Posted: Thu May 24, 2007 10:33 am
I have stumbled onto a few more programs that have just made life easier in general. Some will cost you about 20-60 bucks one time fee, no yearly renewal, others are free with certain features disabled.
Unlocker
This utility makes life easier in that when you are trying to delete, remove, or shut down something that the system is using and get the "Unable to delete" error, this program bypasses that. Even when you have those extremely stubborn processes that just wont die, a feature to rename and move the file is always available. And if thats not enough you can always wipe out the big guns "Rename and Move or Delete on Startup". This make for one heck of a tool when combating your way through heavily infested hard drive territory.
Beyond Compare 2
This program I haven't began to use its full ability. This allows you in its most basic form to compare to folders side by side. You can "Sync" one side to the other. This is great for Data recovery/comparison. Its come especially in handy when a customer claims that certain files that were on his machine when he brought the PC in, have now disappeared. Merely mount the backup of his hard drive, Beyond Compare it, and Viola "MY FILES, THANK GOD THEY ARE STILL THERE" (You did make a backup right? More on a great program for that later )
Acronis True Image 9.1
For true backup and imaging, I have found nothing better than Acronis. This utility has made backup not only practical but FUN! (OK, so I laid the cheesy sales pitch on a bit thick). Even though its not terribly exciting, it has become very easy and practical to even backup your home computer in the event that hardware failure or a virus toasts your file system. The program features the ability to do full backups or incremental backups. In the event you do a Full backup (Highly Advised) you are copying the whole file system, MBR, and OS folder hiearchy. Once imaged you are able to mount the saved partition as a logical drive letter temporarily and access it as if it were another psychical hard drive. Where the magic in this program comes out, is the ability to restore that imaged disk to a totally new drive, where it can either create a partition the same size of the original install OR extend into a larger than original partition. So you can take a 40gig HDD and put it on a 500gig with zero problems, it will run as though its the same drive but with the extra space under the same single partition. Pretty nifty huh? Its become one of my favorite tools considering you can get a perfect vanilla install of your favorite OS, image it, and if you ever wanted to reset, just write it back to the drive. The whole process takes no more than 10-20 minutes to image or restore a drive.
I hope these tools come in handy for whatever tasks you can find to put them too. Give me some of your feedback on these items and let me know how you like them or if you have any others that you deem worthy of replacing them.
Unlocker
This utility makes life easier in that when you are trying to delete, remove, or shut down something that the system is using and get the "Unable to delete" error, this program bypasses that. Even when you have those extremely stubborn processes that just wont die, a feature to rename and move the file is always available. And if thats not enough you can always wipe out the big guns "Rename and Move or Delete on Startup". This make for one heck of a tool when combating your way through heavily infested hard drive territory.
Beyond Compare 2
This program I haven't began to use its full ability. This allows you in its most basic form to compare to folders side by side. You can "Sync" one side to the other. This is great for Data recovery/comparison. Its come especially in handy when a customer claims that certain files that were on his machine when he brought the PC in, have now disappeared. Merely mount the backup of his hard drive, Beyond Compare it, and Viola "MY FILES, THANK GOD THEY ARE STILL THERE" (You did make a backup right? More on a great program for that later )
Acronis True Image 9.1
For true backup and imaging, I have found nothing better than Acronis. This utility has made backup not only practical but FUN! (OK, so I laid the cheesy sales pitch on a bit thick). Even though its not terribly exciting, it has become very easy and practical to even backup your home computer in the event that hardware failure or a virus toasts your file system. The program features the ability to do full backups or incremental backups. In the event you do a Full backup (Highly Advised) you are copying the whole file system, MBR, and OS folder hiearchy. Once imaged you are able to mount the saved partition as a logical drive letter temporarily and access it as if it were another psychical hard drive. Where the magic in this program comes out, is the ability to restore that imaged disk to a totally new drive, where it can either create a partition the same size of the original install OR extend into a larger than original partition. So you can take a 40gig HDD and put it on a 500gig with zero problems, it will run as though its the same drive but with the extra space under the same single partition. Pretty nifty huh? Its become one of my favorite tools considering you can get a perfect vanilla install of your favorite OS, image it, and if you ever wanted to reset, just write it back to the drive. The whole process takes no more than 10-20 minutes to image or restore a drive.
I hope these tools come in handy for whatever tasks you can find to put them too. Give me some of your feedback on these items and let me know how you like them or if you have any others that you deem worthy of replacing them.