External Hard disk slow transfer rates with Windows7?

If you are facing issues in transferring data from and to external hard disk (USB) using a Windows7 system, then most likely the solution given here should work for you.

My System Config

1. Windows7 Professional, 64 bit
2. Lenovo Thinkpad T520, 50 GB HD, 4 GB RAM, Intel i7 2.2 GHz

Symptoms

• External hard disk to and fro transfer rates were extremely slow

Debugging

1. The problem was not with the USB Cable
2. I was able to replicate the problem with both my Seagate Freeagent 750 GB as well with WD Elements 1 TB drive
3. The copy from Local disk (C:\) to Local disk (C:\) also became very slow at these times, though better than the external HD one
4. The problem was not there EVEN on my old laptop -Windows XP, 100 GB HDD, 2 GB RAM, HP      6910p 

What are the things that I found on net that did not work?

• Note that the disabling of the BIT (Background Intelligent Transfer) Service or changing the Policy of drive  to "optimize the performance" didn't work for me.

The following didn't do any wonders for me :-

1. Open "My Computer" or "Computer" from your (Start) Menu or Button
2. Right-click the external Hard disk drive from the list and select "properties"
3. Click the "Hardware" tab
4. Highlight the drive your having problems with from the drive list and click on "Properties"
5. Click on the “Policies” tab
6. You will see two radio buttons - "Optimize for quick removal" and "optimize for performance"
7. If not selected, select "Optimize for performance" and click on "OK". If running Vista or Windows 7 also check "enable write caching on the disk"
8. Click on "OK" and exit

Nor did the following work for me :-

1. Go to Control panel

2. System and Maintenance

3. Administrative tools

4. Run services shortcut

5. Stop and disable the BIT (Background Intelligent Transfer) Service

These are given here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/topic/external-hard-drive-is-reallly-slow

But I reached to the eventual solution via a link from here via a post by "noiox8"

What worked is the solution given here courtesy Peter Bromberg. Thanks a ton Peter!

http://www.eggheadcafe.com/tutorials/windows-7/69610eb9-5429-48d8-a00a-e0547fd30ff4/how-to-make-windows-7-lean-and-mean.aspx

Turn off Remote Differential Compression

Remote Differential Compression measures the changes in files over a network to transfer deltas with minimal bandwidth rather than transferring an entire file that has previously been moved. Because it constantly checks for file changes, this service can hinder system performance.

To disable this service:

1.      Open windows7 search box

2.     Search for “Turn Windows features on and off”

3.      Scroll down and uncheck Remote Differential Compression

This eventually worked for me.Quirks of windows!

Hope you find this useful and it works for you if you face this issue.

\Vikram

Why BJP lost and UPA won in Elections 2009 !

The 2009 Lok Sabha elections sprung up a major surprise for a number of people. No one was predicting a washout of BJP or sure. Most of the s0-called experts and exit polls were predicting a hung parliament with some even suggesting a slender but definite lead for the BJP.

Let's first see that what BJP thought would work:

1. Hindutva - The party still believed that Hindutva as its ideology will still appeal the masses as it did in early 90s.Varun Gandhi's speech a Pilibhit could be construed as an example of the same, trying to garner support of Hindu voters. ( obviously that backfired)
2. Anti-incumbency - It or its think tank just thought or rather hoped that people would not like to vote for an UPA govt. again
3. Charisma of Advani-Modi. So called Iron-men of the BJP.
4. Global recession - It hoped that the global recession and its affects can be blamed on the UPA govt.
   

well, this is a short list, IMO , in spite of its manifesto it had only these 4 as the main issues it brought out in its campaign.

Lets look at why the above did not work.The 1st and 3rd did not because probably these do not form the basic issues for most people in the country now. At least I hope so, now I may be proven wrong on this in the next election, but those would be a different set of circumstances and variables and I guess no one can predict that.

So IMO, the Hindutva as a concept that will garner votes is obsolete. It did once, but not anymore.

The portraying of Narendra Modi as "Chote Sardar" with a reference to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel in mind, did not work. The riots in Gujarat has not gone down well. That is also implied by the reduction in Lok Sabha seats for BJP in Gujarat as well.

The BJP also managed to confuse the electorate by portraying Narendra Modi as the choice for PM for the 2014 elections. That was definitely a big mistake. It sounded like Advani was an interim candidate. There should be only one clear leader, that's all.

It is quite surprising for India as its only second time in history of independent India that any Prime Minister has won back-to-back. The last time it was done by none other than Nehru. Even Indira and Rajiv Gandhi could not do what Dr. Manmohan Singh has done.

Clearly ant-incumbency could not be argued. The previous government essentially did a good job on most of the fronts. The below list actually contains

1. The signing of the Nuclear deal with US in spite of stiff opposition from the UPA allies i.e. the Left block (CPI, CPM) was a major positive step in the right direction. Securing energy security in a scenario where the fossil fuels can not be depended upon for long term, say a hundred years down the line is paramount to India's rise in future as a economic power.
   
2. Although one could attribute security goof up for the Mumbai attacks in 2008, the fact is that the government did a good job in managing the crisis both domestically as well on the foreign ministry's front. I am not saying that there are no lessons to be learned on the internal security front but just referring to the management of the situation once it happens. We need systematic changes in our intelligence and automating the monitoring activity rather than depend on police force's manual inspections.
3. The BJP did not have any anti Sonia Gandhi trumpet to blow this time based on her Italian descent unlike the last time when a lot of people decided not to vote for UPA because they did not want an Italian born as their Prime Minister. Obviously, what happened in 2004 when Sonia Gandhi decided to bring in Dr. Manmohan Singh who had a great and clean image and is considered the father of Indian economic reforms since 1991 is all very well known. The infighting BJP leaders could never have done such a thing, giving up the PM's job. That killed the BJP's pathetic issue for once and all.
4. The focus and infrastructure and development has been substantial.A number of development projects have been taken. But, more work needs to be done for road and power infrastructure improvement, dams and possibly even connecting rivers or deep canalization to provide water and food security. Fifty or hundred years down the line, the wars may not be about nuclear energy and control of iron,minerals, oil but for WATER.
   
5. NREGA - the national rural employment guarantee act/program. This was ridiculed by the elite as a dole out for the poor which will be a waste due to corruption and bureaucracy. But, proving everyone wrong, the program has excelled in its motives of ensuring that the money reaching the poor and needing. This was enable by enforcing bank credits in the name of the NREGA card/account holder instead the usual way of cash which is easier to fritter away by the corrupt middlemen. The NREGA also allowed upto 6% money to be used as administrative expenses which was a good and realistic measure.But this was the classice case of BEFORE n AFTER comparisions like the weight loss advertisements. Before the poll it was predicted by the media and the election pundits that the UPA will lose because of failure of the NREGA whereas after the election results, it was attributed to exactly the reverse, i.e. to the success of the NREGA. Most election pundits did a complete volte face on this simulating a circus act.But that's a separate matter ( accuracy of psephologists - is it a science or something akin to astrology). Having said that about NREGA, there are a number of things that can be improved about the scheme making it more efficient and better which I am sure the government is planning to do.You can do a Yahoo! search to find about more about both positives and scope of improvements for NREGA. From an economic theory point of view, the NREGA provided the money in the hand of the people whose marginal propensity of consuption or spending is much higher than the people who would rather save than spend. In the time of a global recession, India has done relatively well to stem the rot. The principle is same that the poor are more likely to spend than save on smaller comforts since they want to improve their standard of living.Companies like HUL(Lever) and and other retailers have realised this much earlier, I guess almost 2 decades ago when they started the marketing of shampoo sachets, creating a price point that was affordable to the poor and addressing an untapped market segment. Obviously, the poor could not afford to buy a 100 rupee, 200 ml shampoo bottle but they could buy a 2 rupee 8 ml shampoo sachet. I should point out that the first company to bring out sachets was a not HUL but CHIC shampoos, a brand very popular in the southern parts of India.Anyway, I have digressed a bit, but the bottom line is that this is also helping in fighting the recession.
   
6. RTI- the Right to Information act has been a first of its kind in probably the whole world. This is a great act in line with the democratic principles.It empowers and encourages normal people to go out and question government decisions, expenses and so on.More things need to be brought in the purview of the RTI act but its no doubt an excellent start for bringing in transparency in the actions of the government and its various agencies and official's conduct.
7. Global Recession - The PM and the finance minister P. Chidambaram along with RBI have done a great job in containing the recession. The inflation is in control, government is spending money in development and infrastucure in roads, realty, power etc. which is a great cure for recession and acts like NREGA have brought money to the people who spend rather than save.It may be noted that during the Great Depression of 1929, U.S. built a huge network of roads and railroads, simultaneoulsy providing jobs and building infrastructure.
   

Probably this list can be a lot longer w.r.t to what went wrong for BJP and what went right for UPA. But this time some sort of history seems to have been created where the Indian voters came out and voted for the pro-development issues that mattered for the people rather than the rhetorical ones created by the the BJP.

Man is a social animal

Man is a social animal

recently, I came across a thread on email group about basic courtesy. Now, the reason that it brought some interesting perspective is that in the end, the rude guy was trying to convince others that what sounded rude was not really intended to be rude. In fact, it was a misunderstanding, something that those familiar with India, Indian politicians and the omnipresent 24X7 news channels can relate to as "being quoted out of context on a comment". Now, that's another story and IMHO, we have a NP-hard problem here (in a nation of 1 billion, an efficient algorithm to monitor the blabber of so many people is obviously hard to even think about, just like this author here:)).

anyway, enough digressions from the main topic, but what set the ball rolling to the title of this blog post is that I felt that in the end we (as in humans and probably all other species as well) need the stamp of social approval. At times, I have seen the nerdiest and the geekiest seeking acceptance to their random or weird ideas ( at least in the geek community). Obviously, the idea in question was considered weird in the first place because it was orthogonal for most normal people.

the point is, when in the earlier classes of my school days, we used to be taught that man is a SOCIAL ANIMAL. And I was like, whats social about it and why do we really classify human kind as animal ?

took many years to understand the deep meaning of the social part, the animal part was easy, considering the brutality of wars, communal riots ( yeah, they are still popular in India and to be precise in the whole of Indian sub-continent). That's another topic for another time... so long...

My Life - My Wife and Kid

Well, for a brief introduction about my life , I felt I should describe a but about myself , my wife and my 10 month old kid with who I am having the best days of my life.

Me



I did my B.Tech in Computer Science a few years back. Man, I miss those days at IIT Delhi hostel,
and remember how I barely managed to pass TOC, theory of computation, I will add a blog for that story some day when I feel nostalgic about my college days.

Currently, my technical interests are in Business Intelligence though.

My Kid

He is 10 months old now, absolutely gorgeous, as I guess all kids are to their parents.
I am sure I was , 30 years ago, at least for my parents !

He babbles in his own language with sounds like ta-ta , da-da, ba-ba-ba.... all seem to be in a large FOR LOOP as he continues trying hard to make us understand what he wants.
Usually that's something out of his reach.

He doesn't like playing with his numerous Fisher Price toys that I brought for him with great zeal. The truth, I still get attracted by those nice toys like colored balls, musical toys , telephone and buy them most of time because I can not resist them in those toy shops.

So far so good, the only flaw in those toys is:

I am attracted and fascinated by them, my son isn't !

He loves to pull wires of my laptops , he reaches there by sneaking under my chair.
That reminds me to describe his so called crawl. Well I guess its because of my eccentric and lazy genes that came via my tRNA to him or what, he doesn't crawl on his knees.

My wife claims that she has seen him crawling on his knees once, but I never had the pleasure of the same.

He actually folds one his leg, while lying on his stomach, and then generates thrust to propel himself forward while sliding on the floor. Simultaneously, his hand seems to be in motion like that of a swimmer in breast stroke, only that he isn't in water.

I don't know if I could describe it in as funny way as it looks to me.


His other favourite pastimes are playing with the cordless, the mobile , tearing my newspapers and magazines. Playing with empty carton boxes of the toys or anything else that he can get his hands to.

He can stand by holding on to some support, which is quite funny because then he gets stuck as he can't sit down once he is upright. At times he is precariously balancing him like a circus man , standing in the pram.

Right now he is banging my mobile in the floor, I bet I will have to get a new one soon :)


My Life


My wife is a an engineer who is currently taking care of our kid full time. Believe me its a tough job to be a mother or a parent.

Anyway, whats funny for my kid ends up as a time consuming exercise for my wife most of the times.

Some nuggets for my young, aspiring soon to be parents :

• Do you know that the young ones' diapers have to be changed 6-10 times a day.
• Feeding them is a nightmare as they keep spitting out food particles on your face and elsewhere,which obviously you need to clean in your spare time, if any :)
• They need at least 4 pair of dress change every day. Every meal is a torture on their clothes as well
  
• In short, you have to be always around to make sure that they are OK, not falling over etc.
• Its the real 24 * 7 job
  

I vote for these disclaimers to be published in some encyclopedia !

Anyway, so my wife is struggling with this rigorous schedule most of the time, but she is still energetic, loving and ready to do something new the whole day.

Apart from all these activities, if and when she gets time she is cleaning one thing or the other.
This trait of hers resembles Monica of Friends fame, quite a bit. At other times she is reminding me to take bath else no lunch. I usually try to avoid taking bath till late evening on holidays.

Another favorite pastime of hers is to predict rain. She loves rain and sea like crazy. She proclaims that she can live on an island alone with seafood and a great beach for years, a la Survivor . I know she can, but I don't see that happening anytime soon as we don't really have software related jobs in that heaven called Goa.

Btw, we have been to Goa last month and twice in last 2.5 years. Every time we go there, we love it more than before and do not feel like coming back to breath the polluted air of Bangalore.
Will describe Goa and its salient features that can improve quality of life in some other blog.

Anyway, I digressed quite a bit, the suggestion I make to wife is to join the Met Department.
Just like them, she is never right about predicting the rains, hence an ideal candidate for that job.

I have got to go now, some lovely idli and sambhar are waiting for me!

Bangalore's Shame - aftermath of Rajkumar's Death

During the past 2 days, Bangalore as a city a new low. As if the traffic,electricity, bad roads and lack of bridges was not enough, the death of filmstar Rajkumar lead the city in to chaos and violence on the streets.

The so called Silicon Valley of India had to shut down its software developent, BPO, IT offices.
People, hooligans to be precise, the disgruntled , misdirected Kannada youth took it to the streets, burn buses, private vehicle, cabs and even police and media vans.Even lorries carrying essential commodities like fruits and vegetables were ransacked and burnt. Even a Hotel named Geo was burnt and the foreign tourists staying there were robbed and harassed.

As a result, the whole city has been on a standstill from the last 2 days, with offices, restaurants,grocery stores, schools etc. all being closed.

Even one of the ambulances on the road was burnt. Imagine the plight of patients seeking medical attentions as pharmacies and clinics were also closed.


The police was shown for running from mob on NDTV and other channels. I wonder how this ill equipped police force was supposed to save citizens and public property from rioters when they can't even save themeslves. Newly crowned ChiefMinister Kumaraswamy and his adminstration has a lot to answer to the tax paying citizens of Bangalore.

The police did not have guns to protecting from the stone-pelting rioters. One policeman died eventually.

These rioters, by the way were so called fans of Rajkumar , who must be tossing and turning in his grave for the violence that has followed after his death and funeral. Ironically, the dead man always spread a message of peace in his lifetime.

Apaprently, the riots happened due to the fact that Rajkumar's dead body was moved 3 times ,from his home to Palace Grounds to back to his home and finally to Kanteerva stadium.This angered the public, actually rioters.

I don't see this as an excuse to burn buses and cars. In fact, the Palace Grounds had some exhibition going on at that time, whic was eventually burnt down by the senseless mob.



The in particular targetting of software and IT professionals by the Kannada youth brings shame to a city which once dreamed of being the second best cosmopolitan city after Bombay.
That dream now lies shattered !

The vote bank politics of all political parties which on the plank of focussing on Rural Development which they claim was neglected during the tenure of SM Krishna goverment,
has in reality put development on the back burner both in rural and urban areas.

In the current scenario, it seems that most MNCs seeking to setup Software/IT/BPO Centres should look at other Indian cities like Hyderabad and Pune which seem to be in control of administration in terms of law and order. This is apart from the usual infrastructure blues that cast their shadow over Bangalore constantly.

Does anyone seems to notice or care that the Airport road flyover is under-construction for more than 2 years. That speaks volumes about the capital city administratuion itself.

The other most important thing that pinches ans irritates me is that no one including the Chief Minister, any other misnister, media and Kannada filmstars and so called prominent personalities have condemned the act of the rioters. They have in fact been calling them grief stricken fans. They just appealed them to maintain calm, which obviously had no impact the cri iminals disguised as fans of Rajkumar.

I can't imagine such thing happening in the world that a 77 year old filmstar dies naturally and you have violence and complete shutdown in a city for 2 days.

May God have mercy on the citizens of Bangalore. Some miracle is required to relieve this city from the clutches of corrupt and inept politicians and adminstration