Tips Of The Week

Tip 1:

I wrote about Virtual Camera not only for its use but also to alert those new internet users who naively think that what they are watching from their so-called internet-friends, is LIVE. It may just be a recorded file being telecast through programs like Virtual Camera!!

Tip 2:

Apart from the Link-Checker, Web-Geek site offers some more utilities namely 1.ConvertText, 2.Password Generator, 3.Check Your IP Address. ConvertText is meant for advanced users only. According to me, IP Address thing is not a utility at all (I can find it in my network icon itself and yet many sites are offering it). Thus, the only other useful tool is Password Generator.

Tip 3:

There are (were?) two types of formatting; 1.High Level formatting (Erases drive/partition completely), 2.Low Level formatting (No data loss). There are some Low Level formatting programs available to mark and fix the bad sectors. But it is said that low level formatting cannot be done by the end user nowadays because modern hard disks undergo low level formatting at the factory only and they will ignore any commands sent to reformat them. If you still want to try without backing up, you are doing it at the risk of losing data!

What is a Bad Sector?

Question Of The Week

What is a Bad Sector?

Hard drives usually have several platters. The platters are the discs which are covered with magnetic material that is used to hold data. Platters are divided into a set of concentric rings called tracks. Hard drives have thousands of such tracks. Each of these tracks is divided into smaller storage areas called sectors. A sector is the smallest storage area on a disk. Hard drives contain millions of sectors.

It is very normal for some of these sectors to be bad sectors, even when the drive is first manufactured. In addition, a small number of sectors will normally go bad during the lifespan of a drive. When this happens, the data in those sectors may be lost.

There are two kinds of Bad sectors on hard disk; 1.Soft, 2.Physical or Mechanical. Physical bad sector is caused by hard disk damage due to dirt, fall, collision etc., Very often, it manifests as a result of failing "Read-Write-Head". Frequently, such bad sectors are early signs of disk crash as they tend to deteriorate over time. Soft bad sector can be caused by sudden power off when hard disk is busy or errors of operating system.

While running your computer, you may receive error messages suggesting that your hard disk might contain bad sectors. The errors are typically flagged as "CRC" or "Cyclic Redundancy Check". If the disk is still working well, important data should be backed up immediately to avoid further data loss. You would have frequently noted such Cyclic Redundancy Check alerts with scratched CDs/DVDs.

Replacing your hard disk is not the first/immediate solution. Before that, Formatting your hard drive might help. A full format (High Level) process should be able to mask the bad sectors (especially soft ones) or mark them in file allocation table. One could continue to use the disk while the operating system will take notice of the location of bad sectors and avoid them altogether. But remember, Mechanical or Physical bad sectors deteriorate sooner or later and need replacement.

Modern hard drives come with many spare sectors. When a sector is found to be bad by the disk controller, it remaps the logical sector to a different spare sector. CHKDSK utility provided by Windows Operating System may help to detect and mark the bad sectors.

Virtual Camera

Program Of The Week

Virtual Camera

Do you chat with internet friends? Don't you have a webcam? No need to worry. Virtual Camera is a virtual software camera that can be installed on Windows XP. It needs no webcam. It can use your media files like pictures and video clips to be broadcast to your friends. If you install a web cam, Virtual Camera can easily switch its input to your real camera if you want to. Virtual Camera coordinates with most of the popular chatting tools.

Web Geek Tools

Website Of The Week

www.wgtools.com

This website hosts a number of Web-Geek Tools. Among them, the most useful one I found was Link-Checker. As the name implies, it helps to find out if a given set of download links are working at this moment or not. It supports nearly 50 file storage websites starting from Rapidshare, Megaupload etc., Just copy the download links you found somewhere, paste them in the box provided and click on CHECK LINKS. It saves you time and energy because if one or two files are missing, other downloaded files will become a waste.