Defragging HD when it is in idle

Yes, defragmenting your HARD DISK is one of the ways to speed up your computer but also the most that takes a lot of time to finish. That's the reason why sometimes computer users doesn't defrag anymore their PC's hard drive. Luckily there is a freeware called Smart Defrag that can defrag you hard drive automatically when your PC is in idle mode.

This is very helpful to those who have no time to defrag their PC but want to make sure their hard drive is in top performance. SmartDefrag motto is "Install It and Forget It", meaning after you've install this freeware, it will do its work in the background without interrupting you from your works. SmartDefrag automatically defrag your HD if your PC is in idle or you can schedule when you want to defrag your harddrive which you can then instruct SmartDefrag to shutdown your computer after it finishes its work.

This is highly recommended. You can download SmatDefrag here.

WIndows Vista Readyboost: Use FLASHDRIVE as RAM

Till this date, Microsoft's windows had two options for the memory requirement of the computer, so that the computing can be done at cheaper rates and that too without installing the physical memory.

1. Physical Memory (RAM)
2. Page File (A virtual memory file, stored on hard disk).

The page file is used by the Windows OS to cater the needs of various applications when the physical memory is fully used up. The reason for that is, that Virtual memory is slower as compared to the physical memory and thus Physical memory takes the first priority.

However, with the release of Windows Vista, Microsoft has introduced a new technology called ReadyBoost. With the help of this technology one can use any Flash drive, SD Cards, CF Cards as the third memory option for the computer.

Now, the benefits of Flash Drive or Cards as a source of Memory :

1. It is faster than the virtual memory which is accessed through the hard disk drive.
2. It is cheaper as compared to the actually Physical Memory.

How can it be activated ?

In order to activate the ReadyBoost technology on your FlashDrive or Memory Cards, you have to follow these steps…

1. Open My Computer.
2. Right Click on the Removable Disk Drive and select Properties.
3. Click on ReadyBoost Tab.
4. Enable the feature by selecting the option and allocate the amount of space you want to use as memory.

Things to be noted….

1. Regardless of the fact that you use Readyboost or not, you need at least 512 Mb of memory to run Windows Vista decently.
2. If your device is not giving the option of ReadyBoost then it means that it doesn't clear up the minimum data trasfer rate required by ReadBoost technology.

How to Block USB devices in XP

A simple trick for XP user..Sometimes we have to protect our data specially at work where confidentiality is a concern, and the biggest problem we face that everybody seems to take everybody's data they are a bit careless about their data security. Pen drives becoming a handy tool to get data is the biggest problem we all face today. Not only in our work,school etc., it is part of everybody's life that. To this what can be done is that the USB can be blocked and then stopping the use of USB drives. Here is a simple registry hack to do so, try it with care.

1. Go to Start –> Run, type Regedit.
2. Go to Hkey_Local_Machine\System\CurrentControlset\Services\USBStor
3. In the right pane, look for value Start and have value as 0000000(3)
4. Double click on that and change that value to 4.

You might be required to restart the PC, and then you are done with it, USB is now blocked.
In case if you want to get the USB unblocked, just change the value again to 3.
ramil