Disc Slow Down for XP Users

Tactics used to make new hard drives more efficient could cause problems for Windows XP users. It may mean any new drive bought after next year could be noticeably slower to use on the operating system.
The issue involves the way hard drives are broken down into individual sectors. Until now, it has always been standard for hard drive sectors to be 512 bytes in size. However, not all of each sector is used for storing data. Instead, there is a marker to denote the start of the sector: a space used for codes which are used to check if there is any error with the sector and its contents, and a space between each sector. (Source: arstechnica.com)
The larger the drive, the more sectors there are, and thus the more space unavailable for data storage. While this wasn't a problem in the past, with today's larger drives it has become a significant issue.

512 Byte Sector Limit Scrapped Next Year
The International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association (IDEMA), the global body for drive manufacturers, has now agreed that all drives produced after January next year will use sectors which are 4 kilobytes, which is 8 times larger in size than the standard 512 bytes.
The 4 kilobyte sectors have two beneficial effects: first, it cuts down the amount of disk space used simply for spaces between sectors by seven-eighths (87.5%). Second, it allows more space in each sector to be used for error correction codes. This should drastically increase the reliability of drives.

XP Users Could See 10% Dip in Performance
The problem comes from the fact that while Vista and Windows 7 were both designed with 4K sectors in mind, XP was created long before the industry had decided it would eventually be a standard successor to 512 bytes.
XP can work with a 4K sector based drive, but will simply treat it as if it used 512 byte sectors. This will be fine for reading information, but will introduce an adjustment step when writing to make sure the data fits the sectors correctly. Though this will only take an additional 5 milliseconds, that works out as a decrease in speed of up to 10%, which is likely to be a noticeable deterioration, especially with many files stored on the drive.

Later Systems Unaffected
In addition to Vista and Windows 7, all versions of Apple's OS X system from Tiger (released in 2005) onwards will work fine with the new drives. Most modern Linux based systems should be OK and, being open source, it's much easier to upgrade those which aren't. (Source: bbc.co.uk)
For XP users, it may be a judgment call as to whether the problem is disruptive enough to justify updating to a later operating system at the same time as getting a new drive.

New Dell Vostro Laptops

We have been a big fan of the Dell Vostro 1520 since it's release a couple of years ago and any of our customers that we supplied with it have been happy campers. So we were sorry to hear that the 1520 (and the 17" screened 1720) are being discontinued in favor of the newly released Vostro 3000 series. The 3500 will be the replacement for the old 1520, with the 3300 and 3700 replacing the 1320 and 1720 variants.

The 3500, which interests us the most, comes with Intel Core i3 and Core i5 options. The Intel Core i3-330M is a lower-middle class dual core CPU for laptops and clocks with 2.16 GHz. The difference to the Core i5-430M is the lacking Turbo Boost overclocking and the slower core speed. Each core is based on the Nehalem (Westemere) micro-architecture. Hyperthreading enables the Dual Core CPU to handle 4 threads at once (for a better usage of the pipeline).

The Intel Core i5-430M is a fast middle class dual core CPU for laptops and clocks (due to the Turbo Mode) from 2.26 to 2.53 GHz. Each core is based on the Nehalem (Westemere) micro-architecture. Hyperthreading enables the Dual Core CPU to handle 4 threads at once (for a better usage of the pipeline). Compared to the faster Core i7-620M, the 430M only has 3 MB Level 3 Cache, missing VT-d, Trusted Execution, and AES features and a lower clock speed.

The new 3300 models seem to tick all the boxes, with built in webcam, 802.11n wireless, Windows 7 in 32 and 64 bit flavours, 3-4 GB Ram as standard, good sized hard discs and good looks (see the picture above). We have ordered our first 3500 with an Intel Core i5-430M processor, 3GB RAM and Windows 7 Home Premium 32-Bit and will post a review when we have it in the workshop.

Cobian Backup

Need a good backup solution? Then you should try out the open source Cobian Backup that we have been using for over a year now. One of the issues that we have had with most proprietary backup programs, such as Genie Pro, Acronis, and Norton 360 is that they save the backup files in a compressed proprietary format. While this may save you some time and space it means that if your file becomes corrupt during encoding you won’t be able to recover it. We have had this exact problem in the past and because of this we insist that all backups are now in the native un-encoded file format.

Cobian allows us to do either full, incremental or differential backups using the native file format and can be set up to run as a service, allowing fully automatic backups to be performed. It is flexible, simple to use and, in our experience, very reliable. Oh, and did I mention that it’s free? Check it out.

Blacklisting

We had a problem sending e-mail from an Outlook account on one of our laptops last week and discovered that the problem was due to our IP address being blacklisted by one of the Blacklist services used by our ISP UPC. The problem was due to a customer's PC that was in the workshop which was infected by spamming software and which we connected to our network. Once you are blacklisted you have to make a delisting request directly to the Blacklist service provider, not to your ISP (UPC in our case). This can take up to 24 hours before it happens, leaving one without outgoing e-mail on SMTP-based mail clients e.g. Outlook for that period (Gmail and other web-based mail is not affected).

This is the second time that this has happened since we moved to UPC - it never happened us during the 12 years we were with Eircom - perhaps Eircom don't utilize Blacklist services.

Anyway, all is well again and to prevent a recurrence we have blocked port 25 on our router for all IP addresses except the one assigned to our PC using Outlook. Any customer's computer that is infected with spamming malware will now be blocked from sending via SMTP on the blocked port.

Here is the description of blacklists from www.blacklist.ie where you can check your own blacklisting status.

Blacklists are created and managed by anti-spam organisations and are seen as an effective way of punishing known spammers.
Some of the most widely checked blacklists are Spamcop, MAPS blacklist, and SPAMHaus - blacklist.ie checks against these and many more. These organisations publish blacklists of IP addresses that are known spammers. Blacklists are used by thousands of ISPs as part of their defense against spam. A legitimate email system can also end up being blacklisted, resulting in mail delivery problems and subsequent costs for business.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) subscribe to blacklists in order to filter out spam sent across their network or to their subscribers. If you are listed and an ISP checks against the list, your message will not be delivered.