• October
  • 31st
  • 2008

vista on ssd : set ntfs allocation size to 64k

Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (0)


To unleashed the performance of SSD, we need to set the block size to at least 64k. See the benchmark here. Of course it came with some side effect. You’ll lose some of usable disk space. I don’t have the tool to resize the allocation size. Partition Magic 8 doesn’t work either so, I opt for fresh install instead.

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  • October
  • 22nd
  • 2008

back from the death

Posted by MaEl in: Personal-Stuff Comments (1)


The server had a major downtime due to unbootable motherboard. Previously the same thing had happen but I just sent the motherboard(EPIA-SN 18000G) for RMA. Without knowing the cause, a week later they sent me a brand new motherboard.

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  • October
  • 1st
  • 2008

low level format hdd using dd

Posted by MaEl in: Bits-and-Bytes Comments (0)


Need to securely wipe HDD data?? Got 2nd-hand HDD?? Got bad sector?? Yes, It’s time to do a low level format(Zero-fill). In Linux, we can use dd. The command is as simple as
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda &
[1] 5645

Set it as background process and it will print out the PID. This process takes a while depending on the HDD size.WARNING! This will destroy ALL data on the HDD, all boot sector info and all data on all partitions. To watch the status, just enter
kill -SIGUSR1 5645
62796+0 records in
62796+0 records out
65846378496 bytes (66 GB) copied, 1748.1 s, 37.7 MB/s
replace 5645 with the PID

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