All Narfed Up photography and words by Bryan Villarin

Hard Drives

Easier multi-system maintenence

In Hard Drives, Maintenence, Windows on 13 September 2005 with no comments

Back in January, I posted “Defrag automatically in minutes“. I should try to make it easier on myself to maintain systems here at work, too. (I think we have over 50.)

I was thinking that I could setup the batch file on each system and have it run once a month at a specific day in the week (e.g. First Thursday of the month). But, what if the person forgets to leave their computer on?

So, I might go another route. I’ll create a one-page template that states something along these lines:

Your system will run hard drive maintenance (defragmenting) at 1am. When you leave from work, do not turn off your system. You can remove this tomorrow. Thanks!

I could do this once a month, or every other month, perhaps going through a floor of computers in a day and finishing off the rest the next day. The batch file would stay on the computer, and I’d setup the scheduled task to run it that day (then delete itself afterwards).

Thoughts? Good idea, bad idea? Personal experience(s)?

Good Sync

In Asides, Hard Drives, Software on 9 September 2005 with 4 comments

Is Good Sync really good?

Maxtor 200GB HD for $80

In Asides, Hard Drives, Hot Deals on 22 June 2005 with no comments

Outpost has the Maxtor 200GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache Hard Drive at $79.99 [PriceGrabber]. No rebate hassles. Free shipping. (Golf clap: Passwird Deals)

Unstoppable Copier

In Hard Drives, Software, Windows on 25 May 2005 with no comments

Unstoppable Copier looks like a good find. So, I’m posting it here for future reference (of course).

This program is great for recovering files from scratched CD’s or defective floppy/hard disks. Normally when your computer is unable to copy a file from a damaged disk it will abort and delete the portition of the file it has copied. This program however will continue to copy the file right to the end.

Hard drive monitor

In Asides, Freeware, Hard Drives, Software on 13 April 2005 with 1 comment

HDDlife looks like a good program to install - and it’s freeware! I think I’ll put it on my desktop computer at home.