Yesterday, I walked through how to make your own DOS USB boot disk with the final result being a bootable USB stick that won’t do much more than let you browse the USB stick itself and other internal FAT and FAT32 drives.
Today, we’ll make that USB stick a bit more useful.
The first and easiest thing to do is to copy all of all the DOS files that we extracted yesterday to C:\DOS (or wherever you copied them) to the USB stick. There should be 31 items in the folder (including the CDROM folder at the top).
DOS Files
Copy all of the files and the folder to your bootable USB stick. You will get a few warnings about file conflicts like the one below:
File Conflict Warning
You’ll encounter three such warnings and for each one your should click “Skip” for each one (or the option to decline overwriting each file if the options differ from above). Once completed, you’ll have a DOS boot disk that can now access your optical drives.
In Part 2, we’ll get your bootable USB stick to recognise your other USB devices (like external hard drives, other USB sticks and card readers) – so stay tuned!
With a day to spare, I have completed the review video for the Panasonic SC-BTT75 3D Blu-ray Home Theatre Sound System. I received this system back in December last year and have put it through its paces across a range of activities including:
CD audio playback,
DVD videos,
Blu-ray videos (3D and standard videos),
regular television (primarily through the Foxtel IQ2),
console gaming (primarily with the PlayStation 3),
PC gaming.
As with previous videos it is available in high definition for those of you who would like to watch in the best possible resolution.
Some of the points I cover include:
similarities between this home theatre system and the Panasonic DMP-BDT300GN 3D Blu-ray Player,
audio and video quality,
DLNA functionality,
Viera Cast functionality and its relativity to the functionality found in the Panasonic Viera televisions,
rear speaker setup options,
Audio Return Channel (ARC) functionality.
As with the Panasonic Viera TH-P50VT20A Plasma 3D Television this unit is compatible with the Wi-Fi USB dongle that comes included with the Pansonic DMP-BDT300GN 3D Blu-ray Player.
Don’t forget, you can also check out the unboxing and preview videos if you haven’t already seen them.
If you download a lot of software (legally, mind you) sometimes they will come in the form of an ISO file which is basically an image of an optical disc (be it a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc). Normally, these files had to be burnt to a physical disc before you could actually start installing the software. However, these days with huge hard drives and a slow shift away from optical media many people opt not to burn ISO files to disc and instead mount them as a virtual optical drive in the computer.
One such way of doing this is using a neat little tool called MagicDisc.
What I like about this piece of software is that it is small (1.3MB download), it installs in under a minute and you don’t have to reboot in order to get it working. Furthermore, reading from an ISO file can often be many times faster than reading from a physical disc meaning you get your software installed faster.
Mounting an ISO is an incredibly easy exercise which you can complete as follows:
Right click the MagicDisc icon in the system tray,
Click on “Virtual CD/DVD-ROM”,
Click on the first drive in the list,
Click on “Mount”,
Browse to your ISO file and click “Open”.
Your ISO file will now show up in Windows as a regular optical drive which can be used and accessed as normal. When you have finished, you’ll need to unmount the file (similar to ejecting the disc) by following the above steps again but choose “Unmount” instead of “Mount”.
It’s also worth nothing that MagicDisk supports more than just ISO files including (but not limited to):
BIN (CDRWin),
IMG/CCD (CloneCD),
NRG (Nero).
If you need more than one virtual optical drive you can also add more by right clicking the MagicDisc icon in the system tray and choosing the appropriate option under the “Set Number of Drives” item in the list.
I also acknowledge that there are other alternatives such as Alcohol 120% (which I own) but this requires a reboot to install plus you also need to fork out some cash for it as well. Furthermore, certain games also search for the more popular disc emulation software and may refuse to load if detected.
At any rate, you might not need it right away but MagicDisc is tiny, simple, free and available for 32-bit Windows 98 and later and 64-bit Windows XP and later.
Yesterday, hopefully you would have seen the video unboxing of the Sony PlayStation 3 Slim (320GB model). Today, I recorded the preview video to show you around the console (in particular the stuff on the front, back and also the little flap to unscrew the hard drive should you wish to remove and replace it). I also touched upon a couple of the major pieces of functionality ahead of the formal review. As with the previous video it is available in high definition for those of you who would like to watch in the best possible resolution.
Like the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 is not just a games console but also quote a capable media player (both disc-based or network-based media). It also contains a web browser and a social gaming hub courtesy of PlayStation Network. Today, I hooked it up and gave Gran Turismo 5 a bit of a go in 3D and, so far, my impressions are positive. If you are interested in the specifications of the television, knock yourself out:
Yesterday, I showed off the video unboxing the Panasonic 3D Blu-ray Player (DMP-BDT300GN). Today, I managed to record the preview video to show you around the hardware itself (primarily the various interfaces on the back and what you can expect to find on the front) and also touch upon a couple of the major features of the device ahead of the formal review.
As with the previous video it is available in high definition for those of you who would like to watch in the best possible resolution.
As with the television, we now enter the review period where I will evaluate the Blu-ray as a device in its own right and in conjunction with the Panasonic Viera television. Whilst Blu-ray playback is the most obvious aspect to review, I’ll also check out its suitability for DVDs and CDs, its other media playback functionalities as well as other touches such as ease of user interactivity.
I will try and overlap the review period for the Blu-ray player with the television and release them around the same time.
If you are interested in the specifications of the television, knock yourself out:
Inputs:
Data & Storage:
Discs:
Bluray Disc (BD):
BD-Video
BD-R
BD-RE
Compact Disc (CD):
CD-DA (Music)
CD-R
CD-RW
Digital Versatile Disc (DVD):
DVD-Video
DVD-RAM
DVD±R
DVD±R DL
DVD±RW
Ethernet:
10BASE-T / 100BASE-T
SD Card Slot:
SD, SDHC & SDXC cards supported
USB:
Devices with up to 128GB storage supported on FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32
It seems that many good things come to an end far sooner than we would expect or would hope. SlySoft, the creator of such software including CloneCD, CloneDVD and AnyDVD will be ceasing sales of software including free lifetime upgrades for software from 1 January 2011.
Whilst this is disappointing news, this does mean you can pick up a bargain between now and then as they are offering a 20% discount on all software (which would go about halfway to covering an upgrade to free lifetime support and upgrades from the default two years).
Personally, I am looking at buying a copy of AnyDVD HD so that I can watch Blu-ray movies on my computer as my 30″ Apple Cinema HD monitor does not support HDCP (which you would have hoped Apple would have included for the price they charged had they liked Blu-ray and protocols built by entities other than themselves). AnyDVD HD can also remove region protection from discs on the fly plus the ability to remaster discs without having to rip them to the hard drive. If you found those mandatory chapters on the disc annoying (like the studio introductions or the “copying movies is a crime” trailer for your country) you can also skip over them. AnyDVD HD works quietly in the background without needing you to do anything special to make it work its magic.
Best of all, AnyDVD HD also works with HD DVDs (if you happen to have any), regular DVDs (if you haven’t already ripped them all with Handbrake or another tool) and CDs (if you still have those too). Whilst you may not want to backup a Blu-ray disc to a hard drive you do have the option available to you.
Anyway, check out the product list and see if there is anything that might take your fancy before time runs out.
Over the course of my career where USB flash drives and external flash drives have become more commonplace (compared to the 1990s where floppy disks and compact discs were king) I have been shocked by the number of people that simply pull out a drive without first ejecting it. In some cases, this has lead to some minor inconvenience when Windows wants to rescan the drive in question to ensure everything is okay but there have been other instances where data has been lost.
So what’s the big deal?
Modern operating systems use some form of cache to buffer all of the write operations to both internal and external drives to help improve performance. In the instance of an external drive, if it is particularly busy, these operations are saved up in the cache until one of the following things occur:
the buffer is completely filled and cannot expand,
the external drive has some idle time,
a request to eject the drive is received by the operating system.
The third point is the only one that can be explicitly controlled by a user whilst the first two points are at the mercy of the operating system being used and the way it manages its drives.
Also, some file systems are more resilient than others. FAT based file systems such as FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 can end up with orphaned files if the plug is pulled on an external drive. NTFS is more robust given its journal functionality that allows playback of all file system changes which helps to repair issues as a result of abrupt removal.
So next time you put your hand on the USB plug to disconnect your external drive just make sure you have ejected it first.
Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media
In Windows XP, Vista and 7 the icon in the top left of the screenshot above should be in the system tray (in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, next to the clock). Clicking that icon will give you a list of devices you can eject. Just choose your external drive and Windows will do the rest for you.
So for a few extra seconds, you can have peace of mind that you won’t risk losing any data. Sounds like a good idea to me.
Once in a blue moon, you might find yourself in the situation where you need to slice up that huge hard drive (or maybe a smaller solid state drive) into multiple partitions. Partitions can make your data easier to manage by keeping logical types of data separate. For example, my computer is setup as follows:
128GB SSD:
C Drive (Operating System)
D Drive (Programs – mainly games)
1.5TB HDD:
E Drive (Data)
F Drive (Swap Partition)
Now this isn’t your “run of the mill” sort of setup, most people would just have one gigantic “C Drive” if we happen to buy a ready made computer from a retail outlet. One of the challenges is that with “out of the box” computers is that it can be inconvenient or impossible to repartition a drive with the included tools.
Whilst Windows 7 does have the most mature disk partitioning functionality of any prior Windows operating system, it can only shrink partitions to the desired size as long as there aren’t any “unmovable files” in the way. Unmovable files may be things like system files (i.e. the stuff comprising Windows), swap files (a place for data stored in RAM to be temporarily swapped to disk if RAM needs to be freed up) or other critical files.
That can really throw a wrench in the works.
Luckily, there is a way around it by using a great utility called Parted Magic. It comes in a LiveCD (which is basically a Linux OS that boots entirely off a CD or DVD and loads completely into RAM) and includes a raft of disk utilities including the all important GParted. GParted is similar to a piece of software called Partition Magic (from which “Parted Magic” gets its name). Back in its day, Partition Magic was the number one disk partitioning software that could repartition your drive without having to lose all your data.
Of course, before using any utility that will make modifications to your hard drive, you really should backup everything beforehand. Whilst under normal conditions the software should work fine you should not take unnecessary risks with your data where possible.
So next time you need to do some disk repartitioning, give Parted Magic a go – it might save you a stack of time and effort!
Today was a bit of a slow news day (in my opinion anyway) apart from ongoing analysis over the AFACT vs iiNet case and something over the weekend about the Australian Democrats attempting to become relevant again with a call for copyright legislation on the Internet.
So I thought I’d dig up something not in the news to change things up a bit.
Optical media has been around for yonks (28 years in the case of the compact disc) but I’ve been wondering if we are getting close to scrapping it in favour of flash-based storage. Sure, we’ve only just come out the other side of the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD but I can certainly see the lower end of the optical disc market fading away into insignificance.
You might think I have gone “Ken Bruce” by making such a suggestion.
With downloadable content taking off (legal and illegal), I’d question the feasibility of the CD and to an extent the DVD. Sure, they are dirt cheap to manufacture but moving 32GB of content on CDs (anywhere between 35 to 53 discs dependent on capacity) is far from convenient and would require some sort of protective storage solution. Compare that to a 32GB USB flash drive that slips right into your pocket.
Then there is the fragility of optical media. Ever scratched, cracked or damaged an optical disc? Sometimes I have found damaged discs and have no idea how the damage occurred. Sure, you could stomp on a flash drive or drive over it in a car but I am sure it would survive being sat on and some drops. It does lose out in the waterproof stakes unless you fork out a model with such a feature.
Taking things up to the next level, cloud computing is starting to get a leg up and is an attractive storage medium with increasingly ubiquitous wireless and mobile Internet connectivity. Devices synchronised with the cloud could forgo the need for smaller portable storage media solutions.
Apart from burning one disc containing a Windows password recovery tool, I can’t remember the last time I have burnt a disc. The only discs I legitimately own are my small CD collection (I have a narrow taste) which have had their contents ripped and copied to my computers, iPod and iPhone and a few DVDs that have received similar treatment.
I’m convinced that optical media is on the way out – am I nuts? Do discs feature prominently in your digital life?
