USB Drive Speed Testing: HD Tach

From a PCWorld Article I read recently:

Test the speed of a flash USB drive with this freebie.

The faster your flash drive, the more smoothly programs will run. When shopping for a drive, look at the specs and try to find one with a read rate of 15 Mbps (megabits per second or 1.9 MB/sec) or faster. If you already have a flash drive, you can test its speed with a free utility like HDTach.

Description:

HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get as close to the physical performance of the device possible.

The trial version of HD Tach measures the sequential read speed (at various points on the device), the random access speed, interface burst speed and CPU utilization of the drive. The registered version adds sequential write testing.

U3 LaunchPad - Remove and Replace

Some flash drives (AKA USB memory sticks, thumb drives, pen drives, etc.) come with a utility called U3 LaunchPad. Many devices from SanDisk and others come with this software. Like PortableApps, U3 allows you to use both files and applications from your portable drive.

If you decide not to use U3, try the U3 Launchpad Removal Tool - for SanDisk drives and for non-SanDisk drives.

If you change your mind, you can use this free utility from SanDisk to re-install.

Portable Apps

http://portableapps.com/

"Convenient
Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind.

Open
PortableApps.com provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It's open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use.

Free
The Portable Apps Suite™ is free. It contains no spyware. There are no advertisements. It isn't a limited or trial version. There is no additional hardware or software to buy. You don't even have to give out your email address. It's 100% free to use, free to copy and free to share."

Suso's safe domain availability checker

http://www.saferdomainsearch.com

"A safer place to check for domain availability. A safe domain search. Please only use this website if you want to check if a domain is available. Do not use other websites unless they offer some guarantee that they do not share their domain lookup logs with 3rd parties."