There are of course other methods of achieving the same goal; some of you may be familiar with .zip or .rar files which have the added advantage of being able to not only take many files and store them temporarily as one but also compress the data, making the total file size smaller. Unfortunately, when using this method on a media disc you strip out important characteristics of the original such as boot code, disc structures and file attributes which can often prevent an application from running.

As a result of this exact copy process, the format has become a popular method of transporting pirated software – the ISO file is an exact match of the original and as such there is no reason the software would realise it had been copied and refuse to run. There are plenty of legal uses for the format, however, and it is highly likely that even the most legitimate users will come in to contact with an ISO file at some stage sooner or later.

Unfortunately they are not the most user friendly file format; you can’t simply complete the download then double click to run the application as they first have to be returned to their original format. There are typically two methods that can be used to complete this process; burn the data back to a physical disc or create a virtual drive on your computer.

The first method relies on a piece of disc burning software such as the fantastic and free CDburnerXP (www. cdburnerxp.se). Simply click ‘burn an image to disc’, point the application in the direction of your ISO file, insert a blank CD or DVD and your computer will then spit out an exact copy of the original media as if it had come direct from the manufacturer.

The second method uses a piece of software such as the free Alcohol 52% (www.alcohol-soft.com) to create a virtual drive that can simulate an actual CD or DVD disc. By asking Alcohol 52% to ‘mount’ an ISO file downloaded from the Internet, Windows will be tricked in to thinking there is a physical drive connected to your computer containing the original disc. You simply access it through Windows Explorer as you would any other regular drive connected to your computer.

This latter method prevents us from having to waste a blank CD or DVD which is especially handy in instances where it would have only been used to install the application before being discarded. We can also keep the original ISO file and mount it whenever it’s required rather than having to store and locate a physical disc when the data is required again in the future.

There are additional benefits, especially when it comes to speed. Not only does it take seconds to mount an ISO file, rather than the minutes it would take to burn it, but in addition the speed of reading the data is exponentially faster. A virtual CD for example will read at 200x speed whereas the fastest CD drives on the market are limited to 52x speed.

Some users may also appreciate the ability to create multiple virtual drives that can function simultaneously; this is useful if you have more than one disc that you need frequent access to without the need for multiple readers. You can create copies of your own discs and load them up on to multiple virtual drives in this fashion and as long as you own the original it is perfectly legal.

Unnecessary Screen Savers

Screen Savers have been redundant for many years now but yet many users still insist on having them on their machines. The idea of a screen saver stemmed from the days of monochrome monitors; these had a tendency to suffer an incurable ‘burn in’ if a still image was left on the screen for an extended period of time. Fortunately modern monitors, especially TFT’s, don’t suffer from this affliction so there is absolutely no reason to have your screen saver turned on. A better idea would be to have your PC automatically switch the monitor to standby mode after a set period of time as this would save power and extend the life of the monitor. To activate this feature head to control panel, double click on the power options icon and then select how long you would like the PC to wait before the monitor is switched in to standby when it’s not being used.

If you don’t ‘stop’ a USB device before unplugging it from a PC you’ll mess it up.

If you unplug a USB device before stopping it correctly from within Windows then it will most likely make a violent sound often followed by your Operating System scolding you for removing the device without disconnecting it first. Whilst it is true that if you do this with a device such as a flash drive or USB hard drive whilst it is juggling data around that some real damage can be done there is no real reason that unplugging a printer, scanner, camera and so on without first stopping it will cause any damage to the device.

Overzealous Defragmenting

I have covered defragmenting before in Click but very briefly I’ll quickly recap for those who are unsure what I mean by this term. A computer will not always write a single file in a continuous space on the hard disk but will often write the file in several pieces on the drive in whatever space is available. Over time this can lead to the drive becoming ‘fragmented’ which results in the computer working harder, and as a result taking longer when accessing the hard drive as the data has to be read from several different areas of the disk, rather than being read in one continuous stream.

A defragmentation program, such as the one provided free in Windows, is used to reorganise the files of the hard drive so that, where possible, a file is always stored in one piece rather than scattered across the drive. The problem is that these programs can become addictive and often lead to an obsessive desire to have every file on your hard drive defragmented. I know people who run these utilities several times a week and the simple truth is that there is nothing wrong with a fragmented drive. Modern Operating Systems attempt to keep fragmented files to a minimum and even a large amount of fragmentation will make a relatively small difference to your overall system speed.

Whilst we’re on the subject, it is worth noting that it’s quite normal that some files cannot be defragmented; this is because they are being used by Windows and as such they can’t be moved around. There are ways to get around this but since this space is more often that not occupied by temporary virtual memory, it really isn’t worth worrying about.

I can’t argue with the fact that if your hard drive is genuinely very fragmented then running a utility such as Windows Defrag can result in some modest speed increases but please, don’t get in to the habit of doing it more than a couple of times a year. Every so often someone will tell you about how they spend two hours a week defragmenting their hard drive and the vast difference it makes but please, ignore them.