A Major Problem With Solid State Drives (SSD)

The Misaligned partitions problem is even more important for SSD drives than for traditional hard disk drives. Many modern SSD drives have an internal memory page size 4096 bytes or larger accordingly to 4K size, which are some analogue for 4K sectors. Thus all previously mentioned problems are the same for SSD partitions alignment.

This issue of SSD misalignment was highlighted in a recent OCZ forum where it was stated:

Take note here, partition alignment with SSD is the most important factor you have to deal with when installing your new drive. Tuning the drive’s alignment can add 30 to 50% more performance so failing to apply the correct alignment could ruin the experience you have with the drive.

There is one crucial SSD issue besides file system speed decline (which is not so noticeable in comparison to traditional HDD). It is the SSD memory cells degradation after some amount of write operations. So if partitions on SSD are misaligned beside downgraded system speed you put your solid state drive in danger. After partitions alignment, PAT eliminates all redundant read/write operations and thus provides speed boost and grants the SSD a longer lifetime.

Is SSD alignment an issue for you? Find out here. Read the rest of Why Misaligned Partitions are a Problem for SSD.

Prepare For A Storage Explosion

We have the good fortune of having opportunities to contribute our insights to readers of popular online editorials like Processor.com. We have been featured by Processor.com for everything from how web development businesses use our products to the challenges to disaster recovery and even the power of partitioning.

This is the most recent article that we were able to contribute to. We were asked to respond to a series of questions related to storage and the growing trend of virtualization.

Read Entire Article

Adaptive Restore Week

About two weeks ago I had a computer crash. Not just a bad virus or other corruption but my PC gave me the dreaded blue screen of death and nothing I seemed to do was going to bring my PC back from the dead. I had a recent backup image of my computer. I was using Drive Backup scheduled for an image on a weekly basis but that alone wasn’t going to help since I was going to need a completely new computer to replace the one that was fried. Granted it was time to buy a new computer, the one that died was on it’s last leg and was over 3 years old.

I ordered a new PC online and when it was delivered I wanted all of my old data to be on the new machine. I was sure that our product had functionality to do this but wasn’t exactly sure how it worked or how difficult it would be since I was now using a completely new set of hardware. I asked my favorite Tech Support rep how hard it would be to restore my computer on the new hardware and he just about  laughed at me. He explained that with Paragons Adaptive Restore, I could restore my backup image onto ANY computer and it would be just as easy as running a regular restore with one minor adjustment. Adaptive Restore would do the rest automatically.

What does Adaptive Restore do?

Here is the explanation of what Adaptive Restore does given on our website.

• Change of the Windows kernel settings according to the new configuration. We detect the given hardware profile and automatically install the appropriate Windows HAL and kernel.
• Installation of drivers for boot critical devices. We detect those without drivers and automatically try to install lacking drivers from the built-in Windows repository. If there’s no driver in the repository, we prompt the user to set a path to an additional driver repository, strongly recommending not to proceed until all drivers for the found boot critical devices are installed. In case drivers for these devices are installed, but disabled, they will be enabled.
• Installation of drivers for a PS/2 mouse and keyboard. This action will only be accomplished for Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003.
• Installation of drivers for network cards. We detect those without drivers and automatically try to install lacking drivers from the built-in Windows repository. If there’s no driver in the repository, we prompt the user to set a path to an additional driver repository.

Announcing Adaptive Restore Week

Because of this personal success with Adaptive Restore I wanted to dedicate this as Adaptive Restore week. I figure if an application works this well, we should have a company holiday dedicated to it and share it with all of our readers. I can’t imagine spending time using a backup product that doesn’t include the functionality of restoring to a new machine out of the box. Drive Backup and Paragon’s Backup and Recovery Suite are the only applications on the market that include Adaptive Restore for free. The truth is that you don’t even need to pay for our backup software and can use Adaptive Restore for the price of a dinner out.

In appreciation of Adaptive Restore Week we are offering customers some great deals on our products.

Get Backup and Recovery for Free and buy the Adaptive Restore tool for $14.95

Get the complete Backup and Recovery Suite for 30% off

If you are looking for something in your business environment we have excellent business class backup solutions that you can get at a discount also.

Drive Backup 10 Server 30% off

Drive Backup 10 Workstation 30% off

* Corporate products and discount sold through an authorized Paragon Partner. Contact a reseller or us directly.

What do you have to lose? Facebook Contest

It always amazes me to talk to someone that does not backup their computer on a regular basis. Most computers have some sort of factory image that can be used to make your computer look like the day your brought it home but everything you have added, saved and hold dear would be lost. I could go on and on about what I would miss most on my computer if something happened but that would be boring. I wanted to offer our exclusive Facebook readers and fans a chance to win some free backup software so I’m giving away 5 copies of Drive Backup 10 for the best answers to “What do you have to lose?”

Tell us what you have to lose and you could win a copy of Drive Backup 10.

What can’t you live without? If your computer crashed tonight what would be lost? Tell us what the most important information is on your computer and you could win a free copy of Drive Backup.

Three simple ways to get some free backup software:

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Step #1: Becoma a fan on Facebook and leave your answer there. Join our Facebook page by clicking on the Become a Fan button on the left. 

Step #2: It pays to share the news. Share this

post with your friends by clicking on the Share button on the left.

Step #3: In the comments section below, fill in your name, email address, paste the link to your Facebook profile in the URL field and tell us why you’d like to win.

Make sure to enter your real email address so that we can contact you if you win!

Winner have gotten an email. Thank you all for participating.

Andrew Ross

Fletcher Christian

Jay Presley

Andrew Lee

Diana Hill