vpnsite.net

If you are interested in purchasing a new wireless router you should consider DLINK’s DI-634M. Many wireless routers such as the Linksys WRT54g have been on the market for many years which lack the speed and coverage of newer MIMO enabled routers.
Features:

MIMO - MIMO stands for (MULTI in MULTI out), this enables to the router to transmit and receive twice as fast as a non- MIMO router. MIMO technology will be a part of the new 802.11n standard that is being worked out by the IEEE. MIMO technology is also in Wi -MAX routers as also. MIMO does not give your router the ability to cover vast amount of larger areas by it will improve your signal quality and speed of transmission. Still in an average size house you will be able to receive an outstanding signal any where in your home, basement or even the backyard with proper placement.

Wireless Antennas - These antennas are not just your ordinary rubber duck antennas. They are actually four antennas two vertical and two horizontal. Four antennas sending out a blazing fast speed spread evenly on all directions.

VOIP - This router was designed to handle VOIP. Many router state that VOIP will work on their router but the DI-634M blows them away. The biggest reason to VOIP is to save a ton off your phone bill. I was paying $70 a month through the phone company and now use VOIP and pay only $30. I’ve tried using VOIP with many other wireless routers but the bandwidth is used up.

Security - Security features for this router include:

1.MAC address filtering - Limits only the computers you want or don’t want to access the network

2.WEP,WPA,WPA2 - WPA2 is the highest form of wireless security out their for wireless routers. WEP is a weaker form of security with flaw due to it’s reuse of encryption keys. WPA2 rotates the keys which doesn’t let the cracker hack your system.

3.TKIP - Encryption is in conjunction with WPA2, if your gamming you will wan’t to use TKIP because AES does use more bandwidth.

4.AES (Advanced encryption standard) - Holy crap you need like five degrees and 30 computers to crack this form of encryption. THe only draw back is that all users might not be compatible with it, also it does slow down the network some.

QOS- Quality of Services is all about regulation how much bandwidth each application uses. You don’t want lime wire or kazzaa eating up all your bandwidth when your trying to purchase Steelers tickets. So, when you are sharing your internet connection with multiple users you can limit how much their file sharing software eats up. Also you may want to dedicate more bandwidth to gamming programs.

VPN - Setting up a VPN server to your home network or an SSH server is a must. IF you ever need to get around a firewall or proxy server you will need a remote connection. DLINks DI-634M will work with a VPN.

The DLINK DI-634M has all the features you should be looking for in a wireless router. MIMO to extend your wireless signal’s range and signal quality. VOIP which will save you a ton of money on phone bills and free long distance. All the latest security features from WEP to WPA-RADIUS. Like I said before to crack WPA2 you have to be an uber hacker who has tons of time and tons of computer power to crack it. Finally QOS if you are sharing your signal with your brother who is sucking up your bandwidth buy this router and get control over it.

Join the most popular wireless networking newsletter on the internet http://www.wirelessninja.com

[tags]wireless router, wireless networking, wireless access point, wireless adapter, wireless[/tags]

In addition to knowing your skills and being moderately qualified, keep an eye on the size of companies you want to target for IT service agreements. Going after 60 stations, 100 stations, or 150 stations is not the best place to start.

Start Small

Start with something that’s more comfortable and more approachable for your technical skill set. This will probably be someone in the 10 to 35 PC range with one or possibly 2 servers. They will not typically have wide area network connections. Most of their needs will be with Windows and Office and things you’re probably already comfortable with. Definitely start with some smaller small businesses before you progress onto larger ones.

IT Service Agreements Require Regular Communication

In terms of maintaining customer expectations, keeping up and keeping in contact with customers on a regular basis, whether it’s emails, phone calls, or dropping by is extremely important. If the service agreement is set up correctly, you and/or your technical staff should be at a client’s site at a minimum of once a month on-site.

In most cases, it’s going to be at least twice a month. Open lines of communication, staying in touch on a regular basis is extremely important if you want an extra quality control tool to make sure that you’re actually meeting and exceeding their expectations.

Use Surveys to Evaluate IT Service Agreements

Send a survey on a regular basis. Once a year is the minimum. Do this a couple months before you’re ready to give them their renewal. Feel free to adapt that to twice a year or quarterly if you want. You can even make it a little less formal but the key is to keep asking for feedback. Keep asking on how you can improve, how you can continue to deliver via your IT service agreements.

Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consulting Blog. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance}

Joshua Feinberg can help you get more steady, high-paying computer consulting clients. You can learn how too. Sign-up now for Joshua’s free audio training program on the Computer Consulting Blog.

[tags]IT service agreements, IT service agreement, IT-service-agreements, IT-service-agreement[/tags]

The latest technological advances have made the world a global village and allow communication at the speed of thought. Using the Internet, vital personal, official, or financial data can be shared or transferred across the globe within seconds. This has not only changed the very social, political, and economic fabric of countries, but has brought people closer as never before. Yet the picture is not all rosy. The hackers are not lagging behind, and they too have devised all possible ways conceivable to breach the security involved with the transmission of data. Given this scenario, maintaining the security of data is a major challenge for the IT experts.

The aim is not data transmission, but secure data transmission. The danger is not only from hackers alone. Unintended lapses on the part of employees can also be a cause of worry. There are many reasons for the leakage of data. Firstly, the employees may not be adequately trained in the techniques of data transmission. Also, technologies are constantly being upgraded. This means that training employees for handling data transmission should be a continuous process. This can be done by holding in-house orientation programs. These can be in the form of classroom teaching or e-learning programs. Classroom teaching programs have their limitations because they are expensive. The e-teaching method is cheaper, allows greater flexibility, and reaches a large number of learners from a centralized location.

Also, awareness and alertness can go a long way in ensuring that these mistakes are minimized. In fact, a recent survey conducted Ernest and Young in 2004 holds the users’ lack of security awareness as the second-greatest reason for vital information getting into the wrong hands.

Another major factor that can go a long way in protecting data is ensuring employee loyalty. This is possible if they are given their due and their needs are taken care of. Otherwise, there can be cases of bribes, and employees can sell important data to rival organizations. In the world of cut-throat competition, this factor can not be ignored.

Information Security provides detailed information on Information Security, Federal Government Employee Information Security, Information Security Systems, Information Security Management and more. Information Security is affiliated with Computer Network Securities.

[tags]Information Security, Federal Government Employee Information Security, Information Security Systems[/tags]

“As computer hardware capacity increases, software becomes more bloated.”

- Bryce’s Law

INTRODUCTION

Ever wonder why our computers typically last no more than three years? Many contend it is because of the fast pace of technological advancements. Maybe. But I tend to believe there is a little more to it than just that, namely “Parkinson’s Law.” For those of you who may have forgotten, “Parkinson’s Law” was devised by C. Northcote Parkinson, noted British historian and author. His original book, “Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress,” was introduced in 1958 and was a top-selling management book for a number of years (it is still sold today). The book was based on his experience with the British Civil Service. Among his key observation’s was that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” Basically, he suggests that people make work in order to rationalize their employment. Consequently, managers create bureaucracies and superfluous work to justify their existence, not because it is really needed.

As an aside, CEO’s clearly understood Parkinson’s Law, which became the driving force behind the flattening of corporations in the 1990’s, such as General Electric under Jack Welch’s reign.

AS APPLIED TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Whereas Parkinson was primarily concerned with people, his law is equally applicable to machines, particularly computers; for example, Parkinson’s Law can be applied to computing in terms of “Data expands to fill the space available for storage.” Years ago I had a Compaq Presario computer with 50mb of disk space, which I considered substantial at the time. I never dreamt I would be able to fill up the hard drive. But, of course, I did (as well as other PC’s I have had over the years). My current PC has a hard drive with a capacity of 224gb and though I’m a long way from filling it up, inevitably I know I will for two reasons: I now feel more comfortable with downloading large multimedia files (MP3, AVI, WMV, etc.), PDF files, data base files, and other larger file formats, and; Second, because developers have become sloppy in programming.

Back when memory and disk space were at a premium, there was great concern over the efficient use of computer resources. Program code was written very tightly and consideration was given to file size. For example, establishing a simple file index was scrutinized carefully. But as the computer capacity grew and hardware prices declined, developers became less interested in efficient programming. To illustrate, not too long ago packaged software installation programs were delivered on 3.5″ diskettes. Today, it is not uncommon to use multiple CD’s to install the same products. This means that as computer hardware capacity increases, software becomes more bloated. This is but one example of Parkinson’s Law as applied in computing.

An another example, let’s consider data transmission lines as used in networking. It doesn’t seem long ago we were using 14.4 baud modems over telephone lines. I remember when we doubled the speed to 28.8 and then 56.4. It seemed like the sky was the limit with every increase. But eventually performance seemed to slow to a crawl. Was it because the technology was aging or was it because our web pages were becoming bigger and more complicated requiring greater data volume over the lines? Frankly, it was the latter. Today, DSL and cable are commonplace in households as well as in business and “dial-up” is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. But as data volume increases with the number of subscribers, will we ever hit a wall in terms of capacity with DSL and cable? Undoubtedly. Again, more due to Parkinson’s Law then anything else.

Make no mistake, computer hardware and software vendors are acutely aware of the role of Parkinson’s Law. It is what allows them to build-in planned obsolescence into their products. As consumers reach capacity, they can either add additional capacity or, more likely, purchase new computers.

There is undoubtedly an incestuous relationship between hardware and software vendors. Hardware enhancements are primarily implemented to increase capacity in order to overcome software inefficiencies, and software vendors make their products more bloated as hardware enhancements are introduced. To illustrate the point, is it a coincidence that every major release of Windows requires additional hardware support? Hardly. This is done more by design than by accident.

CONCLUSION

Parkinson’s Law is just as much a part of computer technology as it is in the corporate world. But what would happen if we decided to “flatten” computer technology in the same manner that Jack Welch flattened G.E.? Keep in mind, Welch did so to eliminate bureaucracy and force his workers to become more efficient and focus on the true problems at hand. By flattening the “bloatware” we would probably get a lot more mileage out of our computers. But I guess that wouldn’t be good for selling computers (or the economy).

I guess Parkinson’s Law and the viscous circle of computing will be with us for quite some time.

Tim Bryce is the Managing Director of M. Bryce & Associates (MBA) of Palm Harbor, Florida, a management consulting firm specializing in Information Resource Management (IRM). Mr. Bryce has over 30 years of experience in the field. He is available for training and consulting on an international basis. His corporate web page is at:
http://www.phmainstreet.com/mba/

He can be contacted at: timb001@phmainstreet.com

Copyright 2006 MBA. All rights reserved.

[tags]Tim,Bryce,MBA,Parkinsons,Law,Parkinson,Information,Technology,Management[/tags]

The textbook definition of “administrative distance” is simple enough: “the measurement of a protocol’s believability”. It’s not enough to know the definition, however you’ve got to know when AD comes into the picture and when it does not.

When a packet needs to be routed, the router looks in its routing table for the next-hop IP address the packet should take to get to the destination. There may be more than one matching path, in which case the router will look for the “longest match”. The route that has the longest match - the route with the most bits in the mask set to “1″ - will be the route that is used.

Consider the following three routes from a fictional Cisco router:

I 172.17.0.0 /24 via 172.1.1.1

O 172.17.0.0 /25 via 173.1.1.1

R 172.17.0.0 /26 via 174.1.1.1

This router has three possible next-hop IP addresses that it can send packets destined for the network 172.17.0.0. The masks are of different lengths, meaning that the route with the longest match (again, the route with the most bits set to “1″) will be used. In this example, the RIP route will be used, since it has the longest match with a mask of /26. The administrative distances do not matter.

AD does matter when the masks are the same length, as shown here:

I 172.17.0.0 /24 via 172.1.1.1

O 172.17.0.0 /24 via 173.1.1.1

R 172.17.0.0 /24 via 174.1.1.1

The longest match rule always precedes the use of AD, but here there is a three-way tie regarding the masks. They’re all /24 (or 255.255.255.0 in dotted decimal). AD will be used to break this tie.

As mentioned, AD is a measurement of a protocol’s believability. It is important to keep in mind that the lowest AD will be preferred. And while the routing table will show you the ADs of the respective protocols, it’s a very good idea to know these ADs before taking the CCNA or CCNP:

Connected route: 0

Static Route: 1

EIGRP Summary: 5

External BGP: 20

EIGRP (Internal): 90

IGRP: 100

OSPF: 110

ISIS : 115

RIP: 120

EIGRP (External) : 170

Unknown: 255 (A router will not believe a source with an AD of 255, and such routes will not be placed into the routing table.)

The three protocols we looked at in the comparison were RIP, IGRP, and OSPF. While your first instinct may be that the OSPF route would be the most believable, IGRP actually has a lower AD than the other two and would be the route installed in the routing table.

Since IGRP does not support variable-length subnet masking and OSPF does, you may never see this scenario outside of an exam question. But if you do see it in the exam room or in a production network, you’ll understand how an IGRP route could be preferred over an OSPF route.

Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage, home of free CCNA and CCNP tutorials, The Ultimate CCNA Study Package, and Ultimate CCNP Study Packages.
For a FREE copy of his latest e-books, “How To Pass The CCNA” and “How To Pass The CCNP”, visit the website and download your free copies. You can also get FREE CCNA and CCNP exam questions every day! Pass the CCNA exam with The Bryant Advantage!

[tags]ccna, ccnp, ccie, administrative distance, ad, nat, free, cisco, pass, exam, certification, study[/tags]

Don’t worry too much if you lack advanced technical computer skills. A lot of that can be remedied by just putting in a little bit of time each week in doing some self-study. In this article, you’ll learn which computer skills are necessary to serve your sweet spot small business clients.

If It Works, Break It
You can do something as simple as getting a not-for-resale (NFR) copy of a product that you want to sell, install, and support and then working with the product in your lab. When you or one of your lead technicians or engineers has a spare half-hour to an hour, you can walk through the basic installations. Then, deliberately break the lab installations. Next, reinstall the software until you get more comfortable with the package.

Most of these products that you’ll be installing for small businesses are very mature technologies. They’re very wizard-driven, and at least for plain-vanilla configurations, they don’t require tremendous levels of computer skills.

Installations Are Easier Now
Years ago, it was much more difficult to install the Novell small business suite or IBM equivalent, or the original 1997 Microsoft Small Business Server. But all of these companies, especially Microsoft, put a lot of money into making it easier for people who don’t have advanced IT backgrounds and networking computer skills to install their small business server application suites.

In terms of your technical computer skills to service sweet spot clients, your staff needs to:
1. have good strong PC hardware skills
2. be able to handle a peer-to-peer setup
3. understand what TCP/IP is all about
4. know what POP3 and SMTP are
5. know how to work with basic SOHO routers

If your staff possesses the above skills, you’re definitely at a good starting point to get started with at least the smaller sweet spot small businesses (10-20 PCs).

Share the knowledge among your employees
Make sure your staff members cross-train each other and you. This way, no one’s ever “too knowledgeable” to the point where they can blackmail you, extract huge raises or huge bonuses, or walk away with your client base. You have to make sure your company’s internal know-how or intellectual capital can’t just get up and walk out the door to your biggest competitor.

The Bottom Line about Computer Skills
In this article you’ve learned about which technical computer skills are necessary to service your sweet spot clients.

Copyright Notice:

Copyright MMI-MMVI, Computer Consulting 101. All Worldwide Rights Reserved. {Attention Publishers: Live hyperlink in author resource box required for copyright compliance}

Joshua Feinberg, co-founder of Computer Consulting 101, helps computer consulting business owners get more steady, high-paying clients. Learn how you can too. Sign-up now for your free access to field-tested, proven computer consulting secrets at Computer Consulting 101.

[tags]computer skills, computer consulting, it support[/tags]

Back in the dotcom days, when dialup Internet connections were everywhere, free ISP offers were inescapable. The deal was that you viewed advertising while your computer was connected to the Internet, and in return you got your Internet connection for free.

The rise of more expensive and technically-complex broadband connections, however, has almost entirely killed this business model. Some free ISPs remain, but they are struggling. Only demographics that are undesirable to advertisers use dialup nowadays, making it almost impossible for them to sell their advertising inventory for as much as they would like.

However, this varies widely from country to country. In America, for example, free ISPs like Juno and NetZero are still holding on to a significant market share, thanks mainly to very large geographical distances between towns making broadband impractical in some places. AOL dialup, although not free and not even very good, is also surprisingly dominant in the American market.

Many European countries, on the other hand, are in the middle of broadband price wars, with some telecoms providers such as the UK’s TalkTalk offering free broadband service as part of their telephone strategy. This broadband can often be of dubious quality and requires the customer to sign up for phone service with the provider, but on the other hand it doesn’t feature any advertising or deliberate crippling of the services in the way that many dialup ISPs did.

However, in the future, we could be heading for a return to the free ISP, thanks to the rise of wireless networks. Sending wireless signals around is essentially free, apart form the initial cost of the equipment, and as wireless technology improves it will become cheaper and cheaper to cover whole towns and cities with access to wireless broadband. It is possible, in the future, that subscription-based ISPs could die entirely, to be replaced by local governments and authorities handling Internet access, in the same way as water or rubbish disposal.

John Gibb is the owner of free ISP information For more information on free Internet Service Providers please check out http://www.Free-ISP-Information.Info

[tags]internet,isp,dotcom[/tags]

Are you lost in the mess of documents that get passed around your company, never knowing what the latest version is and which one you should work on without worrying if someone else has already made the same editions that you are making? Perhaps you have heard of collaboration software solutions such as Documentum to help your company manage its documents that are passed around. Documentum is a very good solution to this problem but is it the only one? In this article you will be presented with some basic information about the differences in collaboration software from Documentum and NextPage.

What is collaboration software?

Collaboration software allows business professionals to work directly with other business professionals by allowing them to work together to create business documents, presentations, and budgets. Most collaboration software is centralized. This allows business professionals to work on the same documents at the same time from different locations. Some centralized collaboration software solutions include Groove Network, Microsoft SharePoint, Documentum, and Filenet.

Why use Documentum?

There are a few advantages to using centralized collaboration software such as Documentum. The main advantage being that they work very well for team collaboration. Documentum’s software keeps all files, projects, and data in one centralized location that everyone who is working on the project can access. This allows them to review and update the same document that everyone else has used, which essentially keeps everyone working on the same page.

Are there any drawbacks to Documentum?

While the collaboration software solution provided by Documentum is very useful and beneficial, there are a few drawbacks to using it. The main disadvantage being that Documentum’s software requires the use of an IT infrastructure. Another potential drawback is that it requires an extensive amount of installation time. This can be a major inconvenience to those business professionals who are always busy and on the go.

Other collaboration software options out there also require everyone you work with to have the same software in order to share information. All of these drawbacks to centralized collaboration software can be very expensive and inconvenient.

What else will work for my company?

NextPage provides an alternative solution to the centralized collaboration software. NextPage 1.5 Collaboration Software tracks documents with Digital Thread technology. Say, for instance, that you are working on your company’s budget. You want to make sure that your facts and figures are correct so you send your spreadsheet to several of your co-workers for review. They look over the spreadsheet and make the necessary changes. They then return their spreadsheet version to you, and with NextPage 1.5, you simply merge the document versions together into one. NextPage 1.5 lets you see all of this visually via a graphical version history. With the graphical version history, you would always know where the various versions of your spreadsheet are stored, what changes have been made, who has reviewed your spreadsheet, when the revisions were made, and how the revisions fit together. NextPage makes it easy to see where the document has been and what revisions have been made, eliminating the confusion of who did what and when it was done.

What advantages does NextPage have?

The major advantages to using NextPage’s collaboration software include

the following:

Do NOT need a centralized server

Do NOT need an IT infrastructure

Installation can be done in a matter of minutes

Will work with associates who are NOT NextPage subscribers

Solves document management problems where they originate

If your company is getting lost in the mess of documents then you can benefit greatly by implementing a collaboration software solution. Solutions from Documentum or NextPage will enhance your overall organization and productivity. In this article I have got the ball rolling for you. All you need to do now is to see what solution will best fit your company. So get out there and get your company documents organized!

Mike Nielsen is a client account specialist with 10xmarketing - More Visitors. More Buyers. More Revenue. For more information about Documentum, visit NextPage.com

[tags]Documentum,NextPage,collaboration software,document management,centralized software[/tags]

Contact management is important for effective sales, marketing, and other service processes. Comprehensive contact management records are an excellent tool for direct as well as e-mail promotional campaigns. Installing contact management software will enable you to manage the records with ease. Browsing the net or the market will introduce you to the various technology vendors ready to deliver contact management software according to your business needs.

If you are one of the many users of Windows, Time and Chaos will serve as very good contact management software for you. People find it very useful, as it organizes their telephone book and enhances their time management skills. The user-friendly appointment calendar and ‘to do’ list makes your life much simpler by displaying your everyday schedule. This contact management software is an inexpensive way to share your information with other people. Using your present network, Time and Chaos will enable you to exchange data without requiring any further server software.

Deciding on reliable and effective contact management software involves a lot more research than a regular comparison of features. Check out if you prefer traditional software or a web-based application, which you can access from any place whenever you wish. The addition of modules and utilities is also an aspect to consider. If you use one computer on a regular basis then installed software will probably be the best for you.

On the other hand, if you were a heavy user of the Internet and access it from your home and workplace then experts would advise you to go for a web-based solution. Some contact management software solutions, like Adigida’s RealFuture, are available for a monthly fee, while for other products like ACT you only have to pay once for the entire duration of usage.

Contact Management Software provides detailed information on Contact Management Software, Real Estate Contact Management Software, Sales Contact Management Software, Customer Contact Management Software and more. Contact Management Software is affiliated with CRM Software Systems.

[tags]Contact Management Software, Customer Contact Management Software, Real Estate Contact Management So[/tags]

Now a days managing files and folders on PCs seems to be a critical task for network administrators and data storage managers due to huge capacity hard disks and millions of files and folders.

This article will help you in two ways

1. Understand the disk space allocation and wastage.

2. Understand how to manage your disk space.

Topics covered

• 1. What is File Allocation Table (FAT) ?
• 2. Disk Efficiency and FAT.
• 3. What is Wasted Space. ?
• 4. Solution.

What is File Allocation Table

The FAT is a roadmap, or index, that points to the location where all the information in files is stored on a floppy disk or hard drive. The FAT is extremely important because the system uses it to store and retrieve files containing information.

When you save a file in Windows, it is stored in multiple pieces (in clusters made up of multiple sectors) on the disk. Windows also saves the roadmap, or index, that points to these clusters in two copies of the FAT (File Allocation Table). The FAT contains the directions to all the pieces of your files, so that applications can find them again later

Disk Efficiency and FAT.

Every file on your system is stored in clusters in your hard drive, the maximum of one file can be stored in a particular cluster, so this results in wastage if the file is under the cluster size. The current FAT version (FAT16) organises files in 32K clusters in drives over 1.2gig, while FAT32 will use a minimum cluster size of 4K. This means that a 3K file wastes only 1K of disk space on FAT32, while it wastes 29K of space on a standard FAT system. This wastage can result in over 50% of a 2gig drive being wasted. See the table below.

What’s a cluster and why does cluster size matter?

The whole problem of wasted space arises from the fact that DOS allocates file space in “clusters”. Clusters are sequentially numbered on the disk, starting at 0, and cluster numbers are used both in the FAT (file allocation table) and in the individual directory entry for each file.

Allocation by clusters means some space on the disk will be wasted. Regardless of the actual length of a file as reported by the DIR command, the file will actually occupy a whole number of clusters on the disk. So a 1-byte file will actually use a whole cluster, a file that’s 1 cluster plus 1 byte long will use 2 clusters, and so on.

Is this serious? It can be, depending on the pattern of file sizes on your disk. For instance, if you have an 2GB disk with 5,000 files on it, about 100 MB of your disk is being wasted. And the figures can be much worse, depending on the pattern of your usage. One user reported copying 450 MB of files to a 1.6 GB disk and having them take up 600 MB! As your disk approaches being full, you may wish you could squeeze some extra space out of it instead of buying a new disk.

How does cluster size depends on hard-disk size?

As mentioned above in the table the cluster size for various partition sizes so that you can make intelligent choices about how to partition your hard disk.

From the above table we see that even 2.1 GB drive is over the 1023 kilo-byte limit for 16 KB clusters and therefore its cluster size (unpartitioned) is 32 KB. With a 32 KB cluster, even a 1-byte file will use 32 KB of disk space. A file whose length is 32,769 to 65,536 bytes will likewise use two clusters (64 KB), and so on for higher file sizes.

Even so, you may be inclined to think this is no big deal. But think about it: if you have a 2.1 GB drive with 5,000 files, you’re probably wasting about 160 MB.

How are cluster sizes determined?

Clusters are always some power of 2 times 512 bytes, but just which power of 2 depends on the disk size. Why should this be so? I mentioned above that clusters are numbered sequentially. The problem is that the directory structure and the FAT have room for only 16 bits for a cluster number. Since the largest unsigned number that will fit into a 16-bit field is 2^16-1 = 65535, the disk can hold at most 2^16 = 65536 clusters. This gives the formula

disk size

cluster size = ———, rounded up to a power of 2

65536

In general the wasted space per file will be half a cluster.

—–

What is Wasted Space?

Whenever a file is created, space will be allocated to the file in the form of clusters. A cluster can be of 8 KB , 16 KB or 32 KB depending upon your hard disk partition size. Following is the chart for cluster size.

FAT FAT32

Partition Size Cluster Size Partition Size Cluster Size

128 - 256 MB

4 KB

1 - 8 GB

4 KB

257 - 512 MB

8 KB

8 - 16 GB

8 KB

513 - 1024 MB

16 KB

16 - 32 GB

16 KB

1025 - 2048 MB

32 KB

>32 GB

32 KB

So the formula for wasted space is Wasted Space = Allocated Space - Actual File Size.

We will take an example of file which is of 900 bytes in size and your partition type is - FAT and its size is 1024 MB. So the allocated space for your file will be 16384 bytes or 16 KB whether you store 900 bytes or 1 byte in the file. So the wasted space in this case will be

Wasted Space = 16384 - 900 = 15484 bytes.

So the conclusion is : Lesser the file size, more the wasted space.

Solution

So to analyze how our disk space is being wasted we need a smart program which will show us the space hogging files and their locations.

We are working with File system softwares since last 2 years. We have developed a powerful disk space analysis and cleaning software - DiskAnalyzer Professional 1.5 which allows you to take control of your disk space and reclaim gigabytes of lost disk space.

You can visit our website to get more information about the software http://www.craveworldwide.com

Manoj Shinde

Crave Worldwide, India.

[tags]Disk ,Space,Analysis,Clean,Control,Manage[/tags]