Fullscreen HTML5Med Res (??MB)HTML4

The Fox Report Barry Fox’s technology column Cloning drives the easy way, plus more news on scams D anish electronics company Sandberg (slogan ‘IT is for everybody’) makes clever and welldesigned gadgets with a real purpose. I recently tried Sandberg’s ‘Unusual hard drive tool’ because it makes a nice fit with our recent articles on making PCs perform much better by replacing an ‘old-fashioned’ spinner Hard Disk Drive with a new SSD (Solid-State Disk). To make the HDD-to-SSD replacement you first need to clone (not simply copy) the existing operating system on the existing HDD to a new and empty SSD. This can be tricky and risky because making a mistake in the cloning process can easily result in wipeout, with the old HDD and new SSD both empty. Sandberg’s ‘unusual’ tool makes cloning as safe and easy as it can be; near risk-free in fact. The same tool also makes it much easier to work with ‘bare’ HDDs and SSDs, storing and reading data to and from discs of both types. Anders Partida Petersen, Brand Director at Sandberg, is realistic when he admits the new tool ‘may well seem like something for nerds’. But I guess that term covers many of our readers! I’m pretty sure computer service centres will love it too. I’ve tried it and certainly love it. I just wish I hadn’t previously wasted my money on a multi-bay HDD dock that looks good but has corrupted some of my HDDs, and also on two-bay HDD docks which are far less use than the much neater Sandberg tool. The USB 3.2 cloner and dock costs £59.99, and in addition to SATA supports SSD fitting types M.2, NVMe and M Key, in sizes 2230 / 2240 / 2260 / 2280. Scammer update We have already warned that scammers have moved on from selling fake capacity USB memory devices that store far fewer megabytes than claimed to SSD drives that store far fewer gigabytes than claimed. Fortunately, there are easy-to-use free apps that test capacity. So far, the tests have been lengthy, but a newish free app plays clever tricks to shorten the test time. It randomly tries to read and write data at widely spaced sections of the memory map. So, it quickly fails if real capacity is lower than it should be. The drive is then red flagged for junking or more detailed testing. For further details, see: https://bit.ly/pe-may24-drv Smart connector The Sandberg tool is really just a very smart connector strip, powered with a separate 12V supply. The strip has SATA and NVMe sockets for plug-in connection to standard 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch SATA spinner drives and SSDs of the type that slot straight into modern computers and peripherals. Connection of the tool to a PC or mobile is by standard USB-A or USB-C cable. No screwdrivers are needed. Rather fiddly rubber plugs do the job of screws. Two drives, HDD and SSD, can be connected to a computer simultaneously or separately, with reading and writing possible to both. But the tool also has onboard software that lets it clone directly from one drive to the other, without the need to connect to a computer. A physical switch controls the direction of cloning, HDD to SSD or vice versa. This is what makes wipeout mistakes far less likely. Sandberg says that because the tool supports USB 3.2 it’s theoretically possible to achieve transfer speeds right up to 10 Gbps. But this will of course depend on the drive specs. 14 Fox tested and approved – Sandberg’s ‘Unusual hard drive tool’ makes cloning drives straightforward, easy and safe. Practical Electronics | May | 2024 It now emerges that scammers are also selling fake USB hubs. Devices that are labelled USB 3.0 or simply equipped with the blue lip sockets that are supposed to guarantee USB/3.0 SuperSpeed performance, are actually USB 2.0 or 2.1. Again, fortunately, there is a simple free test, called ‘USB Device Tree Viewer’. Just install the app on your computer and plug and unplug hubs, one by one. The app then displays which devices are 2.0, 2.1 or 3.0. I have already found several hubs, bought online, that have blue lips but USB 2 speeds. USB Device Tree Viewer also provides useful information on every USB device that is hard-wired or plugged in – see: https://bit.ly/pe-may24-usb Card scam - not what you think! Meanwhile, news is now breaking of a new high street scam for which there is no useful IT app cure – so self-protection is the key. It seems the crims are ‘borrowing’ tekkiepix pic of the month U-matic video cassette recorder U-Matics were not pretty, they just did the job, and loaded faster than open reel. H ere’s a good ‘pub quiz’ question for PE readers of a certain vintage: ‘When did the first video cassette recorders go on sale, and what was the name of the manufacturer?’ Betamax, from Sony, in 1975? Wrong. VHS from JVC, in 1976? Wrong, again. So perhaps it was a bit of a trick question? Panasonic was ahead of VHS with a VCR called the Quasar VX ‘The Great Time Machine’, born 1975, but it died soon after – and not just because the marketing team hadn’t realised that just about everyone associated the label ‘VX’ with nerve gas. So, was that one first? Sorry, wrong again; and even though Dutch Philips had stolen a march on the Japanese with the N1500 VCR in 1972, that’s still not the right answer. The first working video cassette recorder was the U-matic, developed by Sony, with Panasonic and JVC joining in for a joint launch in 1971. It’s true that the first U-matic recorders needed a bolt-on tuner and output circuitry to feed into the aerial socket of a home TV. It’s also true that the U-matic system was initially adopted Practical Electronics | May | 2024 Early CD discs were often edited and mastered on U-matic systems. by professionals rather home users because of high cost and the lack of an easy connection. Neverthless, U-matic became a must-have trophy gadget for well-heeled homeowners, and recorders were soon available with built-in connectors for home TVs. U-matic cassettes held ¾-inch tape, rather than the 1-inch tape used for open-reel recorders and ½-inch tape used by Beta, VHS and the Philips and ‘nerve gas’ systems. But most people neither knew nor cared what kind of tape was in the cassette. Until then, home video wannabees had had to struggle with open spools of very expensive video tape that needed careful threading round a spinning head drum. Touching the tape could spoil a recording – and anything less than precision threading could wreck the delicate video heads. U-matic cassettes only ran for an hour, but so did the Philips cassettes and the first Sony Betamax tapes. Sony’s boss Akio Morita initially saw no problem with this because back then most Japanese TV programmes only ran for an hour anyway. Threading video tape gift cards, for food and services like music and movie streaming, from supermarket checkout racks. They then secretly copy the card validation code and put the card back in the rack. When another customer innocently buys the card and loads it with credit, the crim can use the previously stolen code to steal the credit. So, from now on I shall buy my cards only from stores that keep them securely ‘behind the counter’ and thus unavailable for ‘borrowing’. became a thing of the past, just as threading audio tape was no long necessary once Philips had launched the audio cassette in the 1960s, and Americans slapped 8-track cartridges in car players. All the the proud owner of a U-matic player had to do was ‘post’ a sealed cassette into a letter-box slot, and a clever mechanism hidden inside the player automatically laced it round the drum. JVC marketed U-matic recorders as U-VCRs that plugged into a ‘regular TV’ and recorded ‘off-the-air TV programs’ under ‘full remote control’. Meanwhile, however, JVC was working secretly on the less expensive VHS system. For many years, U-matic was a standard convenience tool for broadcasters, programme makers, business teachers and TV advert producers. Early video cinemas used U-matic tapes, and security services used them for secret training videos – as one UK journalist found out to his cost when he bought some cassettes from a tech jumble sale and thought the contents looked suspicious. Soon after he wrote about them in a specialist video magazine, promptly followed by a knock on his home door and a bunch of big men with security IDs confiscated the cassettes. In the early 1980s U-matic cassettes were used to store digital audio and became the de facto standard tool for mastering Compact Discs (CD). The cassette tape stored digital audio packed inside a video signal. As far as the U-matic recorder was concerned it was just another signal. More consumer-friendly (smaller, lighter and cheaper) VHS and Beta decks could do the same job, but Umatic recorders and tapes were far more rugged. Practical Electronics is delighted to be able to help promote Barry Fox’s project to preserve the visual history of pre-Internet electronics. Visit www.tekkiepix.com for fascinating stories and a chance to support this unique online collection. 15