cut-to-fit over the intake port of my case. It's the white fan-fold media you find in large frames at hardware stores like Home Depot and Walmart. It's thick, due to the fan-fold, but the fan-fold provides greater surface area and very low flow-restriction. Due to...

I've seen this before - a nice overclock that's stable under stress tests, but I couldn't even browse the internet without a crash. Perfectly stable with Prime95, SuperPi and all Memtest86 tests - except Memtest86 Test#8. After adjusting RAM timings to pass multiple passes of Memtest86 Test#8...

I recently did a low cost Biostar NF560 A2+ with 5000+ upgrade. Reliable, good overclocking BIOS and runs games such as Crysis and Far Cry just fine. Total upgrade cost less than the cost of the board you're looking at. I expect this combo to last a year or two, with perhaps a graphics card...

You don't state your Vista version - 32-bit or 64-bit. Consider partition management software from vendors such as Paragon, Acronis, Terabyte, etc. Partition management software allows you to create, re-size, delete, merge, split and copy partitions. Some add functions such as partition...

Consider using an OS partition and installing a backup/restore app (Acronis, Terabyte, Paragon, etc.). Consider this with the intent of always having a reliable OS installation backup archive. This means that the backup/restore app is a security app, just as important as your Firewall, AV and...

Reply With Quote One method to re-size partitions - without using special partition-management apps - is to use the disk-cloning function. Cloning utilities must deal with cloning to smaller or larger drives, so they offer the option of changing partition sizes during the clone operation...