A reader dropped a comment onto another page with a question that I’ve asked myself many times…

I wonder if you can help with this perhaps related problem. Running Windows Vista, it reports the hard drive has only 58 MB of free space. Adding up the folder sizes as shown in the properties window for each folder in Windows Explorer (including hidden folders), indicates that there are hundreds of GB of unused space.
When the limit is reached and there is no space left, by Windows reporting, no files can be saved.
It seems obvious that Windows’ reporting is faulty, but as it stops the saving of files, it cannot be ignored.
Any solution / suggestions?

Unfortunately, it’s not likely that Windows is simply lieing to you. More likely is that your technique of evaluating the disk space used by each folder is flawed. However, just to make sure Windows isn’t lieing, you can run a checkdisk at an administrative command prompt by following these steps (after the jump):

1. Click Start and type cmd.
2. Right-click cmd.exe and then click Run As Administrator.
3. Type chkdsk C: /f /r and then press Enter. I’m assuming the free disk space problem is on your C:\ drive, but you can check any disk this way.
4. When prompted, type Y and press Enter.
5. Restart your computer and be patient while Windows scans your disk.

After you restart your computer, check your free disk space again. If your free disk space still isn’t where you expect it, then it really is being used by something. First, use the Windows Disk Cleanup Wizard to remove unnecessary files.

The trick is finding the files and folders that are using the space. Windows isn’t especially good at this, but there are many free tools that are good at it. My favorite is the free and tiny Scanner disk space usage analysis tool. Download and run the .exe file–no install necessary–and then examine the radial chart to find the folders using the most space. Hover your cursor over the bigger sections of the diagram to find the folders using up lots of space. If you don’t expect that folder to use that space, right-click the section and then click Open. Scanner opens an Explorer window to show you the contents. As you can see from this screenshot, my Shared Virtual Machines folder is using 17 GB–a surprise to me, since I don’t use that folder to store virtual machines anymore.

I managed to clear up about 40GB of unneeded files, postponing the purchase of more hard disks by another couple of months…

After the jump, more CD and DVD burning tools, including Movie Maker and ways to burn ISOs.

Microsoft offers a variety of free applications at Windows Live including Movie Maker. Movie Maker is a simple tool for creating movies and slideshows. You can combine video clips, photos, and audio files; Movie Maker includes a variety of transition effects, the ability to overlay text, and to adjust the lighting and contrast of videos. You can also burn completed movies to disc from within the program. You can click on the DVD icon on the ribbon or select Burn a DVD from the Save movie menu, as shown below.

Those are basic tasks though, what if you want to do more sophisticated things when burning discs like creating a bootable DVD or editing an ISO image that you downloaded? Winzip is able to open ISO image, you can use it to copy files from within an ISO image but it does not include features for creating or modifying them. UltraISO is designed to do exactly that. UltraISO is designed for creating, editing, and converting both bootable and non-bootable ISO images. One feature that I find particularly useful is the ability to burn and an ISO image to a USB drive, its very convenient to have a bootable USB drive with antimalware and troubleshooting tools. For example, you might want to burn the ISO image I describe in Creating a Custom DVD or CD for Eliminating Viruses and Spyware to a thumb drive that you carry around in case one of your less computer proficient relatives asks for help when you’re visiting. In Explorer, Right-click the ISO image and select Open with UltraISO. In the Local: pane in the lower right select the thumb drive, then open the Bootable menu and select Write Disk Image, as shown below. The Write Disk Image dialog box will appear, click Write to write the ISO image to the USB drive.

Tony, I don’t have 10,000 photographs but sometimes it seems like it. I would appreciate your opinion for the best program for organizing my files on the computer. I can’t seem to find something that will permit captioning, date recording and tagging. I often wonder how the NGS organizes their collection which must numer in the millions. Thanks

My answer after the jump…

Hiya. First, I don’t have 10,000 photographs either–Lightroom shows I have 29,089. Of course, I delete most of the pictures I take, so I’ve probably taken 100k+.

On to the question–how to organize pictures. I use Adobe Lightroom, which is fantastic. It actually makes you a better photographer by helping to find your best pictures and quickly do basic editing on your pictures. It’s also perfect for stock photographers like myself, because it supports tagging, titles, and captions, which different stock agencies use to help buyers find pictures. Here’s the rub: Lightroom costs $300. Here’s a video introduction of Lightroom:

If you’re not blown away by the $300 price tag, download the free Lightroom trial and see if it’s worth it.

If you’d like something free, but not quiet as powerful, check out Google Picasa. It’ll let you set captions, tags, etc. Date Recording is generally done by your camera, assuming you have the clock set correctly. Here’s a video demonstration of Picasa:

I also discuss managing pictures (including naming and tagging and such) using the tools built-in to Windows 7 in my video tutorial.

Let me know what you decide!

I created a Windows 7 video training course for InfiniteSkills.com to help people get started with Windows 7. Here’s the course outline–click the links to view the beginning (and most basic) subjects for free. Buy the course online and you’ll get access to the subjects covering the more advanced material.

Introduction

• What You Will Learn
• What’s New In Windows 7

Upgrading to Windows 7

• Is My Computer Ready
• Using the Easy Transfer Wizard in XP
• Installing Windows 7 Over XP Part 1
• Installing Windows 7 Over XP Part 2
• Upgrading Vista to Windows 7 Part 1
• Upgrading Vista to Windows 7 Part 2

The Windows 7 Taskbar and User Interface

• Taskbar
• Start Menu
• Notification Area
• Desktop
• Gadgets
• Working With Windows
• Using Aero

Windows Explorer

• Navigating Folders
• Creating Folders
• Changing Views
• Opening Files
• Creating Files
• Selecting Files, Deleting Files, and Using the Recycle Bin
• Moving and Copying Files
• Adding Shortcuts
• Searching
• Using Libraries

Using Media

• Windows Media Player Part 1
• Windows Media Player Part 2
• Windows Media Center Part 1
• Windows Media Center Part 2
• Copying Pictures From Your Camera
• Browsing Photos With Windows Explorer

Built-in Applications

• Wordpad
• Paint
• Calculator
• Sticky Note
• Games

System Settings

• Volume
• Uninstalling Programs
• Accessibility Options
• Startup Programs
• Logging On Automatically
• ReadyBoost

Networking

• Connecting to a Wired Network
• Connecting to a Wireless Network
• Sharing Files With HomeGroups

Security

• Windows Update
• Windows Defender
• Managing Users
• Family Safety
• Sharing Folders on a Computer
• Encrypting Files Part 1
• Encrypting Files Part 2
• Encrypting Files Part 3
• Encrypting Files Part 4
• Encrypting Files Part 5
• Encrypting Files Part 6

Printing

• Printing
• Sharing and Network Printers

Backing Up and Restoring Your Important Files

• Scheduling Backups
• Restoring Files Part 1
• Restoring Files Part 2
• Burning CDs and DVDs
• Online Backups

Browsing the Web

• What’s New in Internet Explorer 8
• Searching
• Using Favorites
• Using the History
• Using RSS
• Using InPrivate Browsing and Filtering
• Managing Add-ons
• Internet Explorer Tips and Tricks

Troubleshooting

• Low Disk Space
• Fixing a Computer That Won’t Start
• Recovering From Malware
• Troubleshooting Performance Problems
• Task Manager
• Hardware That Doesn’t Work
• Recording Problems
• Other Troubleshooting Tools Part 1
• Other Troubleshooting Tools Part 2

Systems Administration

• Configuring a New Hard Disk
• Customizing the Appearance of Windows
• Configuring Your Mouse
• Power Settings
• Setting Time, Date, and Time Zone
• Configuring the Language
• Customizing the Explorer Interface
• Customizing the User Interface
• Enabling and Using Remote Desktop

Summary

• About the Author
• Goodbye

Can I add extra pixels in a picture saved im my computer by Photoshop or something else for enlarge or resize it??

Lauro

Brasil

Answer:

Yes, but there’s hardly ever any reason to. When you print the picture, your printer or the printing service you use will automatically scale the picture as necessary. Nonetheless, I have run into printing services that insisted on having the picture at 300dpi (or 250 dpi or 200 dpi).

I use Photoshop Elements, but I think the steps are the same in Photoshop:

1. Open your picture.
2. Click Image, click Resize, and then click Image Size.
3. Select the Resample Image check box (if it’s not already selected). You can select Bicubic from the list. Also make sure that the Constrain Proportions check box is selected.
4. Change the Width and Height in the Pixel Dimensions group to the desired resolution. If you need to achieve a specific DPI, change the Width, Height, and Resolution settings in the Document Size group.
   
5. Click OK.

Photoshop will think for a second and then show your bigger picture. Of course, this doesn’t make your picture any sharper or add any detail–it just makes it bigger and a little blurrier. Photoshop can’t add information where their wasn’t any previously.

1. Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Manage.

2. Expand Storage, and then click Disk Management.

3. Click the Action menu, and then click Attach VHD.

4. Click the Browse button, select your VHD file, and then click OK twice.

5. Open Explorer and access the VHD like a newly created hard disk. It’ll show up as a blue disk in the Disk Management snap-in. For example, mine appeared as the H: drive.

How dare you.

Here’s an easy way to stop Windows 7 from nagging you: stop the Windows Update service. It’ll automatically restart the next time you start your computer. Just follow these steps:

1. Click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Manage.

2. In the Details pane, expand Services and Applications, and then click Services.

3. Scroll down to Windows Update. Right-click Windows Update, and then click Stop.

No more nagging!

You can also stop the Windows Update service from a script or command prompt, provided you have administrative privileges. Just run this command:

net stop wuauserv

How to create a bootable disc? You could do it with Linux, but then you’d have to learn another OS, I prefer to stick with Windows. Besides, there are a lot of useful tools already available for Windows. You may have heard of the Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE or simply PE) that has been available to computer vendors for years. Microsoft made it available to everyone a few years ago, and I’ve found it to be extremely useful. There are several ways to create a customized Windows PE disc, the simplest approach is to use the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) that some colleagues of mine in the Solutions Accelerators Team (SAT) at Microsoft created. You’ll need several gigs of storage space to download and use everything described below, make sure you have enough room before you start!

1. Download and install MDT 2010, you can use the default values for the installation.
2. Download Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 and burn the disc image to a DVD. Run StartCD.exe from the DVD to install the AIK on your computer. Once again, you can use the default values for the installation. This is a big file, if you have an MSDN subscription I suggest that you download it from there because the MSDN downloader can resume interrupted downloads from where they left off.
3. Download malware scanning tools and other utilities designed for offline use. There are a lot of free antimalware tools available, but for this troubleshooting disc you need those that will work in offline mode, I’ve been able to use Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool, Alwil Software’s avast! Virus Cleaner, and McAfee AVERT Stinger with ease.
4. To create a Deployment Share in MDT
   1. Open Deployment Workbench from the Start Menu.
   2. In the console tree expand Deployment Workbench and right-click Deployment Shares.
   3. Select New Deployment Shares and specify a location for the deployment share such as C:\Deploymentshare.
   4. Accept the default values for the rest of the options and complete the wizard.
5. You’re ready to create the troubleshooting disc, to do so
   1. In the console tree expand Deployment Workbench and right-click Deployment Shares.
   2. Right-click the deployment share you created in the details pane and select Properties.
   3. Select the Windows PE x86 Settings tab and click Generate a Generic Windows PE WIM File.
   4. Enter an Image Description such as Offline Troubleshooting.
   5. Select Generate a generic bootable ISO image.
   6. Enter an ISO file name such as Troubleshooting_Disc.iso.
   7. Next to Extra Directory to Add enter the path to the folder where you saved the malware and troubleshooting tools in task 3.
   8. Set the scratch space size to: 128.
   9. Click on OK.
   10. Right click on the Deployment Share and choose Update Deployment Share.
   11. Click on Next two times, and then click Finish.
   12. Burn the iso image file to a CD-ROM or DVD, it will be located in a directory called Boot folder in the deployment share folder, e.g. c:\Deploymentshare\Boot folder\Troubleshooting_Disc.iso.

Your troubleshooting disc is ready to go, when you boot the stricken system the system drive is X:, and you’ll find your troubleshooting tools in the root of that drive.

This brief article has only brushed the surface of what’s available in MDT, if you have to manage more than a few PCs or if you have to install Windows frequently then you should look at what else it has to offer. MDT greatly simplifies the tasks involved in creating and maintaining installation images and deploying those images to different computers.

Kurt Dillard

kurtdillard.com

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1. Change the way Control Panel applets are displayed by clicking the Category button just to the right the View by: label and select either Small icons or Large icons. This is how I prefer to see Control Panel, but it can be tough to find what you want amongst the 50 or more icons.
2. Another way is to launch Windows Defender directly, click Start; in the search box, type Defender; click Windows Defender to open the program; and then click Scan.

There are some others I usually just access with the search box like Credential Manager, Configuration Manager, Autoplay, and Desktop Gadgets.

Kurt Dillard

kurtdillard.com

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I go on and on about how important backup up your data is. All hard disks fail eventually, and when they do, you’ll lose all your stuff–including your personal pictures and home videos.

So, you need to backup. I tell most people to buy a USB drive a bit bigger than their computer’s C:\ drive and use that for backups. That works well and protects you from a failed hard disk or accidentally deleted files–but it doesn’t protect you from fire or theft, because you’d lose your backup drive, too.

Businesses do off-site backups for disaster recovery. Basically they take their backup drives or tapes to a different location that they can get to if something goes really bad. That doesn’t work well for people, though, because even if you buy a second external drive and take it to a friend’s house, you’ll forget to do it regularly. For the home user (myself included), backups must be automated or they’ll be forgotten.

Enter online backup services, which copy files from your computer to a server on the Internet. When you lose your data, you download it back from them. I checked out the major online backup services and found one that’s working for me.

Online backup services either charge based on how many GB of data you upload or they give you a flat monthly rate. Some of those with the flat monthly rate cap the amount of data you can store to, say, 100GB. I have about a terabyte (1,000 GB) to backup. That means paying per GB is out of the question for me, and I’m way past any caps. If you don’t have as much data, the math might be different.

Consider customer service as you’re evaluating online backups. When you do need to restore files, you’ll discover that it’s not the backing up that’s important–it’s the restoring. You’ll be really disappointed in the service if you can’t access your files or if some of your files are missing.

Most of these services offer similar feature sets–they backup and restore your files. Some of the distinguishing features are:

• Support for MacOS X and Linux in addition to Windows
• Storing multiple revisions of a file (in case you need to go back to a version of a Word file from two months ago)
• Sharing files with other users
• Software includes local backup capabilities (not required with Windows Vista or Windows 7)
• Business, enterprise, or server backup (note that I focus on backups for home users)

The limitations were more important than the features to me. Some limitations of different services include:

• Limiting the amount of backups per month
• Not backup up network drives
• Not backing up external drives
• Not backing up large files over a specific size

I also recommend picking one of the big services–you don’t want your backup service going out of business. Keep these factors in mind as you review my notes of the individual services.

Unlimited Online Backup Services

If you have more than 100GB of data, I suggest choosing an unlimited backup service. I can’t fathom how they can make money redundantly storing a terabyte of data for me for $5/month, but it’s not my problem!

MozyHome – $5/month Unlimited

Ultimately I selected MozyHome: cheap, a fixed rate with unlimited storage, and with some exceptions, generally good reviews. MozyHome also allows me to throttle the upstream bandwidth and schedule backups at night, which is important because my upstream connection must be shared nicely with my self-hosted photo album.

The $5/month covers one computer, so if you have multiple computers, you’ll need to pay $5/month for each of them. You can’t backup shared folders.

Once your backup starts, double-check to make sure everything is being backed up. If a folder shows a grey check box, that means not everything in the folder is being backed up. For me, MozyHome automatically de-selected files over 50MB. I have LOTS of files over 50MB–including many videos that I’ve recorded for work. Hey, I have a 1080P video camera–even a few minutes of video exceed a gigabyte.

MozyHome offers 2 GB of storage for free, so if you just have a few files, go ahead and take advantage of them.

Carbonite – $5/month Unlimited

Users complain Carbonite won’t backup all file types, even if you select them. This is okay for the average user. If you’re a developer and you want to make sure your MSIs are backed up, you can manually choose to backup other file types.

Carbonite won’t backup external drives, which is a problem for me. Otherwise, they’re very comparable to MozyHome.

CrashPlan – $4.50/month Unlimited

CrashPlan can store multiple versions of a file (in case you need to go back to an earlier revision) and they provide both local and off-site backups. Of course, you don’t really need the local backups if you’re using Vista or Windows 7, because they have backup software built-in.

CrashPlan offers a “seeding” service which starts your backup by shipping storage the old fashioned way–with UPS. This helps to overcome the VERY LONG initial backup period. For MozyHome, the initial backup has taken months. I didn’t mind waiting because I have local backups anyway, but if you’re willing to spend some time with shipping, this is a nice feature.

CrashPlan charges you more for constant backup without ads, so you might not actually get the $4.50/month price and be happy with it.

CrashPlan also offers a Linux client.

ElephantDrive – $5/month Unlimited

ElephantDrive works, but they limit files to 1 GB each. If you upgrade to their $10/month plan (which allows up to 4 computers to be backed up), they’ll backup files up to 2GB in size. I still need bigger files, but most people don’t.

You can also use it for file sharing on the Internet, because you can upload any file.

Like CrashPlan, ElephantDrive can store multiple revisions of files.

BackBlaze – $5/month Unlimited

Files are limited to 4GB each and they can store multiple revisions of files.

Space-Limited Online Backup Services

If you don’t have that much data, these might be good for you:

iDrive – $5/month for 150GB or $15/month for 500GB

Free 2GB backups and they store multiple versions of your files.

SpiderOak – $10/mo per 10GB or $100/year per 100GB

They support Windows, MacOS X, and Linux and store multiple versions of files, but the per-gigabyte pricing would get expensive for me. They provide file-sharing capabilities, too

Dropbox: $10/month for 10GB or $20/month for 100GB

They support Windows, MacOS X, and Linux. Like MozyHome, they give you 2GB for free. DropBox makes sharing files with other users easier, so it actually provides services beyond basic backup and restore.

SOSOnline: $30/year for 5GB or $50/year for 15GB

Their software provides local backup, too. The low storage limits eliminated SOSOnline as an option for me.

IBackup: $1/gb/month

IBackup is more of a business-oriented service, and their pricing reflects that. Supports Windows, MacOS X, and Linux. Their simple pricing plan turns out to be awful if you have large amounts of data, as I do.

Summary

If you want an easy choice, just pick MozyHome like I did (I don’t have a business relationship with them–I’m not being paid), double-check that all your important files are being backed up, and go on with your life.

There are MANY other online backup services that I haven’t reviewed: Syncplicity, Humyo, Data Desposit Box, Zectar Zumodrive, Livedrive, Microsoft Live Mesh, BullGuard, Fabrik, and others! As I mentioned above, try to stick with one of the big providers to reduce the risk that they’ll have terrible service when you need a restore or that they go bankrupt on you.

If you have real-world experience with a backup service, please describe it in the comments.

Firefox 3.6 has a couple of minor improvements. The one user’s will most appreciate is instant previews of personas, which are skins for Firefox. Basically, it shows a picture over the unused portions of your browser window. Go to GetPersonas.com to check them out.

As I detail in that video, there are also many behind-the-scenes improvements. Performance is up about 15% compared to Firefox 3.5, and the new version has support for several new types of Web content, including full-screen video (without using Flash), gradient backgrounds in CSS, Web Open Fonts Format, drag-and-drop support, and the ability for Web pages to interact with your computers accelerometer (if you have one, like the new Macs do).

I also cover how to fix incompatible add-ons. Basically, grab the Add-on Compatibility Reporter add-on and restart Firefox. Easy.

Over at the Official Google Webmaster Blog, Matt warns that Google might (someday) factor in page load times when returning search results. In other words, if your website is slow, it might fall off the search rankings.

He pointed me to a site I hadn’t seen before–webpagetest.org. It’s fantastic. I’ve used many different website optimization tools (including Web Page Analyzer, Google Webmaster Tools, and Page Speed), but WebPageTest provides several different sources throughout the world, and different bandwidths, with different browser versions, and a fantastic user interface.

I used it to examine the performance of two of my sites–www.vistaclues.com and www.northrup.org. Northrup.org was pretty good already because I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing it, but I did discover that simultaneous connections with older browsers was limiting the page load time a bit (despite the fact that I already use parallelization), so I juggled the locations of images around a bit.

VistaClues, however, was fairly awful. You can see the test results here. Specifically, compare my first test result with my last (with the same parameters).

Overall, I increased performance by about 250% and decreased bandwidth usage by about 30%:

• I eliminated a few unnecessary objects (including a reference to an object that didn’t exist because the theme developer had left it out).
• I enabled gZip compression. I had incorrectly setup the WP Super Cache plugin for WordPress and disabled gZip.
• I implemented parallelization by adding the sub-domains images1.vistaclues.com through images5.vistaclues.com and referencing different images and objects using these hostnames–even though they point back to www.vistaclues.com. I also activated the Parallelize WordPress plug-in.
• I removed the stupid Gravatar (Avatar) pictures in the comments. Almost nobody used them and they REALLY caused a lot of unnecessary requests.
• I enabled caching for images, CSS files, JavaScript files, and other static files by editing Apache’s .htaccess file. No, I’m not becoming a Linux guy. ;)
• I minified some scripts and plug-ins by activating the WP Minify plug-in.
• I disabled some WordPress plug-ins that I was no longer using to decrease the page generation time.

With all that said, 6.4 seconds still seems like a long time to wait for the first page to load. Other pages do load faster, and the page generally appears within a couple of seconds. So, don’t take the page load time literally, just use it as a point of reference.

Add a comment if you have other performance suggestions or different performance tools.

Here’s how to check which updates have been installed on your Windows 7 computer:

• Click Start, type installed updates, and then press Enter.

As shown above, Windows displays all the Microsoft updates that have been installed (including those for Microsoft Office). To check your service pack level, do this:

• Click Start, type winver, and then press Enter.

As shown above, Windows 7 with no service packs is version 6.1 build 7600. If you have a service pack installed, it’ll be shown on this page. As of the time of this writing, however, Service Pack 1 is still being tested by Microsoft.

You could also click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties. The Windows edition group at the top will show you any service packs installed.

If your computer seems slow and you’ve already upgraded your memory (say, to 2GB or higher), your next step might be to upgrade the hard disk. First, check out your current hard disk’s performance using HD Tune. Write down the average transfer rate and access times so you’ll know how much better your new disk is. If you’re running Windows Vista or Windows 7, you can use the Windows Experience Index to get a rough estimate of your disk speed.

Now, figure out what type of disk you want to buy. Write down your choices as you go:

• Internal or external. If you want to improve system performance, you’ll need to replace your system disk, which means you’ll want to buy an internal drive. They’re more work to install, but they’re cheaper and faster. If you just want to add a second disk for backup or more capacity, go external.
• Physical size. If you have a laptop, you probably need a 2.5 inch drive. If you have a desktop, you’ll want a 3.5 inch drive.
• Interface. Nowadays, most computers use Serial ATA (SATA). If you want an external drive (which will save you from having to open your computer’s case), use external Serial ATA (eSATA) if your computer has it. If not, use Firewire (if you have it). As a last resort, you can use the USB interface. Your disk will be slow, though. If you choose Firewire (IEEE 1394) or USB, buy a disk with low RPMs, because you’ll save money and electricity, and the performance difference won’t much matter. This picture shows internal SATA (in red) and external SATA (in black):

Now that you’ve written down your choices, do a search at Amazon.com or TigerDirect.com. For example, you could search for “3.5 inch external serial ata” or “2.5 inch internal serial ata”. You’ll see many different models, with varying speeds and capacities. Consider these points:

• Speed. For conventional drives, the most important metric is revolutions per minute (RPM). Typically disks come in 4500, 5400, 7200, and 10000 RPMs. Faster is better, but uses more power.
• Capacity. Bigger is better because you can store more stuff, of course. For conventional drives, bigger drives also improve performance–usually. For example, if you compare two 7200 RPM drives at 500GB and 1.5TB, the larger drive will probably be faster. You always need more disk space, so buy the biggest drive you can.
• Solid-state or conventional. Super-expensive solid-state drives use flash memory instead of rotating magnetic media like a conventional disk. As I described here, they’re each fast in their own way. Conventional disks are still the best value for most people. Get a solid-state disk only if you’re a mobile user and you want to improve battery life or need durability (and you don’t mind Windows being a bit slower).

Here are some factors to ignore:

• Brand. For home users, this doesn’t much matter. You’ll find people with horror stories about every brand of disk. So, disregard it.
• Throughput. Drive manufacturers always list the maximum theoretical throughput of the disk, but it has no bearing on the drive’s actual performance. So, just disregard it.

Hard disks sometimes attempt to distinguish themselves based on power usage, noise level, reliability, and warranty. If power usage and noise level are important to you, find a disk that specializes in those areas. I generally dismiss reliability claims, because for home use, it doesn’t make much of a difference. Hard disk manufacturers have definitely cranked out some unreliable drives, but there’s no good way to know if a current model is going to be reliable. Nowadays, most drives are plenty reliable, but regardless, you’ll need an extra disk to make backups. I dismiss warranty, too, because by the time the hard disk dies, newer, better disks will be available for less, anyway.

Checklist

Wait, don’t click buy yet! Double-check these things:

• Does your computer support the interface?
• Do you have a cable to connect the hard disk?
• If the hard disk is internal, does your computer have an extra power connector? If not, buy a Y-adapter/power splitter.
• If the hard disk is internal, do you have room in your computer to store it? if the storage big is bigger than 3.5″, be sure your disk includes mounting rails. OK, I admit it–my computer has a non-mounted hard disk floating free inside the case, but that’s a bad idea.
• How are you going to back it up? If it’s worth saving, it’s worth backing up. Consider buying two drives so you know you have enough space for backups.

During installation, you can skip entering the Windows 7 Product Key–just leave the field blank (as shown above).

Windows will run normally for 30 days, but it’ll be nagging you to enter the product key in the whole time. After 30 days, it’ll lock itself down and prevent you from doing most tasks on the computer. No worries, just follow these steps:

1. Click Start and then type cmd.

2. On the Start menu, right-click cmd and then press Enter.

3. When prompted by User Account Control, click Yes to start the command prompt with administrative privileges.

4. Type slmgr -rearm, and the press Enter.

5. When prompted, click OK to restart your computer.

Windows 7 will begin nagging you again, but you’ll have another 30 days. You can only rearm Windows 7 three times, allowing you a total of 120 days. Sure, it won’t last forever, but it’s great for those test computers that you tend to regularly re-install.

After that? Buy a license! You can do it directly from Windows, online, or at just about any electronics store.

One of the best ways to improve your system performance is to remove any unnecessary startup applications. In Windows Vista, I suggested changing startup programs using Windows Defender. Unfortunately, Microsoft removed that capability in Windows 7.

In Windows 7, follow these steps to remove startup applications with the System Configuration tool:

1. Check the programs settings. Typically, programs (such as instant messaging applications) configure themselves to start automatically. The best way to turn this off is to find the application-specific option and disable it.

If you can’t find that, you’ll have to manually remove it:

2. Click Start, type msconfig, and then press Enter.

3. In the System Configuration tool, click the Startup tab (as shown above).

4. Clear the checkboxes for any applications you don’t want to run automatically. There will probably be some apps you don’t recognize–Google the name of the app before you remove it. For example, I almost removed the SMax4PNP application. After Googling it, I discovered that my sound card used it, and decided to keep it around.

5. Click OK.

6. When prompted, click Exit without restart. Or, restart your computer. Whatever.

The next time you restart your computer, the programs you deselected won’t start.

That’s a screenshot from my favorite free tool for testing hard disk performance–HD Tune (there’s a pro version you can buy, too). That’s from my Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 1.5 TB SATA drive backup drive.

The Blue Line–Transfer Rate

First, the blue line is the transfer rate. That’s the speed which the hard disk sends data to the computer when a big file is lined up nicely–defragmented, in other words. Notice that the line starts high (at 126 MB/sec) and drops (to about 57 MB/sec). That’s because the test moves from the outside of the drive to the inside. Disk drives are round, like a record, and so the outside spins faster (in inches/sec) from the inside.

Windows starts storing data on the outside of your disk, and works its way towards the center. That way, your files will be as fast as possible. The fact that the performance drops by 65% from the outside to the inside of the disk helps illustrate that disk performance is WAY better for files stored on the outside of the disk. It also shows one big reason why, as your disk fills up, it also slows down.

The Yellow Dots–Access Time

The yellow dots show random access time. That’s the time it takes for the disk to jump from one part of the drive to the next. In other words, that’s how long it takes to jump from the end of one file to the beginning of the next, or to jump between two segments of a fragmented file. The average access time for this disk is 13.5 ms–but lower would be better.

USB Flash Drive Performance

The previous graph shows typical performance from a hard disk, but USB flash drives behave very differently. They don’t have spinning platters–data is read by sending electrical signals. If you think they’ll be faster, you’re right. If you think they’ll be slower, you’re right.

As you can see, the transfer rate is WAY slower. My Seagate had an average transfer rate of 100 MB/sec, but my USB flash drive was at 16 MB/sec–about 6X slower. The access time is 0.8 ms, though–about 17X faster. So, USB flash drives are faster at random access and slower at sequential reads.

ReadyBoost uses this to improve the performance of Windows by caching files from the hard disk to a flash drive. If it would be faster to read it from the flash drive (like, if it’s a small segment of data that would need to be randomly accessed), it reads it from the flash drive. Otherwise, it takes advantage of the hard disks high sequential read performance.

Many new mobile computers ship with flash drives instead of conventional disk drives. In some ways, performance is better, and in other ways, performance is worse. The transfer rates of flash drives will increase over time, however, and Windows 7 includes some major improvements that speed up flash drives.

How to Get the Best Performance

I do a great deal of photo and video editing with my Canon EOS 5D Mark II–that’s 21 megapixel pictures and 1080P video–and a really fast disk makes things much more efficient. When I bought a new computer, I set it up with a very fast disk subsystem. Not the fastest in the world, mind, you, but a good bang for the buck. I chose two EXPENSIVE 15,000 RPM disks and put them in a RAID 0 array, which reads and writes to both disks at the same time. Here’s the performance I got:

Overall, that’s about twice as fast as my 1.5 TB drive (though I might have expected better…)

On Laptop Performance

So far, I’ve been discussing the disk performance of my desktop computer (a Dell Precision T3400). The main reason I bought a desktop was to get better disk performance–laptops tend to be really bad, owing to the use of small disks. Remember my lecture about how disks perform best at the outside edge of the platter? Well, smaller disks have smaller outside edges, so performance drops. Laptop disks also tend to be optimized to reduce power usage, so they spin at a slower RPM. Here’s the disk that shipped with my Dell D820:

Abysmal, right? The average transfer rate is 3X slower than the cheap Seagate drive I began this discussion with. All hope is not lost, however. It’s not too hard to upgrade a laptop hard disk–just backup to an external disk, swap drives, and then do restore to the new disk. I upgraded to a newer, faster, 500GB drive and got this performance:

The new disk doubled the average transfer rate (though the access time actually dropped a bit). It sped up the computer noticeably. So, if our laptop seems slow, upgrading the disk might be the right choice.

Got a fast or slow disk? Need some advice about hard disk performance? Tell me about it in the comments.

Windows 7 let’s you maximize a window by dragging it to the top of the screen, or size a window to half the screen by dragging it to the left or right side of the screen. I hate it–I already know other ways to do it, and sometimes it resizes windows for me when I want to just move them to the edge of the screen.

Disabling it is easy, if you know where to look. Watch the video above, or follow these steps (after the jump):

1. Click Start and then click Control Panel.

2. Click Ease Of Access, Ease Of Access Center, and then Make the mouse easier to use (at the bottom of the screen).

3. Clear the Prevent windows from beign automatically arranged when moving to the edge of the screen checkbox.

4. Click OK.