Test and Detect Fake or Counterfeit USB Flash Drives Bought from eBay with H2testw

eBay has lots of cheap stuff that you can buy. The price are normally lower than the retail suggested price to attract buyers but beware! Not all cheap stuff are good and some of them can be counterfeit. I know that almost anything can be copied because when I walk along the night market (pasar malam), I can see fake branded bags such as LV, Gucci, Prada and etc, perfumes, software, games, music CDs, DVD movies and many more being sold there. You name it, they got it.
Anyway, if you’ve ever purchased a second hand USB flash drive from a friend or even a new one from eBay, you should have it checked if it is a fake. Even though Windows might seem to be reporting the correct capacity of the drive, that information might not be sufficiently enough to prove that it is truly a 64GB flash drive. Here is a standard tool called H2testw that a lot of eBayers use to PROVE they have received a fake from a seller. It is extremely easy to use and proves detailed information. Created by Harald Bögeholz, the default language of the interface is in German but can be changed to English.
H2testw was developed to test USB sticks for various kinds of errors. It can also be used for any other storage media like memory cards, internal and external hard drives and even network volumes. To run the test for your drive, just plug in the drive, format it in Windows, run H2testw, select the target, and click Write + Verify button. H2testw writes files of up to 1GB to the chosen destination and names them 1.h2w, 2.h2w, 3.h2w and so on. If the target directory already contains such a set of files H2testw will offer to verify them. After it is done the software leaves its test files on the medium. You can erase them if you like or verify them again.
If the drive that you tested passes the test of H2testw without errors, then the advertised capacity is correct (minus a small overhead for operating system file formatting). However, if you are seeing a sample output like below, then it is a counterfeit. This is 4GB USB flash drive not a 64GB USB flash drive. As 4GB drive it should be about 3.9 GB not 3.8 GB formatted. This indicates in low level formatting a lot of bad sectors had to be locked out. Usually flash chips like these are rejected for major brands but somehow is being resold and reprogrammed.
The media is likely to be defective.
3.8 GByte OK (8084847 sectors)
58.6 GByte DATA LOST (122921617 sectors)
Details:710.5 KByte overwritten (1421 sectors)
7.6 MByte slightly changed (<>Don’t panic if H2testw detects an error on your USB flash drive. It could be other factors, so here’s what you need to do. Don’t use USB extension cords, make sure you insert it directly to the USB port on your computer. Try using a different USB/Firewire port especially the ones at the back of the case. Try a different cable if you are testing external hard drives. If you still get errors after following the guidelines above, then it’s surely something wrong with the drive.

The executable file H2testw.exe needs no installation and can be directly run. It was developed for Windows XP and Vista but I’ve tested it on Windows 7 32-bit which worked without problems.

[ Download H2testw ]

PC Tools Spyware Doctor 6.0

Spyware Doctor 6.0 provides 3-way spyware protection through real-time threat blocking, scanning and immunization, anything less is like putting locks on the front door of your house but letting intruders in through the side or back door. This is one of the many reasons why the award-winning Spyware Doctor has been chosen by millions of users to protect their PCs against spyware, adware, trojans, keyloggers, spybots and tracking threats.

Did you know that when a PC is infected with spyware that every keystroke, every website and every conversation could be recorded or monitored by the people or companies that may have secretly installed software on your PC. The consequences of spyware and adware infections can include banking and identity theft, unusual computer problems, slow Internet access, changed browser homepage, search pages or favorites, and excessive numbers of adware generated adverts.

Anti-virus software and firewalls do not fully protect your system against the majority of spyware and privacy threats. Because spyware is commonly bundled with software downloads, attached to e-mails, or transmitted through networks it can appear to be legitimate software, but once installed it can be nearly impossible to detect and remove without the help of a dedicated spyware removal tool like Spyware Doctor.

When you consider the amount of valuable and confidential personal information stored on your PC, including credit card and banking details, private e-mails and documents, shopping and browsing habits, the risks of having software intruders snooping on your computer activity are obvious. Spyware protection should be an essential part of your protection to defend your privacy and computing habits from prying eyes and virtual trespassers, download Spyware Doctor and check your PC now.

We know you don't care what a rootkit or a keylogger is and even though PC Tools is considered the best in the industry at detecting and removing them, we know that all you care about is being protected against cybercriminals attempting to steal your personal information and money. Do you or your family use the internet for any of the following?

• Banking, shopping or investing online
• Surfing the internet, playing games and watching videos
• Instant messaging with MSN, AOL, Yahoo
• Using VOIP programs like Skype
• Downloading anything online, including music, software and pictures
• Using MySpace, Facebook or other social networking and dating websites
• Emailing friends and family
• Connect using wireless (WiFi) internet

Spyware Doctor protects you under all these circumstances.

Product Website

Download

BuyNow

SignMyImage Protects Your Image with Invisible Signature

You might have noticed that there were a few times the images that I attached to this blog’s article has a watermark. By default the images has no protection at all and anyone can use it and claim that it was taken by them. So a lot of people resort to visible watermarking, a method of embedding information into an image that can clearly shows who is the owner of the image. Depending on the complexity of the image, sometimes it is nearly impossible to remove the watermark from the picture. Where you place the watermark is also important. If you put a small logo watermark at the corner, it can be easily removed by cropping off that part. Best is to put a watermark diagonally across the image BUT professional photographers hated that because it covers up the area which they are trying to focus.
Another method of protecting your image is to use invisible watermarking. It is the same as above by embedding an information to the image except that it cannot be seen. One software that can do this is SignMyImage. SignMyImage allows you to insert your sign to the image and allows you to check if any image is signed or not. The sign can consists of letters, capitals, numbers, dashes and can be up to 10 characters long
SignMyImage adds your sign directly to the image data. It modifies picture intensity at few places slightly. The modification is so gentle that it is invisible for a human eye. SignMyImage doesn’t use EXIF(or other tags) or stream properties of image files to sign the image. SignMyImage doesn’t allow to sign already signed images and the best part is the signature stays detectable after jpeg compression, scaling and cropping or for example PrintScreen&Paste. Try comparing the 2 images below and see if you can spot any difference. The left one is original image and the right one is the signed image. I bet you can’t find any difference at all or notice any invisible watermarking.
Embedding an invisible signature using SignMyImage is very easy. All you need to do is load an image to the program, click Sign at the menu bar and select Sign Image. You get to enter your sign which must be less than 10 characters. When the signing has completed, just save the image to a new filename or you can replace the existing one.
The only drawback for SignMyImage is its shareware that cost 14,99 Euros. You can use it for free to watermark images with invisible signature but you cannot use the batch processing feature and every watermarked image will be signed by a visible stamp to right-bottom corner. An idea to overcome the stamp is to maybe add a few pixels of empty space at the bottom so that the program stamps it at an empty area which can be cropped. Paid user also gets to access the Image Spider. Image Spider is a web crawler, that searches through whole internet for signed images. If it finds a signed image, the owner of the image will be noticed.
[ Visit SignMyImage Website ]

pdfFactory Pro 3

Create PDF or print to paper: Only pdfFactory allows printing to paper or PDF without printing twice. Acrobat is not needed for printing.

Combines multiple documents into a single PDF: Increases the convenience of document delivery by having a single PDF that contains material from different sources. Just keep printing documents to pdfFactory and they will automatically be combined.

Preview: Allows quick, accurate previewing of the PDF, including up to 400% zoom, without saving the file first and without opening Acrobat.

Security: Encrypt and control access to PDF files as follows:

• Prevent printing PDFs
• Prevent copying text and graphics
• Prevent opening without a password
• Prevent editing (yes, PDFs can be edited)

Font embedding: Ensures that the original fonts used in a document are displayed even if the reader of the PDF does not have the fonts installed on his or her computer.

Page insertion and deletion: Allows unwanted material to be deleted before the PDF is created. This is especially useful when creating PDFs from long reports, email and web pages.

Send via email: One mouse click sends PDFs through your default email program. Also copies PDF to clipboard for pasting into existing email.

AutoSave: Saves entire contents of pdfFactory sessions automatically so you can retrieve previously compiled PDFs.

Live URL Links: Customize links by line type, thickness and color to open Web pages and email addresses with a click of your mouse.

pdfFactory Pro includes all of the features in the standard version plus:

• Create PDFs on letterhead
• Add page numbering, headers, footers, watermarks
• Bookmarks and Table of Contents: Automatically or manually create bookmarks to organize and easily navigate complex documents.
• Convert to grayscale
• Integrated Jobs Tab: Shows all jobs and allows you to rearrange them.
• Custom Drivers: Save your settings to multiple print drivers so you can quickly select them for specific tasks.
• Set Initial Acrobat Display Properties: Such as zoom factor, layout and tab configuration.

Should You Be Looking For A Hard Drive Upgrade?

Most desktop PCs bought or built in the past five years are probably using hard drives in the capacity range of 80 GB to 250 GB. Recent price drops in the hard drive market mean that most current drive generation is more attractive than ever before. You can get 1 TB hard drives for less than $100 now.

Knowing that capacity may not be the only impetus for upgrading your hard drive, we "recreated" a three-year old system with a 200 GB hard drive and looked at what would happen if we replaced the drive with a modern terabyte model.

Capacity Quadrupled, Performance Doubled

It is safe to say that each and every hard drive selling today is far superior to older-generation drives, as improving recording technologies keep pushing forward capacities and performance. Other modifications, such as the interface transition from parallel ATA to Serial ATA 150 (and then 300 MB/s), also make a difference. But no individual feature—even Native Command Queuing or a larger cache—can make as much of a difference as simply stepping up from one drive generation to the next. In fact, the only reason why new hard drives aren’t getting faster to an even greater degree is an increased emphasis on power consumption and drive efficiency.

The bottom line is a simple recommendation that is almost always valid: when it comes time to buy a new hard drive, make sure the one you pick is a latest-generation model.

Capacity Upgrade: Check

The number one reason to purchase a new hard drive for an existing system, undoubtedly, is capacity, since a three-year old 200 GB hard drive fills up fast. In a year, most people typically add at least a few gigabytes of digital pictures, or even more data if video is stored on the drive. Add to that music, new applications, and so on. Unless you don’t touch digital media at all, you might need an additional 50-100 GB capacity per year, and enthusiasts and professionals may easily require far more. Hence, a hard drive replacement or upgrade every few years is absolutely warranted.

Performance Upgrade: Sure?

The next reason for replacing a hard drive would be performance. To illustrate this, we recreated a typical PC system using a Pentium 4 660 processor and a 915G-based motherboard from Asus with 1 GB of RAM; this represents an upper-mainstream system from the 2005-era. We selected a 200 GB Samsung Spinpoint P120 series SATA hard drive and ran several performance and power consumption benchmarks. Then we replayed the benchmark suite using a brand new 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint F2 EcoGreen to measure the difference.