Pioneer - 400 GB optical discs

Memory size is always been of our interest friends.I have posted many news on HDD or other data storage devices which provides huge memory sizes.This one must be included in that list.Pioneer has claimed that they will represent a optical disc with a storage capacity of 400GB!

Pioneer has developed a 16-layer read-only optical disc which can store 400GB of data.The per-layer capacity is 25GB, the same as that of a Blu-ray Disc, and the multilayer technology will also be applicable to multilayer recordable discs.

Pioneer said,

"Multi-layered discs have been difficult to develop because 'crosstalk' from adjacent layers and transmission loss mean that getting a stable signal from the disc is often nearly impossible."

So it means if this thing got OK signal, then it will be used for data storage in corporates which needs such devices for daily data backup.Thus this will replace the slow tape drives which are in heavy usage now a days.Lets hope this happens,so we can have better and fast solution for data backup/storage.

Pioneer will present the details of this research at the International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage 2008 in Hawaii on 13 July.

source: vnunet

Areca Backup 6.0

Areca Backup is a free and open source file backup tool developed in Java, which can be run on Windows or Linux. It supports data compression and encryption, incremental backup, file history explorer and many other features. Areca Backup also includes a transaction mechanism which guarantees your backups' integrity.

Backup Engine Features :

* Archives compression (Zip & Zip64 format)
* Archives encryption (Triple DES & AES encryption algorithm)
* Storage on local hard drive, network drive, USB key, FTP / FTPs server (with implicit and explicit SSL / TLS)
* Source file filters (by extension, subdirectory, regular expression, size, date, status, with AND/OR operators)
* Incremental, differential and full backup support
* Archives merges / deletion : You can merge contiguous archives in one single archive or safely delete your latest archives.
* As of date recovery : Areca allows you to recover your archives (or single files) as of a specific date.
* Transaction mechanism : All critical processes (such as backups or merges) support a transaction mechanism (with commit / rollback management) which guarantees your backups' integrity.
* Backup reports : Areca generates backup reports that can be stored on your disk or sent by email.
* Post backup scripts : Areca can launch shell scripts after backup.
* Files permissions and symbolic links backup. (Linux only)
* Support for delta backup (store only the modified parts of the files - not the whole files)

Areca Homepage

Recover deleted files on an ext3 file system

It happens to everyone sooner or later: a split second after you hit Enter you realize your mistake, but it's too late; you just deleted a valuable file or directory for which no backup exists. Or maybe you have a backup, but it's a month old... and in shock you see the past month flash before your eyes as you realize in pain what you'll have to do all over again...

Fortunately, you remember that files are never really deleted, at most overwritten by new content. So, you remount the disk read-only as fast as possible. But now?

The most frequently quoted passage comes from the ext3 FAQ itself:

Q: How can I recover (undelete) deleted files from my ext3 partition?

Actually, you can't! This is what one of the developers, Andreas Dilger, said about it:

In order to ensure that ext3 can safely resume an unlink after a crash, it actually zeros out the block pointers in the inode, whereas ext2 just marks these blocks as unused in the block bitmaps and marks the inode as "deleted" and leaves the block pointers alone.

Your only hope is to "grep" for parts of your files that have been deleted and hope for the best.

All information is still there, also the block pointers. It is just slightly less likely that those are still there (than on ext2), since they have to be recovered from the journal. On top of that, the meta data is less coherently related to the real data so that heuristic algorithms are needed to find things back.

Read full article to get deleted data from ext3 @ xs4all.nl

Reviews: Partimage - linux partion image maker

Partimage is a Linux utility which saves partitions having a supported filesystem to an image file. Most Linux and Windows filesystems are supported. The image file can be compressed with the gzip / bzip2 programs to save disk space, and they can be splitted into multiple files to be copied on CDs / DVDs, ... Partitions can also be saved across the network since version 0.6.0 using the partimage network support, or using Samba / NFS. If you don't want to install Partimage, you can download and burn SystemRescueCd. It's a livecd that allows to use Partimage immediately even if your computer has no operating system installed (useful to restore an image), and it allows to save an image on a DVD on the fly.Partimage will only copy data from the used portions of the partition. For speed and efficiency, free blocks are not written to the image file. This is unlike the 'dd' command, which also copies empty blocks. Partimage also works for large, very full partitions. For example, a full 1 GB partition can be compressed with gzip down to 400MB.

More @ partimage.org

Alcohol 1.9.7.6022

Alcohol brings a new meaning to the word multimedia! It is without a doubt a leader in its class, bringing the ability to emulate and record CDs and DVDs together into one amazingly easy to use software program. Using the latest technology the program is constantly being developed and improved to add new features, allowing it to maintain it's position as a leading software package. Imagine being able to store your most used CDs as images on your computer and just call them up at the click of a button! And then run them at 200x the speed of some CD drives and without requiring the CD itself! How about being able to make a backup of that CD onto another CD either using the CD itself or just using the image you have created? This is what Alcohol allows you to do and much more.

What's New

• NEW Alcohol Xtra, Pre-mastering wizard
• NEW Reading Engine, Speed Improved
• NEW Writing engine, Speed Improved
• NEW Data Type Setting options for DVD medium
• NEW SPTD layer version 1.53
• NEW Increased memory buffer for x64 system, if you have more than 4GB RAM installed, the maximum buffer size could be set as 1GB. 32bit system, 3GB ore more RAM installed, you can set max buffer as 512MB
  
• FIX Special ICH9 device drive incompatibility issues
• FIX Missing volume name of discs after auto mount upon system restart
• FIX Addressed some blacklisting problems
• FIX Bugs reported by some users
  
• UPDATE Help files
• UPDATE language files
• UPDATE Devsupp additional support for more drives
• UPDATE Upgraded Starwind ISCSI function
• UPDATE ISCSI controller in Vista, admin mode is no longer required

Home Page

How to install RipIt4Me, DVDShrink and DVDDecrypter in Linux

Although there are some very good programs for dvd ripping and dvd backup under Linux such as devede and k9copy many window users that have moved to Linux still prefer using dvddecrypter and dvdshrink. Therefore they have a dual boot system just to use those programs! In this guide I will explain how it is possible to install dvdshrink and dvddecrypter under Linux using wine. Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X, OpenGL, and Unix. In other words think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs as it is described in its official home page.

For the following tutorial I will be using wine 0.9.45, dvd shrink 3.2.0.15, DVDDecrypter 3.5.4.0 and RipIt4Me 1.7.1.0. You must also find and download those 2 dlls, mfc42.dll and msvcp60.dll. They can also be found in a windows installation in C:\Windows\System32 folder. For the rest of the guide I suppose that you have all of these files under ~/downloads folder.

I have completed the installation and rip process in a Fedora 7 32bit system. Therefore I don't know if it works in other distributions. I believe it should. Please report if you achieve it under another Linux distribution.
Full Tutorial...

Toshiba Leads Industry in Bringing Discrete Track Recording Technology to Prototype of 120GB Hard Disk Drive

Toshiba Corporation today announced a prototype hard disk drive (HDD) that uses Discrete Track Recording (DTR) technology to boost capacity to a record-breaking 120 gigabytes (GB) on a single 1.8-inch platter. The drive is the first in the world to apply DTR, a breakthrough technology that boost the areal density of a perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) by a full 50 percent. Toshiba plans to start mass production of HDDs integrating DTR technology in 2009.

The new prototype HDD is a 1.8-inch PMR HDD. Toshiba's latest 1.8-inch HDD in the market offers a single platter capacity of 80GB; application of DTR technology boosts platter capacity to 120GB, and takes the recording density to 516 megabits per square millimeter (333gigabits per square inch). A servo pattern for tracking control is also formed on the disk.

DTR technology increases recording density by forming a "groove" between the tracks on the PMR medium. The groove reduces signal interference between adjacent data tracks, allowing the pitch of the tracks to be shortened. The improved signal quality also contributes to raising the recording density by 50 percent.

The DTR "groove" forming process is most easily applied to small form factor HDDs, such as 1.8 inch and 2.5 inch drives. It will take these drives to a new level of enhanced capacity.

Full Story @ NewsWire

FlashFXP 3.6 RC1

FlashFXP offers the easiest and fastest way to transfer any file using FTP, providing an exceptionally stable and robust program that you can always count on to get your job done quickly and efficiently. There are many, many features available in FlashFXP. Here are just a few of them:

* Local and Site to Site File transfers.
FlashFXP allows you to transfer files from any FTP server directly to your local hard drive, or transfer files between two ftp sites (Site-to-Site transfers), giving you total control over any situation.
* FTP Proxy, HTTP Proxy, Socks 4 & 5 support.
FlashFXP can handle thousands of connection types. If you are behind a firewall, proxy or gateway, no need to worry, as FlashFXP can be configured to support almost any network configuration.
* Full Featured User Interface with Drag & Drop Support.
FlashFXP has an intuitive and full featured user interface, allowing you to do all the common tasks with just a few clicks. It also support full drag & drop, so you can transfer files, synchronize folders, find files and schedule tasks with just one click.
* Want to learn more about the FlashFXP Features?
Click here for a more complete list of features.
New Features in FlashFXP 3.6 RC1

* Added 'Activate Synchronize Browsing on Connect' per-site option.
* Added -approvessl command line param, this is used for automation to always accept the SSL certifcate. Use with care.
* Added support for MLSD (machine formatted directory lists).
* Added support for UTF8 (iso-8859-1/Latin-1).
* Added parsing of host:port when pasting into the host field of the proxy dialog.
* Added drag/drop support between the local browser and external applications.
* Added support for custom commands in the right-click menu in the FTP File Search Dialog.
* Added move to the right-click menu in the FTP File Search Dialog.

Changes
* Upgraded Zlib component to 1.23.
* Upgraded the folder browse dialog to use the BIF_USENEWUI flag, which gives the dialog a Make Folder button and makes it resizable.
* Optimized the status window text scrolling. It scrolled slower and slower as more text was put into it. This is no longer the case.
* Optimized the FlashFXP load up time. It's about 30% faster now.
* FlashFXP now uses FastMM4 memory manager.
* Upgraded OpenSSL Dll's to 0.9.8e. [view full changelog ]

Home Page

DSynchronize - file synchronization tool

DSynchronize is a standalone file synchronization tool that allows you to synchronize one or more folders on the local PC, removable drive or across a network. It supports file filters based on extension, bi-directional synchronization, and can be run on a regular schedule to synchronize your folders automatically, with an option to run as a Windows service. Other features include support for idle priority, folder creation, command-line operation and (experimental) real-time synchronization.

Dimio

MoveIt2 - automatically move or upload files

MoveIt2 is a utility to automatically move files that are added to a specific folder. You can set filters based on the file name, rename files using regular expressions when moving them to the new destination, create directories based on the file name or date and check if the file already exists. The program can move files from/to local folders as well as FTP directories. MoveIt2 offers quite a few features that make the program very flexible and useful for a variety of file management tasks as well as file backups. It runs in the system tray and automatically monitors the selected folders for any additions that match your file moving rules. You can set up to 5 working threads, each with individual settings. Other features include detailed logging, support for subdirectory scanning, command-line options and more. This free Lite version is restricted to 5 MoveIt2 threads (moving rules), which should be sufficient for most users.

HomePage

Toshiba: 320GB Notebook Drive

Toshiba Corporation has announced two new lineups (MK-GSX and MK-GSY) of hard disk drives for mobile or portable applications that offer either increased capacities or leading performance. Both families of HDDs support an optional Free Fall Sensor function, which detects falling HDD and parks the head before it crashes. Toshiba did not reveal when the new drives are planned to be commercially available.

The flagship Toshiba MK3252GSX model has two 160GB platters, for a total capacity of 320GB. The new hard drive features Serial ATA-300 interface, 5400rpm motor, 8MB buffer and 12ms average seek time. Other members of Toshiba MK-GSX family sport similar technical characteristics, but feature capacities of 250GB, 160GB, 120GB or 80GB. The Toshiba MK2049GSY uses two 100GB platters for a capacity of 200GB. The two main advantages of the HDD are 7200rpm motor and a 16MB buffer. Toshiba declares that the new drive increases the maximum transfer rate by approximately 46% and the average random access time by approximately 8% when compared to the current MK1637GSX model. Other new members of the family feature capacities of 160GB, 120GB or 80GB.

Xbit Laboratories

StarBurn 9 'Evolution' (0x20070820)

StarBurn is a powerful tool for grabbing, burning and mastering CD, DVD, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD media. StarBurn supports all types of optical storage media (including CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE, HD-DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM) as well as a wide variety of burning hardware. With StarBurn you can perform grabbing, copying and burning operations as well as advanced DVD authoring and mastering. These advanced features enable you to create DVD-Video content from custom video files, or compilations from other DVDs. Additionally with the DVD Splitting Wizard you can split DVD-Video discs into smaller parts and burn them to DVD writable discs or share them with the StarPort DVD-ROM emulator and watch DVD video directly on your PC. This enables you to create copies of 8.5 GB dual layer DVDs with just a few mouse clicks. StarBurn is easy to learn and to use. In addition to advanced DVD authoring and mastering features StarBurn offers a number of step-by-step wizards for novice users. StarBurn has a Quick Start Wizard that provides to simplify frequently used operations such as disc copying, grabbing and splitting DVDs.

Key Features:

- All MMC (Multi-Media Command Set) compatible CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD burning hardware is supported. StarBurn deals with devices in a "generic" mode meaning you don't need to get an updated version of our software to support a brand new burner.
- CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, BD-R/RE, HD-DVD-R/RW and DVD-RAM media supported. Including modern high-capacity double layer DVD+R and dual layer DVD-R.
- UDF (Universal Disc Format) file system mastering (UDF 1.02, 1.50 and 2.01). Files larger then 2 GB and with names up to 2048 characters long can now be stored on optical media. You don't need to use third-party tools to split your huge database backups or rename long file names before burning them.
- ISO9660 file system mastering (including Joliet Unicode extensions). The most compatible file system virtually any machine can read.
- Bridge file system (ISO9660/UDF for DVD-Video creation) mastering. StarBurn creates bridge file system which is DVD-Video compatible. This media can be read with both stand-alone DVD players and ancient Windows 95 and DOS machines.
- Session import (appending already created CD/DVD/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD media). In this mode you can use the same media for sequential recording daily. New data will perfectly co-exist with previously recorded data. The only limitation is the physical media capacity.
- DVD-Video main sequence (movie) extraction. StarBurn can re-master the DVD and extract only the movie. This allows you to include just the movie content and without the trailers and advertising from the original DVD. Unwanted video won't be copied, the main movie sequence will be extracted and stored on your hard disk or directly recorded to optical media on-the-fly [view full list of features]

Supported Platforms:
StarBurn is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003 and Vista.

Home Page

Flash drive offers keypad PIN security

Corsair Memory Incorporated has launched its new Flash Padlock drive: a USB flash drive secured with a five-button PIN-based "padlock" built into the drive itself. The PIN interface forces the user to hit the unlock button and the chosen code (up to 10 digits) before accessing the drive. The drive requires no special software to operate. Flash Padlock drives also don’t need a separate partition for the security driver, as password-based drives do. To avoid the code being forgotten, users are invited to register their PIN code on Corsair's Web site. If the PIN is forgotten, the code can then be retrieved by supplying a valid e-mail address and password.

Beyond describing the PIN system, Corsair's description of the drives inner security workings, and any use of encryption, is vague. Presumably, the PIN is stored on a physically separate memory location within the drive. Flash padlock costs $29.95 and $39.95 for the 1GB and 2GB capacities on offer, and can be used on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Apple OS X.

Product Details

Cirago 10GB External HDD

There are a variety of ways to carry data with you. You could buy a notebook computer and schlep it with you everywhere. That can be helpful if you need processing power or internet access on the move. Not everyone, however, has the extra cash for another computer, or the shoulder muscle to tote around a heavy laptop. On the other end of the spectrum are USB keys. Small enough to fit on your key chain, these little gadgets can be the perfect addition to your mobile office. Flash drives cater to almost every need, from storage capacity of up to 16GB to bullet-proof encasement (I wish I were kidding). Nevertheless, 16GB runs you on the expensive side and isn't really all that big considering the price, not to mention their limited lifetimes.

If notebooks and flash drives aren't your style, never fear, there's an alternative: the classic external hard-drive. External HDDs come in a variety of forms, but today we're looking at the 2.5” laptop form-factor drives that are slim and mobile. You can find laptop drives of up to 250GB now, which is far larger than any flash drive, while still keeping the lightweight, small-sized mobility of a solitary hard-drive. Cirago has sent us the 10GB version of their mobile storage line for today's review, which offers drives of up to 120GB in size.

Specifications and features, from the Cirago website, are below:

External Interface: USB 2.0/1.1
Hard Drive Interface: IDE/ATA
Form Factor: 2.5”
Dimension: 10” x 3” x 0.8”
Power: USB bus power
Warranty: 1 year

Full Review...

Alcohol 120% 1.9.6.5403

Alcohol 120%, is a powerful Windows application that makes it easy to create backups of DVDs and CDs. In addition, the program lets you store your most used CDs as images on your computer, so you can call them up at the click of a button. Home users make backup copies of their game CDs and movie DVDs, allowing the kids to treat multimedia disks roughly, without destroying their value. Librarians and school administrators use Alcohol 120% to archive their institutions' collections of recordable media, protecting themselves against the daily wear and tear that damages discs. Business users use Alcohol 120% to make duplicate backup copies of software titles, ensuring that they will continue to have access to their licensed software, even if their physical CDs become damaged and unusable. With Alcohol 120%, you no longer have to worry about CDs or DVDs getting lost, stolen, or damaged. Duplicate discs work just like the originals, and your entire collection can be archived safely.

About Alcohol Free Editon: There are no limitations on this version, other than the ability to create only 6 virtual drives. Our retail version still supports 31 virtual drives. This version of Alcohol 52% is for private, non-commercial, single home computer use only. The license is provided personally to you and for that reason it does not allow you to make any duplicate (copy) to be sold, borrowed, assigned, leased or transferred.

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Driver Magician 3.21

Driver Magician is an easy-to-use and powerful tool for device drivers backup, restoration, update and removal in Windows operation system.

Features:

• Back up device drivers of your computer in four modes.
• Restore device drivers from backup in one mouse click.
• Update device drivers of your PC to improve system performance and stability.
• Uninstall device drivers
• Live Update device identifier database and driver update database.
• Detect unknown devices.
• Get detailed information of the hardware drivers.
• Clone all drivers to an auto-setup package (.EXE), so you can restore drivers without installing Driver Magician.
  

Changelog:

• Add device drivers uninstallation function
• Support Window XP 64-Bit, Windows 2003 64-Bit and Windows Vista 64-Bit
• Rewrite device driver update function
• Improve accuracy of drivers update
• Fix a bug of memory leak
• Update unknown devices database and drivers update database
• Back up drivers of non-present devices
• Some minor tweaks

Home Page

BDS Offers Unlimited Online Backup for Macs

Online storage startup Berkeley Data Systems, which only three days earlier announced it had signed General Electric to a multimillion-dollar backup contract, was back in the storage news April 26 with the public beta release of Mac Mozy—a service a BDS spokesperson called the "first unlimited online backup for Macintosh users worldwide." For $4.95 a month, the hosted service allows Mac users to encrypt and automatically back up all of their digital media content online, including collections from iTunes and iPhoto, the spokesperson said.

"The public beta was built by Mac engineers who understand the needs of the Mac community," said BDS founder and CEO Josh Coates, in American Fork, Utah. "With more than 1,000 participants in our limited beta, we're excited to be the first to embrace the Mac community with this unlimited online backup service." The company did not say how long the public beta version would remain in operation, but it said it is seeking feedback from users about the software and service.

eWeek.com

SelfImage 1.2.1

SelfImage is capable of making an image file of a hard disk or hard disk partition, and can restore an image back to any drive or partition that doesn't have open files. Useful for making backups. Unlike dd for Windows (or cygwin), SelfImage is capable of creating an image of a partition that is currently in use. Additionally, when run on Windows 2000 or XP, SelfImage can create images of partitions that Windows doesn't even recognize or have mounted on a drive letter. Perfect for the dual-boot system, you can create an image backup of a Linux partition directly from Windows.

Features:

• Create 1:1 image files of any mounted (or unmounted on Windows 2000/XP) hard disk partition.
• Can create an image of an entire hard disk, including the master boot record, partition table, and all partitions (Windows 2000/XP)
• Restore previously created images to any partition, even mounted ones, as long as it doesn't have open files.
• On-the-fly compression accelerated with parallel CPU support to take advantage of today's hyperthreaded, multi-core and SMP systems.
• Skip reading a disk's "free space", treating it as if it were zero. This decreases the size of a compressed image and makes it process MUCH faster. NEW Version 1.2.0 can now do this for Linux ext2/ext3 partitions as well.
• NEW Available as an experimental BartPE plugin for use in boot/rescue CDs.
• Network Block Device support to make images of disks on remote machines, and restore back to them.
• Multi-threaded design for maximum throughput and low CPU overhead.
• It's free software - free as in cost, and free as in open source - released under the GNU General Public License.

Home Page

How to copy a DVD-9 using Ripit4Me and DVD Shrink 3.2

Considering that the old DVD-Decrypter cannot copy all the known dvd types, Ripit4Me has come along, giving solutions on dvd copying issues. First of all, you have to install Ripit4Me, DVD Shrink and DVD-Decrypter. Execute Ripit4Me, insert the desirable disc in your drive and choose the “Wizard Mode” option.

Full Tutorial @ My-Guides.net

Cobian Backup

Cobian Backup is a multi-threaded program that can be used to schedule and backup your files and directories from their original location to other directories/drives in the same computer or other computer in your network. FTP backup is also supported in both directions (download and upload). Cobian Backup exists in two different versions: application and service. The program uses very few resources and can be running on the background on your system, checking your backup schedule and executing your backups when necessary. Cobian Backup is not an usual backup application: it only copies your files and folders in original or compressed mode to other destination, creating a security copy as a result. So Cobian Backup can be better described as a "Scheduler for security copies". Cobian Backup supports several methods of compression and strong encryption.

Cobian Home Page