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Windows 7 Offers Direct Download For Bootable USB Recovery Drive

There is no doubt Netbooks are becoming more and more popular.  The problem with Netbooks if your computer goes south, no optical drive is available to restore your computer.  You either have to A) buy an optical drive, burn a bootable backup or B) call the manufacturer and request a disc.

Windows 7 usb recovery

Windows 7 is addressing this process with the option to burn a bootable USB stick with your on-line purchase.  Well, at least that’s the rumor.
“The ‘Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool’ is used when you buy a down-loadable version of the software from Microsoft’s online store. During the download process, buyers are given the option of creating a bootable USB stick or burning a DVD.”
So now the question becomes, should a user be required to Continue Reading

USB Duplicator Movie Trailer – Say What?

If Nexcopy where to make a movie about USB duplicators and data loading USB flash drives, this would be the movie trailer to draw in attention. Clearly, it would be ‘the most boring’ movie in the world, but I’ll have to admit the movie trailer is quite impressive given the mundane product. Nexcopy did a good job of putting a unique spin on their product announcement for the new 40 and 60 port USB duplicators via a movie trailer.  The 1 minute video gives you just enough information to peak your interest, yet doesn’t bore you enough to click away. The high definition version is posted on youtube, but you’ll get the point from this:
<a href=”https://www.linkedtube.com/Ple78QrtOqQ3c12ba47b76a2f71f865959ea665af7f.htm”>LinkedTube</a>
Click to learn more about the Nexcopy USB duplicator and SD duplicator solutions and their all new 40 and 60 port solutions. Source: Zedomax. Continue Reading

LaCie Partners with Designer Philippe Starck For New USB Hard Drive

Press Release

PARIS, FRANCE (OCTOBER 6, 2009) Today LaCie, in collaboration with world-famous designer Philippe Starck, announced the LaCie Starck Desktop Hard Drive and the LaCie Starck Mobile Hard Drive. The new products showcase more than just Starck’s iconic signature; there is an intellect revealed throughout each component of the design. From Philippe Starck: “Technological genius explodes exponentially, each time with incredible power whose limits are yet to be known. The power remains, never abating, symbolically characterized by the sculptural magma that one attempts to cleave, to master within this geometrically perfect strongbox. A symbol of strength mastered, of freedom guided, of incandescent magma heeding to the form of its cast. The interpretation is free. But the mystery remains.”

LaCie USB hard drive

Here is the YouTube video of the full interview with Philippe Starck. Complementing Starck’s design philosophy is an intelligent surface that responds to your Continue Reading

USB Soldering Iron Is One Hot Rod

Thanko is getting us one step closer to computers fixing themselves with the USB soldering iron.  The USB soldering iron can heat up to 390F on a single USB connection or 570F with a dual connection so it’ll handle just about any quick fix job you need while out on site.

USB soldering iron

Thanko included a well thought out position for an on-board LED light at the tip of the handle to shine directly down onto the needle point of the USB soldering iron to illuminate your work area. At just $28 [about double that of Continue Reading

Standalone 35mm Slide Scanner

I have mentioned other 35mm Slide Scanners, but today I found one which is 100% standalone, no PC required! This standalone 35mm Slide Scanner allows even the most technologically challenged person easily scan old 35mm slides into digital archives.

35mm slide scanner

In just seconds the scanner will turn your 35mm image into a .jpeg photo file.  You have some options to see the resolution of the digital image, with a maximum resolution of 3,600DPI [dots per inch]. The new jpeg image is instantly saved to the SD memory card sitting inside the 35mm slide scanner. To insure the image is what you expect, the unit includes an Continue Reading

Internal USB Expansion Board

iBUYPOWER is best known for their gaming rigs and powerful laptops, who knew they also dabled in USB board components.  Well maybe you did, but I didn’t. iBUYPOWER released this sweet little internal expansion board for USB devices.  The point of the expansion board is to provide additional power to those growing number of gadgets you’ve seemed to accumulate.

usb expansion board

The board includes two internal USB pin-out connectors and one USB-A standard connector.  The board is $14 for what you see, or $24 which includes a bluetooth module…this will allow connectivity to those wireless keyboards, mice and printers. Continue Reading

Verbatim Tuff-N-Tiny USB Drive

Verbatim has been busy these days.  On Monday we reported about the Verbatim USB Tuff Clip flash drive, and today Verbatim is announcing their new Tuff-N-Tiny USB flash drive.

tuff n tiny

At the thickness of a penny and about twice as long, the Tuff-n-Tiny USB drive is available in 4 & 8GB sizes.  It’s almost the side of microSD card. The stick gets so incredibly small, because of it’s SIP technology which encapsulates all of the electronic components into a single miniaturized and sealed unit. As a result, the tiny drives are resistant to dust, water and static discharges. Our comment about this drive, and any other drive which uses the same USB contacts [image below] Continue Reading

Verbatim: USB Tuff Clip Flash Drive

Verbatim turned 40 this year and one of the products they have released to celebrate is the USB TUFF CLIP flash drive.  Designed for the everyday use by a teen or college student the USB TUFF CLIP is made of ABS plastic and includes a retractable USB connector.  In addition the TUFF CLIP comes with the obvious carabineer clip.

USB TUFF CLIP

The clip is the compelling part about this project, as you can pick up a 4 or 8GB flash drive just about anywhere.  The clip is well designed to fasten the flash drive to backpacks, key chains, belt loops and notebooks.  With a capless design the caps wont fall off or get lost while dangling from your person. The 4 [light blue] & 8GB [black] drives are priced at $29 and $39 respectively. Continue Reading

Split Stick USB Drive Keeps Your Personal Data Personal

What are the two things people always tell you; “don’t hire your friends and family” and “keep your work life separate from your personal life.“  Well, the USB split stick was designed for just that.  The USB drive is split into two drives.  The top lever allows you to pop out the USB connector for either work files or personal files.

USB split stick

I think this is brilliant.

You get 2GBs for each side, so whether it’s work and home, his and hers, or legal, illegal, it’s easy to separate the two without having a stoner moment and mixing your lifestyles.

The 4GB split stick sells for $20 and is available now.

Here is a bit from their press release:

Continue Reading

USB Duplicator By Nexcopy Expands to 60 Ports

Nexcopy first made waves back in 2009 with their USB400PC and USB600PC systems—PC-based USB duplicators offering 40 and 60 target ports. At the time, these systems broke ground by overcoming Windows’ drive letter limitations and offering a modular expansion path for high-volume USB duplication.

USB Duplicator, Large 60 Ports, Nexcopy

Fast-forward to 2025, Nexcopy continues to lead the field with a wide range of duplicators, now including USB 3.0 support, write protection, and advanced data handling features. Their modular system design allows users to scale from 20 ports to 60 ports by adding more hardware units to the same PC-based platform—ideal for Fortune 500 companies, schools, universities, and service bureaus.

The company also overcame technical challenges like Windows’ drive letter limit by bypassing the OS’s native mounting system. Instead, Nexcopy communicates directly with each USB controller, allowing the system to support dozens of devices simultaneously without exhausting the alphabet.

Current models include:

  • USB160PC – A 16-port USB 3.0 duplicator offering File, Device, Image, Copy?Add, and Unique Data Streaming modes. Includes checksum verification, data collection, and bootable image support.
  • USB160PRO – Adds advanced features such as hardware write protection, CD-ROM emulation, dual partitions, Copy Secure encryption, and descriptor-level customization.
  • USB400PC / USB600PC – Still the largest standard PC-based duplicators on the market with 40 and 60 USB ports, updated with Nexcopy’s latest Drive Manager PRO software.

Nexcopy’s Data Collection feature remains a unique and valuable tool. It reverses the usual duplicator workflow by extracting data from each USB drive and saving it into uniquely labeled folders on the host PC. This is especially useful for teachers collecting student homework or companies retrieving field-collected data.

Continue Reading

Corrupt a USB Drive Without Properly Ejecting – Not Likely, Here’s Why

If you yank out a USB drive from your computer, do you think it hurts the stick or could damage the drive?  No it doesn’t.  Well, it’s possible, but not probable.  The reason why is that Windows updated their removal policy for mass storage devices a long time ago.

eject USB drive

To mitigate the likelihood of data loss in surprise removal scenarios, Windows XP refined the caching policy for removable storage. As of Windows XP Beta 2, for consumer-oriented removable storage (USB, Flash, Zip, and so on), write caching is disabled by default. This means the write process happens immediately and when the Windows dialogue box shows complete…it’s really complete. In the past, Windows would buffer the data first, then write.  So if you pulled out the storage device there was a good chance Windows was still writing to the drive.  That’s when you get a corrupted drive.  So Window’s changed Continue Reading

Remove Read Only USB – Remove CDROM USB Partitions

Remove CDROM USB Partitions

Remove Read Only USB – Remove CD-ROM USB Partitions

If you are like me, you’ve done a great bit of searching on the internet to remove Read Only USB partition or to remove CDROM USB partition, and unfortunately the information is very scarce and the information which is out there, isn’t very clear and direct.  The only utility we’ve found, is the one used to remove the U3 platform off a retail USB stick made by SanDisk, but chances are you are dealing with a different vendor or stick. In addition, the U3 platform was killed a long time ago by SanDisk because hackers kept using the auto-run function associated with CD-ROM discs to auto-run USB malware.

remove CDROM USB partition

We found a company that can do this, and they do it in bulk, USBCopier.com is a USB duplication service company that specializes in fixing your problem, like removing a Read Only USB partition.  I’m not sure how they do it, but their services worked for us.

As you know, a simple format or delete attempt to the USB device simply doesn’t work…you get the “This disk is write protected” message. The flash drive is configured this way at the chip level, so it’s not a formatting problem. The chip inside the USB flash drive, called the controller, has a configuration setting so the device will appear as a CD-ROM device. Since the vendor commands are not available to access the USB controller chip, you cannot re-configure the device to work like a normal flash drive.

I spoke with USBCopier.com about the issue, and they can remove a USB partition off all types of drives, like USB sticks with Chipsbank controllers, Alcor, SMI, USBest, Innostor and many others.  They also said the partition type doesn’t matter, it can be either the Read Only or CDROM and they can remove it.  USBCopier also mentioned if they can remove the USB partition, then chances are, they can also recreate it.

The company was a life saver to us and I wanted to pass along the information.  It was much cheaper to pay the service fee to remove the USB partition than it was to re-buy all the USB sticks and start from scratch.

Here is the link to their USB duplication service page.  Here is the link to their contact page.

If you are in a bit of trouble – I wish you luck – these guys could possibly help.

Continue Reading

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