The best answer to this is a firm "maybe". DOS device drivers are available for most USB and Firewire controllers. If such drivers are added to a DOS boot diskette so that your USB or Firewire drive is "seen" by DOS, SpinRite will also be able to "see" and operate with it. However, the performance of the drive through the DOS drivers and the serial (USB/Firewire) cable will likely be far lower than if the external drive were connected directly to a PC's motherboard controller.

Currently, Drive Image 2002 cannot create images to external USB and FireWire devices (such as USB and FireWire CD-RW drives and hard drives).

No. The target value is only used by the gauge to calculate the percent of compaction that has been achieved. The gauge will still give Wet Density, Dry Density, Moisture and Percent Moisture results without the target density entered. The percent compaction can be calculated at a later time if necessary.

its maximum depth of operation, performing a complete read/write/read/write for data recovery and surface analysis/verification, SpinRite can obtain extremely high speeds of up to 2 gigabytes per minute, or 120 gigabytes per hour. However, that is SpinRite's maximum speed and many things can cause it to run slower and, in some cases, much slower . . .

At this time, only Windows/DOS FAT (vfat, fat32) are supported. If there is sufficient interest, we could investigate adding Linux ext2/ext3 support. (Contact us if you want this support to be added.) We do not support NTFS (NT, XP), HFS+ (Mac OS), or other formats; do not your USB device using those filesystem formats if you plan to use it on the Linux lab machines.

Yes. Desktop Authority allows you to centrally allow and/or deny devices based on device serial number, or VID/PID combination.

Some say USB 2.0 will likely not replace FireWire (IEEE 1394/FireWire/I-link, etc.) because FireWire has established its place firmly within many industries, such as the camcorder industry.

Yes. There are USB receipt printers, cash drawers and scanners available. If you don't see an interface type you are interested in, please call us.

Hardware: You need a USB port in your computer. Most computers build since 1998 have at least two built in USB connectors. You can also get PCI and CardBus USB adapters for older computers. Software: For Wintel computers, you need Windows98, WindowsME, Windows2000, WindowsXP, or a recent version of Linux. There is limited USB support on Windows95 OSR 2.1, and none on WindowsNT. For USB support on Apple Macintosh computers you need MacOS 8.1 or later.

They are a chip of flash memory in a little case with a USB plug on the end. They're called Flash Drives, USB Drives, Thumb Drives, etc. They have no moving parts (unlike the similar units called MicroDrives) and are quite dependable. When plugged in they look and act like a server or hard drive and are safe to work from. Be sure to use the appropriate unmounting, ejecting or other disconnect procedure for the computer you are using before unplugging them. Data may be lost if you don't.

This list is by no means exhaustive but attempts to cover as many USB devices as possible that are known to work under Solaris. Also, in addition to many new devices being introduced into the market each day, many may have undergone revisions or updates to their firmware or hardware even though they may be listed with the same model number or are no longer available.

Refer to System Administration Guide: Basic Administration (for Solaris 9), Devices and File Systems (for Solaris 10 and Express release) For the Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 OS releases, the latest updates will install the USBA1.0 kernel interfaces as part of a Dual Framework. The Dual Framework consists of two USB frameworks: the newer USBA 1.0 framework which supports USB 2.0 devices, and the original framework of the OS release.

USB Audio drivers implement a subset of the 1.0 USB audio spec. Generally, simple USB audio devices compliant to USB audio spec 1.0 on www.usb.org work well with Solaris 10 or later. However, USB audio devices usually have a very short shelf life and many devices that the Solaris USB audio driver supports are no longer available. One exception is the Griffin iMic Audio adapter. Check out http://www.griffin.com. Some Logitech audio devices have also been reported to work.

Your purchase receipt — which you should try not to lose — contains your purchase transaction code. You may visit the customer service page of our web site at any time to enter your purchase transaction number. This will re-display a copy of your original online receipt containing a fresh software download link you may use to retrieve the latest version of our software. You may do this whenever you need to.

We have never created nor offered a demo version of SpinRite because people would just download and use the demo whenever they needed SpinRite's help. Unlike "productivity" software such as a word processor or appointment manager which are used all the time, SpinRite is typically needed only from time to time. But when it's needed it's really needed and it's really useful! So if a demo of SpinRite were available, people would just use the demo whenever they were in trouble.

This is mostly a matter of personal taste. For example, how often should you backup your data? However, a general rule of thumb would be that SpinRite should be run every two or three months. Running it more often provides greater safety at the expense of the time consumed. Running it less often provides more opportunity for new problems to go undetected until they become severe. Once every few months should be often enough to catch and detect any early trouble.

SpinRite and ScanDisk are entirely different types of products. ScanDisk replaces the original DOS CHKDSK command, which verified the logical file system structure of the hard drive (the newer CHKDSK command no longer performs that function). Microsoft created ScanDisk because people were switching off their computers without first exiting Windows. This resulted in corruption of the file system.

Nope. SpinRite is not a drive defragmenter. SpinRite operates with the drive's built-in intelligence to reassign and relocate defective sectors without creating file system fragments. Thus, running SpinRite does not create fragments, but neither does it eliminate any that may exist before it was run. You may use any common defragmenter (such as those built into Windows) either before or after using SpinRite.

SpinRite was deliberately designed to absolutely minimize the "window of opportunity" for trouble if the system's power should fail while SpinRite is running. We, and many editorial product reviewers, have literally "pulled the plug" on SpinRite with no ill effects. However, reliable use of a personal computer does depend upon a supply of reliable power. If system power fails at the instant of a drive writing to its disks, the single sector being written will, of course, be mis-written.

The actual types of ink files you can recognize may vary depending on whether you acquired a specific version of MyScript Notes accompanying a particular device (e.g. Logitech iO pen, ACECAD Digimemo, Pegasus Note Taker etc.). See the previous point for a list of currently supported devices for the version purchased from the Vision Objects web store. It can also accept ink made with the Ink Editor on Tablet PC and any Windows 2000 or XP touchscreen.