I’m in a bit of a quandary on an interesting subject. I just purchased a 128 GB USB 2.0 Flash drive — a Centon DataStick Sport — that I picked up on special from TigerDirect for about $65 (as I write this blog, you can pick them up at Amazon for about $80). It seemed like a very good deal when I bought the unit, but I was quickly disabused of my enthusiasm when I plugged it into my desktop PC to copy all 29 GB of music I keep on that machine to see how it performed doing large bulk file transfers. The entire transfer took almost three hours to complete (I can do it in under 40 minutes from one direct-attached disk to another), after which I understood that while I might have purchased plenty of capacity, I didn’t get the kind of performance one might wish to have, to keep the time required for big file transfers more manageable — but then I didn’t pay for that privilege, either.
This flash drive is big (128 GB) but it’s not fast.
At least, I now understand why USB 3.0 or eSATA makes more sense for big flash drives, or other forms of external storage, especially if you need to move large amounts of data on a regular basis. But if you go shopping for USB 3.0 flash drives (probably the most practical form of higher-speed flash storage available at the moment) you’ll find prices running from $1-2 GB for such storage, depending on how fast you want that storage to be. In particular, the bigger and faster such drives get, the more they cost. In particular, this $290 Super Talent 100GB USB3.0 Express RC8 Flash Drive (model ST3U100R8S) stuck me as amazingly extravagant, even if it is “Windows To Go certified” for Windows 8 Enterprise.
On the other hand, you can jump over to Newegg and purchase a Vantec NexStar 3 USB 3.0/eSATA 2.5″ drive enclosure for $30, and a very fast Samsung 830 128GB SSD for $105. Add $20 for shipping and handling, and you’ve spent $155 for more storage capacity (119 GB actual storage in Windows Explorer vs. 93 GB likewise) and similar or better speed (depending on whether or not your notebook has an eSATA port or “only USB 3.0″). Given those economics, I have trouble understanding why anybody would buy the higher-dollar UFD, except that the form factor is significantly smaller. But my Vantec drive measures out at about 5.5 x 3.5 x 0.7” and weighs under 250 grams, so it will fit into a laptop bag with no stress or strain at all. And it only takes 5 minutes and a Philips-head screwdriver to put all the pieces together.
But there must be a market, because there are lots of 64 GB and higher-capacity USB 3.0 UFDs available. Go figure!
This year, school is getting serious for my 8-year-old son, Gregory: he’s in the third grade. For the first time, he’s having to deal with real grades for his homework, plus regular quizzes and tests. And later on this year, he’ll face his first standardized test (the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, or TAKS) as well. He shares a classroom at Cactus Ranch Elementary with 18 other kids, but they have only one general use laptop for the whole group there (the kids do have more general access to computers in the library, and some classes issue laptops to students from cart set-ups for their use as well). His classroom PC is an elderly Dell D630 Latitude that’s on the last phases of its lifecycle — I volunteer in the library once a week, and the school IT guy also works there; he tells me they’re getting ready to upgrade to Vostro models running Windows 7 in 2013.
So I’m loaning my son’s teacher a couple of additional laptops for the kids to share in his classroom. One is my old and trusty Dell D620 Latitude that’s been upgraded with an OCZ Agility 3 SSD, 4 GB RAM, and a T7200 CPU (which puts it on par for processing with the D630, but where its SSD blows the doors off that unit). The other is my equally old and sometimes not-so-trusty HP HDX9203, aka “The Dragon.” I decided to roll the Dragon back to Vista SP2 and it’s been running like a champ ever since. However, Vista’s odd and seemingly random Windows Update behavior hasn’t let me believe I’ve finally caught up with all the updates: with 148 of them installed over the past two days, it’s been a dizzying sequence of download-install-reboot the entire time. Even so, Windows Update now claims I’m completely caught up. We’ll see.
The D620 has an adequate 14″ screen.The HP has a huge and vibrant 20″ screen.
I’m still debating as to whether or not I should install Paragon’s terrific $20 Migrate OS to SSD utility on the Dragon, and then use it to move the OS over to the spare OCZ Vertex 2 nominal 120 GB (actual 111 GB in Windows Explorer) drive I’ve got lying around. There’s no doubt this would speed things up significantly on the Dragon, just like the Agility 3 did for the aging D620, which laughably melds a processor rated at 5.1 in Windows Experience with a drive rated at 7.8! But there are few things you can do to an older laptop to keep it usable that are better than this, so my real question is: do I want to let the Vertex 2 walk out the door, or do I have something better I can do with it? Right now all of my laptops and desktops boot from SSDs already, so perhaps not…
Since the introduction of Windows Vista in 2006, Windows Gadgets have made colorful and useful additions to Windows desktops everywhere. At this moment, Windows Gadgets work on Windows 8 as well as on Windows 7 and Windows Vista. But a planned discussion of profound security vulnerabilities in the Gadget architecture at the upcoming Black Hat DEFCON Conference(July 21-26, Caesars Palace) appears to spell doom for these desktop denizens.
Win8 Gadgets
What you see in the screen capture to the left comes from one of my Windows 8 test machines running the Release Preview: my Lenovo X220 Tablet with touchscreen. I’ve found the CPU Usage and Network Meter gadgets from AddGadgets.com to be particularly useful over the years. I also use the analog clock that’s built into the Windows base gadget set, and a handy little gadget called Shutdown as well. That last item is useful because I tend to remote into my test (and other family member) PCs over the network, and it gives me the ability to shut down or restart those machines quickly and easily through a remote desktop session.
But as security researchers Mickey Shkatov and Toby Kohlenberg have discovered (as reported by Ryan Naraine “Security flaws signal early death of Windows Gadgets,” ZDNet), the gadget interface is rife with points of vulnerability that could lead to attack. Hackers could, in fact, take over a system through a malicious gadget foisted on unsuspecting users, or by direct attack on gadgets already running on a Windows desktop. From there, a successful exploit could lead to the attacker obtaining the same level of system privileges and access that attaches to the current logged-in user account. Because so many users routinely log in with system admin privileges, this effectively transfers complete system control to the attacker.
The details aren’t completely clear yet — I guess we’ll have to wait for the presentation and demonstration at DEFCON — but Microsoft has already issued a security advisory (Vulnerabilities in Gadgets could allow remote code execution). This web page includes two “Fix It” tools numbered 50906 and 50907. Because MS fails to describe what these tools do, I learned by experimentation that 50906 disables gadgets (and the Windows Sidebar in Vista), while 50907 turns them back on again.
It might be simpler for users with admin privileges who manage their own systems to simply remove all gadgets from their desktops, and not to add any new ones. I’m not sure it’s necessary to disable underlying support for gadgets if none are running. Apocalyptic warnings aside, I’m going to leave my gadgets up and running until more information emerges from the upcoming DEFCON conference. I need to better my understanding of the nature of the vulnerabilities that already-installed gadgets can pose before I do anything more. Frankly, I’m not sure that a gadget I’ve been using for years actually poses a security risk on my heavily firewalled home network, so I’m willing to wait and learn more about the potential risks of ongoing exposure before I wipe my desktops clean of these helpful bits of software.
It is interesting to understand that Microsoft will do away with the gadget interface, rather than attempting to repair its security issues. The company had already indicated it was deprecating gadgets in Windows 8 (though I discovered to my relief that they still worked on the Developer Preview release late last year, and have continued to use them anyway). However, it now seems likely that they will disable the Gadget interface in the upcoming RTM and GA releases for Windows 8. Thus, production versions of the new OS cannot fall prey to whatever security vulnerabilities gadgets might pose. It should be interesting to mull over what these researchers have learned, and what they’ll reveal, to decide if even trusted gadgets must go on Windows Vista and 7.
I am sorry to see this happen to gadgets. If it turns out they must be removed from my desktops, I’ll also be sorry to see them go. I’ll report back again later this month after the word on gadget vulnerabilities comes out in more detail.
[Note added on 11/18/2013: Thanks to an article I read recently by Deb Shinder, as recounted in a recent post to my Windows Enterprise Desktop blog entitled “Say! You CAN user Gadgets in Windows 8…” I’m very pleased to report that, thanks to 8GadgetPack, you can restore and use Gadgets in the Windows 8 and 8.1 environments. Whoopee! You may do this at your pleasure; I am doing it on several of my Windows 8 and 8.1 machines already.]
If your Windows 7 install has been around long enough, it will pick up various bits and pieces of leftover install information. The Windows Deployment Image Servicing and Management (DISM) tool includes a plethora of command line options that work on a running operating system (in addition to its more common use in setting up images for automated Windows deployments). For use on an active OS, however, your best reference is to start up cmd.exe using “Run as administrator” then type dism /online /? at the command line for a complete listing of commands and options.
In particular the command DISM /online /cleanup-image /spsuperseded is a handy one to know, because it gets rid of superseded install packages left in the wake of a service pack or other major update. It was designed as a post-SP-install cleanup tool, but I’ve run it on several systems that were built from the Windows SP1 slipstream install media, and it still found elements to remove from the installed image, as shown in this screen capture:
DISM removed two packages from my post-SP1 slipstreamed Windows 7 Ultimate installation
This recovered about 3 GB of disk space on my primary production machine — a welcome capability on the 120 GB SSD drive that I’m watching carefully to make sure it maintains at least 25% free disk space, to give the OS and applications room to breathe. On the other hand, if you run it on some systems, you’re more likely to see a result like this one, when DISM finds nothing to clean up on your behalf:
Nothing to clean up on my Lenovo T520 running Win7
Still, it’s a useful post-SP-install trick to keep up your sleeve. Another SP for Windows 7 is pretty likely to appear around the same time that Microsoft ships Windows 8 (late October is when that should happen, say most pundits). If this doesn’t do your system any good now, it will surely come in handy after you install the next SP!
Anybody who’s followed my Windows experiences and commentary already knows I think the Sysinternals guys (Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, primarily, but also a host of others over the years) hung the moon when it comes to great tools and utilities. I was recently pondering how to get over the “What did I forget?” hump in finally upgrading my primary desktop from 4 to 12 GB of RAM, and thus also from Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit to its 64-bit counterpart, when my research led me to their free tool named Disk2VHD.
In the past quarter, I’ve replaced the boot drives on my three primary notebook PCs with el-cheapo ($149) OCZ-3 Agility 120 GB SSD drives. In turn, that has left me with three 500 GB 2.5″ drives that I can still use, but no longer want for primary notebook HDs. That left me casting about for a solution to put these babies back to work at minimal expense with maximum results. Here’s what I found to meet my needs: a 5.25″ drive bay that accommodates four 2.5″ drives in the standard form factor, and supports both SAS (Serial-Attached SCSI) and SATA drives in a single, heavy-duty brushed aluminum enclosure. It’s available on Newegg for a modest $55, and on Amazon for $60. Here’s an introductory photo of the device, straight from the manufacturer’s Website:
Each of the drive sleds holds a standard 11mm 2.5" HD, or larger if you remove the sled top
OK, so I finally got my three production notebooks upgraded from conventional spinning hard disks to SSDs. All three of the source drives were 7,200 RPM SATA II drives: two from Seagate (one a Momentus plain-vanilla, the other a Momentus XT), along with a Hitachi 7K500 model. Of the three, the Momentus XT was far and away the fastest, but it couldn’t begin to match the OCZ Agility 3 SATA III 120GB drive that replaced it. I took advantage of a special sale to pick mine up for about $150 each on Newegg. Right now they’re priced at $155 with a $30 rebate to bring the price down to $125.
It took me a while to whittle these machines’ drives down to an acceptable level of disk space for the transfer. I recount this exercise in a couple of upcoming articles (one for InformIT.com, the other for InputCreatesOutput.com; no links yet but I’ll plug them in as they become available). Here’s a quick before-and-after snapshot:
Table 1: Notebook System Disk Holdings (Before & After)
Laptop
Before Clean-up
After Clean-up
HP dv6t
72.9 GB
52.8 GB
Dell M11X
48.2 GB
33.1 GB
Dell D620
35.4 GB
27.7 GB
I used the “Clone Disk” tool in Acronis True Image Home 2012 to transfer the contents of each conventional HD to its SSD replacement. Although the HP dv6t has the faster processor, the Dell M11X supports SATA 3 and outperforms the HP on I/O. All in all, the real proof for the value of the exercise comes from some before and after system timings, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2: Notebook System Timings (Before & After)
Timing Point
Dell D620 (Before/After)
Dell M11X (Before/After)
HP dv6t (Before/After)
BIOS alert
00:03 / 00:03
00:03 / 00:03
00:08 / 00:07
Windows 7 Starting
00:11 / 00:07
00:32 / 00:19
00:12 / 00:09
Login Prompt
00:53 / 00:23
01:07 / 00:32
00:40 / 00:12
Desktop appears
01:20 / 00:35
01:44 / 00:42
01:13 / 00:19
Soluto value
01:49 / 00:42
02:26 / 00:42
02:22 / 01:02
Shutdown
00:20 / 00:07
00:18 / 00:06
00:22 / 00:10
Here’s what I take away from this recent adventure. First and foremost, you get the biggest win in performance after Windows starts loading and the systems start banging their drives for all they’re worth. Second, there’s a clear correlation between the I/O interface hardware and overall disk subsystem performance: the Dell D620 which has the oldest SATA controller, saw a jump from 5.9 to 6.9 in the Windows Experience value for the disk data transfer rate. The HP dv6t has a faster SATA II controller and leaped from 5.9 to 7.4, but the MX11 with its SATA III support surged from 5.9 to 7.9 (which is as high as Windows Experience values currently go). Third, some of the best benefits from SSD use come after the OS has booted: applications open and close much more quickly, and shutdown takes no more than half as long as it once did. I like it!
Every now and then I’ll get a request from a vendor to take a look at their products and report on my experiences. Over three weeks ago, a package from Canada showed up at my door, including the LensPen LapTop Pro Ultra Notebook Cleaning Kit. As the following photo from Amazon (where you can pick this item up for $9.95 plus S&H) shows, it includes a microfiber cleaning cloth, 10 moist wipes for cleaning an LCD screen, a big multi-brush and screen cleaner holder, and an itty-bitty screen cleaner for cellphones (lower right in photo).
In my continuing quest to find more and better ways to slim Windows 7 down on disk, so as to make the most of smaller, more affordable SSDs, I’ve come across another footprint reducing technique. Exploring space consumption with my favorite visual tool, WinDirStat, I observed that the Windows FileRepository directory (C:WindowsSystem32DriverStoreFileRepository) consumes a fair amount of space (2.2 GB after my initial assay, just under 1 GB after the clean-up I’m about to describe).
I stumbled into an interesting potential “gotcha” as regards Windows 8 and its much-ballyhooed support for Hyper-V (see Steven Sinofsky’s Building Windows 8 blog entitled “Bringing Hyper-V to ‘Windows 8’” for more information) while researching an article on this topic for SearchWindowsEnterpriseDesktop.com this weekend. Although Microsoft has claimed in the past that Windows 8 will run on any PC that can run Windows 7, the same is most definitely NOT TRUE for Hyper-V support.
To run Hyper-V, a PC must not only run the 64-bit version of Windows 8, its CPU must also support a virtualization technology called Second Level Address Translation (aka SLAT) which, as Sinofsky’s blog states, “…is present in the current generation of 64-bit processors by Intel and AMD,” along with at least 4GB of RAM. Given the memory requirements for VMs, the 4 GB requirement is neither terribly surprising nor onerous. As it turns out, only the ix Intel processors (i3, i5, and i7) and Barcelona-model or later AMD processors (K10 or higher Opteron and Phenom CPUs) support SLAT.
You can check the status of your CPUs by downloading the latest version of Mark Russinovich’s coreinfo.exe utility from the Microsoft Sysinternals Web pages, then launching the utility from a command line launched with administrative privileges. If your CPU will run Windows 8 Hyper-V, you’ll see a display like this one:
Coreinfo -v produces virtualization info
The key entries in this display are the EPT (Extended Page Tables) for Intel processors, as shown in the preceding screenshot, and a value in the AMD processor output that may appear as NPT (Nested Page Tables) or RVI (Rapid Virtualization Indexing). Simply put, one of these values must be enabled for Windows 8 Hyper-V to work. What this also means is that even though I have some older quad-core systems that run Windows 7 just fine, with 12-16 GB of memory (and thus plenty able to host multiple VMs except for the SLAT requirement), I won’t be able to use those machines to host Hyper-V VMs when I start digging into Windows 8 later this month. All I can say is “Rats!”
