What Are They?

The Freecom ToughDrive 2.5″ is a mobile 2.5″ hard drive from Freecom with Anti-Shock mechanism contained in a durable, soft silicon cover. It has an integral USB 2.0 cable and plug and is USB 2.0, buspowered so you don’t need an additional power supply. It works with Win & Mac as well as other digital products with a suitable USB interface.

Why Would You Want One?

I could have written something here but the Freecom site has some text that I think covers what I would say anyway:

The toughest drive there is!
In today’s world mobility has become a key factor. People who are on the road carry their whole office with them. Notebook, mobile phone, PDA, external hard drive… Imagine what can happen when you’re late for a flight, running to the gate, and your external hard drive accidentally falls from your notebook case or out of your jacket pocket onto the floor… it breaks. Hundreds of hours of work, gigabytes of spreadsheets, documents, photo’s… all gone. Not anymore! Freecom introduces the ToughDrive. The ideal external storage solution for people on the move. Fitted with an internal anti-shock frame and a unique soft silicon cover, it can withstand bumps and drops so your drive is still fully functional after it has dropped. The ToughDrive ensures you can still access your valuable files.

What Are The Essentials?

Specification:

Product Short Spec - 250GB:
Compatibility: PC, Mac
Hard drive size: 250 GB
Interface type: Hi-Speed USB
Form factor: 2.5″
Buffer size: 8 MB
Average seek time: 12 ms
Spindle speed: 5400 rpm

View datasheet (PDF)

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Durable, soft silicon cover
• Internal anti-shock mechanism - Withstand falling from 2 meters
• Integrated USB 2.0 cable
• Buspowered
• High quality, slimline design
• Fanless design thus no noise
• Including award-winning NTI Shadow backup software for PC and Mac,automatically & continuously protects your photo, music, video and other data files
• 2 years warranty

Cons:What’s Not So Good?

• Short integrated USB cable

(An extension is provided but it is one more thing to have to carry around)

Why Do I Use Them and

What is the ProReviewer Experience?

I have used 3 different Toughdrives over the past 2 years. an 80GB, a 160GB and my most recent purchase a 250GB. I bought the first one because I needed some lightweight portable storage as my Laptop only had a 30GB internal drive. I wanted something I could take on overseas trips and holidays with confidence that it was unlikely to fail due to being bumped about in the laptop bag or rucksack. The later purchases were to be able to carry more data and take some multimedia files for entertainment on my travels. The first drives also came with Acronis Backup software which is excellent. The latest drives come with NTI Shadow backup software which I haven’t tried.

The first two drives (80GB & 160GB) were called ToughDrive Pro but Freecom have now used this for a newer model which has both USB and FireWire connections. However you will see that both reviews in the “Useful Links” section below refer to the original model and describe them as the ToughDrive Pro so watch out for this inconsistency if you intend to purchase and don’t need the extra FireWire connection.

I have not been disappointed. Not a single problem with any of them which is more than I can say for 2 other drives I have used from other manufacturers. Acknowledging just 3 drives is a small sample to comment on overall reliability I have been very pleased with them and would recommend them to anyone. While a little more expensive the extra security and confidence you can get to your data when you need it is well worth it. The soft cases have not scuffed or marked with use despite being regularly carried in the front pocket of a rucksack with several items. Needless to say I keep a full copy of all my portable applications on all of them

Useful Links

Freecom

250 GB Drive - More info

View datasheet

PC Pro Review - Freecom ToughDrive Pro

Amazon.com - Freecom ToughDrive Pro - Hard drive - 250 GB

ZDNet Freecom ToughDrive Pro hard drive - 250 GB - Hi-Speed USB … (see Spec Tab)

What Other Posts are Relevant?

TIP - Format a USB Flash Drive for Speed or File Size - What’s Best and How to Overcome Some Problems

Data Rescue Tip - Use MS Utilities to Repair Outlook Files

Backup - Identify Where the Data Is - Find the Location of Your Information on a Windows Based PC?

Why You Want to Use Portable Freeware Applications

Why I decided to Write This Blog

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What Is It?

PDF To Word Converter is a very nice program to convert PDF (Adobe Acrobat format) files to Microsoft Word format. As you probably know there are plenty of freeware (and paid for programs) available to convert Word documents to PDF, this utility converts in the opposite direction!

Why Would You Want It?

So many documents are available in PDF format nowadays for all sorts of reasons. PDF provides a format that can be read easily by freely available software. These include portable options such as Foxit and Sumatra as well as the larger programs such as Adobe Acrobat Reader. PDF documents generally compress to a much smaller file size than the word processor equivalent, particularly if the documents contain images.

There are times when you want to take text from these documents to use in a new document you are compiling (Please be aware that you should respect Copyright in these situations!) You may have tried selecting text in a PDF then copying and pasting it into Word to find all the formatting problems that go with this. Also if the scanned documents are only needed as images then how do you get them into a word document in a simple and efficient way? PDF To Word Converter provides a simple quick and easy solution to this problem.

Why Do I Want It?

I produce many PDF documents using my Acecad Digimemo writing tablet as well as documents scanned directly to PDF. Some of these are converted to text using OCR software but sometimes I do not need this option.  I often want to attach handwritten notes or drawings to a single document which will include typed notes that represent details of a meeting or conference. This gives me a way to quickly achieve that rather than having a folder with a combination of different document and image formats.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Converts PDF files to MS Word or WordPad format

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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What Is This About?

Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents contain hidden data in the form of collaborative data such as tracked changes and comments as well as metadata such as as the author, company and editing dates/times for the document. There may be times that it is important that the recipient of your file doesn’t see this information particularly in the work environment but sometimes such information may also be in documents you send privately and could be a problem. This post gives you some details on how to remove or change the data.

Tracked Changes in Word and Excel Documents

2 or 3 years ago there was some headline news where such hidden data had revealed embarrassing or confidential information for companies. Tracked changes and comments may contain commercially sensitive information and metadata may reveal that the document did not originate with the company or author claiming ownership. Even information such as editing time, last edited by and the created/accessed/modified dates may reveal unwanted details. While this may sound a little paranoid I have found information in many documents that clearly the sender would not have wanted me to have.

Metadata in a Word Document (Excel and PowerPoint are Similar)

This post refers mainly to Office XP (2002) and Office 2003 suites. Office 2007 is similar but has a built in tool for removing some of the data.

What Can You Do?

There are 3 simple solutions to the problem.

1. Manually Remove the data from the document

2. Use a utility to remove the data

3. Convert the document to another format such as PDF

1. Manually Remove Data

Open the document in the appropriate program (Word, Excel or PowerPoint). The exact layout of menus, toolbars and options varies with the different programs but the principals are the same.

Properties Metadata

The Properties Metadata can be accessed from the File dropdown and then click on Properties, some of the data can now be manually deleted or edited. To “reset” the editing data create a new file using the Save As option (make sure you save the original first or you may have loose any edited/deleted metadata)

The following screenshot shows how the statistics change when the new file is saved:

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What Is It?

A utility that monitors the files accessed by any specified process or program. For the selected process it provides the filename and extension, last handle, last error, Opening module and address, the number of times that the file was opened and closed, number of read/write calls, total number of read/write bytes, the dll that made the last open-file call.

Why Would You Want It?

Ever wondered why a particular process is reading or writing to files so often or wondered what all the disk activity is about. Using Windows Task Manager and selecting the Read, Write and Other columns will show the overall activity but not which files or where they are located. This utility allows you to find out this information quickly and easily.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Provides details of files accessed by a selected process

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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What Is It?

A POP3 and IMAP4 email viewer and manager. It will allow you to review emails on your email servers for multiple accounts in a tabbed interface. You can then choose to view the full text (but not HTML*) or delete the emails without full download.

*You can view the text portion of the HTML code.

Why Would You Want It?

To check, monitor and delete emails on your email account servers without having to download the complete email or using your email client. This can reduce the load on your Internet connection which can be useful if you are on a capped package or having to use a limited connection, particularly when travelling.

Why Do I Use It?

I use it mainly for quickly monitoring emails when I am away from home. The fact that I can carry it on a USB stick or removable drive or transfer it to another PC/Laptop makes it very useful to me. As removal of SPAM by ISP’s and the major web based mail providers is so good I don’t bother with defining rules, I simply delete manually anything that gets through.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Provides access to email on servers
• Allows email text to be viewed
• Allows emails to be deleted on the servers

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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What Is It?

If your Outlook email files become corrupted you may not be able to start Outlook, the program may load slowly or unexpected behaviour or error messages may appear when carrying out operations like moving or deleting emails. What you may not know is that Microsoft provide tools to repair your .pst files (and .ost files for “corporate” Exchange Server setups.

Why Would You Want It?

Quite simply (and obviously ) to repair your email file if they have become corrupted. So if you think your Outlook email has become very slow to startup or is behaving strangely it may be worthwhile trying this solution.

Quite interestingly my Outlook 2003 has been very slow starting up for some time. I thought it was all part of the general slowing down of my XP system which needs to be reinstalled as I reported a short while ago (My Current XP OS is Dying (and Holiday Weekend in the UK)). However yesterday I went to empty the “Deleted Items” folder and got an error message saying

“The messaging interface has returned an unknown error. If the problem persists, start Outlook again.”

I duly restarted Outlook but the same error message appeared when I tried to empty the “Deleted Items” folder again. Now, as you may know Outlook has problems if the .pst file becomes too large, there are also problems with deleting large numbers of files, so I first tried reducing the size of the main folder by archiving emails older than 1 Jan 2008. The archive routine duly produced the folder structure in the new archive.pst I created but wouldn’t move the emails. I could manually move the emails by dragging and dropping but couldn’t empty the deleted items folder. At this point Outlook locked up and I had to terminate it in the Task Manager. On restarting it went through the

“The data file ‘Personal Folders’ was not closed properly. The file is being checked for problems.” checking procedure. However this did not fix the problem (another Microsoft annoyance - why doesn’t it check the file properly ), so at this point I decided to use the pst file repair utility .

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Repairs the Outlook email data storage files

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• MS Utility provided with Outlook

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What Is It?

Zonesize is a simple utility whose sole purpose is to predefine window sizing templates on your monitor. These zones can be defined by pixel position or as a percentage of the screen size and they can overlap which is what makes the utility really useful. You simply drag the window over the zone and it automatically resizes to fit. It is one of the many “1 Hour Software” utilities from Skrommel at DonationCoder.

Why Would You Want It?

There are often times when you need to have 2 or more windows displayed on the same screen where you are using both programs at once. For instance you may be viewing a browser window while writing to another document. In these situations you may also want to drag and drop text or graphics from one window to the other. Zonesize allows you to have a predefined set of window sizes or zones to suit your working pattern

How Do You Use it?

Having defined the zones you wish to use you simply drag the window over the zone and allow it to resize automatically within a predefined time (user definable). You can drag the window from one zone to another to suit your required working arrangements.

Why Do I Want It?

I generally manage quite well with a 2 monitor “multi-monitor setup but there are times when I need access to more windows. Zonesize not only allows me to predefine some windows sizes for my working area across both monitors, it also allows for overlapping zones and zones within zones as you will see later. The benefits of overlapping zones, as is demonstrated in the example below, is the ability to quickly make windows active by clicking on the non-overlapped areas. Using a utility to keep windows “always on top” such as DeskPins - Help to Stop Other Windows Stealing Focus further enhances the use of Zonesize so that you can keep a smaller windows always on top within another larger window.

Note: In carrying out this review I have also come across:

Auto Window Manager from Eusing Software

Gridmove from JGPaiva at DonationCoder

which may be even better,I will check them out shortly.

What Does It Do - The Essentials?

Summary:

• Resizes Windows to predefined “Zone” sizes by dragging

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 21% [?]

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