TWEAK: Enable Formatting Flash Drive to NTFS

As previously mentioned, Windows does not directly allow formatting USB flash drives (UFDs) to be formatted to NTFS. However, the utility diskpart makes this possible. And we also mentioned that using diskpart when there are multiple drives and UFDs makes the risk of losing data grow exponentially. Things can go wrong in many different ways and we need to mitigate that risk.

While it is not possible through the GUI at default settings, we can tweak the behavior of Windows to make the GUI allow us to format UFDs to NTFS. Follow the procedure along as we make tweaks to the handling of the USB drives.

Follow the below procedure to enable formatting to NTFS.

[1] Launch the Device Manager. Via start menu: Start -> Run -> devmgmt.msc -> OK. If via the control panel, Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management. Then click on the Device Manager.

[2] Then open the Disk Drives by clicking the "+" before it. You will be having a window similar to the screenshot below.

[3] Right-click on the UFD you want to format. And select Properties.

[4] On the device properties window, go to the Policies tab. Change the Removal policy to Better performance. And click OK to close all open windows.

[5] Launch Windows Explorer, right-click on the drive assignment of the UFD and select Format... You will now notice that the Format utility can format the UFD to NTFS.

[6] Go ahead and format the UFD.

This way of formatting UFDs to NTFS is safer and doesn't have the same level of risk as when using diskpart. You can select the proper drive to format and won't easily commit the mistake of accidentally formatting another drive or UFD. Not only that, the risk of losing important, critical data is avoided.

But then again, whichever way is easier and works for you remains your judgment call.

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HOW-TO: Format USB Flash Drives to NTFS

By default, Windows doesn't allow USB flash drives (in this document we will shorten its name to UFD) to be formated to NTFS. I'm quite puzzled by this myself but as this is the default behavior, you will need to discover and study a bit more in order to get the functionality you require. Further research brought the realization that this limitation only exists on the GUI. If you are used to the *nix systems command line coding, this will suit your taste quite well.

Diskpart is an integral part of Windows, a command line utility to partition disks -- quite similar to fdisk of the Linux world. While this is not a full-blown command-line coding like *nix, it is a bit similar in a sense. Enough talk.. on to the meaty details of diskpart.

Plug the UFD on an available USB port and launch "cmd.exe" as Administrator. You will know that the command tool ran as Administrator due to the "Administrator" tag on the upper left corner of the window (see below).

The procedure below should be done on the cmd.exe window as posted above. The "DISKPART>" prompt is provided for illustration purposes to show that the commands used need to be executed inside th diskpart shell (in performing the procedure, skip the "DISKPART>" portion when copying and pasting).

[1] Launch diskpart. On the command tool key-in "diskpart" (or "diskpart.exe").

[2] On the diskpart prompt, key in "DISKPART> list disk". The last one should be the UFD. You may also check the size column just to be sure. Then select that disk by "DISKPART> select disk 1". If you have many disks select the appropriate number "disk X", where X is the disk number.

[3*] (optional) You may choose to clean the disk partitioning information using "DISKPART> clean". This will delete everything in the drive so be careful! A prompt of successful cleaning will follow.

[4*] If you skipped STEP#3 above, you already have a partition on the UFD. Create a partition on the disk. Use command "DISKPART> create partition primary". Verify that a primary partition exists using "DISKPART> list partition".

[5] Then select the newly created partition using "select primary 1".

[6] Mark the partition active through command "DISKPART> active". When you list the partitions, the "*" (asterisk) before the partition number indicates that the partition is active.

[7] Format the UFD, "DISKPART> format fs=ntfs" or "DISKPART> format fs=ntfs quick".

[8*] (optional) If you wish to assign a drive letter to the UFD, use "DISKPART> assign".

[9] Exit the diskpart utility. "DISKPART> exit".

Yes, the command line utility is really cool. It can give you the flexibility you need if the GUI doesn't give room for it.

Typing the commands above can be excruciating and tiring if you're not used to it. Don't worry about this though as you can shorten the commands. You may key-in the first three letters of the command.

For example, instead of "DISKPART> list partition" you may use "DISKPART> lis par". The commands execute the same set of instructions and is less of a hassle to type.

To get a better explanation of what a particular command does, you can always use help (DISKPART> help select).

This procedure is easy to execute on a computer system with only a system drive and UFD. On a system with multiple disks and UFDs this can be really risky.

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FAQ: Locate's Equivalent Command in AIX

"There’s No Such Thing As A Silly Question" -- does the cliche sound familiar? In this part of pimp-my-rig reloaded, technical questions are answered. Mail them to me and I will post the answers here. If you have a better answer, by all means share it with us.

Q. Just recently I asked a colleague (whom I consider to be a guru of AIX) what the equivalent of the Linux command locate is on this particular operating system. The equivalent Linux and Solaris commands are previously documented here.

A. Unfortunately, his answer was there is none. But the discussion did not end there. He suggested that I use another command that has a similar function and is quite as flexible as locate.

The commands is whereis (and which_fileset). And this whereis is part of the package bos.rte.commands and bos.compat.links. To determine if whereis is installed on the machine, check as outlined below:

On AIX 5.3:

user@host => which_fileset whereis
/usr/ucb/whereis -> /usr/bin/whereis    bos.compat.links 5.3.0.0
/usr/bin/whereis                        bos.rte.commands 5.3.0.0

On AIX 6.1:

user@host => which_fileset whereis
/usr/ucb/whereis -> /usr/bin/whereis    bos.compat.links 6.1.0.0
/usr/bin/whereis                        bos.rte.commands 6.1.0.0

The above command is dependent on another package and without that there will be errors as outlined below.

user@host => which_fileset whereis
The /usr/lpp/bos/AIX_file_list file does not exist.
Please install the "bos.content_list" fileset
and try the "which_fileset" command again.

When all is well. Try it out:

user@host => whereis hosts
hosts: /etc/hosts.allow /etc/hosts.deny /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.bak /usr/share/man/man5/hosts.5.gz

Did I mention the same command works for Solaris and Linux? It does (given the dependent packages are installed), so add this option on those operating systems too!

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TWEAK: Larger Active Tab in Firefox

Previously, I showed you how to tweak Firefox to gain a bit more horsepower. Now that Firefox is faster than usual, let us add more functionality to the browser.

Did you ever notice that Firefox tabs are bland? The question then is, how do you make the active tab stand-out from the rest of the tabs? Here's how.

In the profile directory (path: %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default), there is a folder named "chrome" (no relation to Google's browser). You will find a file named userChrome.css inside it. If the file does not exist, create it. It is a simple text file that we will edit.

Open the file in notepad and add the following lines of code:

/* 225 pixels to the active tab */
.tabbrowser-tab[selected]:not([pinned])[fadein] {
min-width: 225px !important;
}

What the above code does is to expand the current active tab in Firefox to 225 pixels wide. It overrides Firefox default tab width of 100 pixels. If 225 pixels is too big or too small for you, adjust as necessary. When you open more tabs, the other tabs will shrink making the active tab stand out, like the screenshot below.

Now your active tabs will stand out from the rest of the other open tabs. Another cool feature of this tweak is when you switch to another tab, the other tab fades in to increase the tab width. Describing it in this post doesn't do it much justice. It is better to see it for yourself.

This tweak has helped me out a lot and made my Firefox experience a bit more worthwhile.

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TWEAK: Firefox Performance Tuning and Configuration

Are you using a performance tweaked machine? Tweaking is fun (others call it tuning) -- tweaking the operating system, tweaking the database, tweaking just about everything. Its like buying a car, chances are you will not be satisfied with it running stock. You'd want it faster, quicker -- PIMPED!

After performance tuning (or even hardening) Windows, you would want to tweak the browser next. And perhaps the browser you can always tweak at your disposal is Firefox. If you have used Firefox before, you will find that it is a fast browser. But you can make it faster -- you can tweak it!

To tweak Firefox, the settings under its hood can be found by putting "about:config" in the address bar. You will be prompted with a warning that "This might void your warranty!" (see below). Just promise to be gentle.

You may try to tweak the following settings one by one and see how your mileage varies. Input the tunables in the Filter text box and press [Return] or [Enter]. To make changes, right-click and Modify or double-click the tunable you wish to change.

WARNING! If you have limited memory please be careful in over-allocating memory to Firefox. Trust me, it will hog your computer's memory. If you are not sure about changing memory related tunables skip the first line below.

For reference as to the particulars of each parameter, you may refer to the entries in Mozillazine. The entries below are the tunable parameters with their recommended values. Try to experiment which values give you the most mileage.

• browser.cache.memory.capacity -- 65536 (64MB)
• browser.turbo.enabled -- true
• network.http.max-connections -- 64
• network.http.pipelining -- true
• network.http.pipelining.firstrequest -- true
• network.http.pipelining.maxrequests -- 4
• nglayout.initialpaint.delay -- 0
• browser.sessionstore.interval -- 3600000
• content.notify.interval -- 500000
• content.switch.threshold -- 250000
• browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers -- 0
• config.trim_on_minimize -- true

Some of the above tweaks automagically reflect without restarting Firefox, while others require a restart. I can't really point out which so I would recommend that you restart Firefox to checkout the effect of tweaking.

Once you have tried it out for yourself and verified the tweaks work for you, you may want to make them permanent and easy to move to a different computer or profile.

Locate the Firefox profile directory (usually "%appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default). The target file is user.js. If it doesn't exist, create the file and open it with Notepad. Copy and paste the following code (replace the parameters with values applicable to your system):

///// start-copy-here /////
// Firefox tweaks
user_pref("browser.cache.memory.capacity", 65536);
user_pref("browser.chrome.favicons", false);
user_pref("browser.display.show_image_placeholders", true);
user_pref("browser.turbo.enabled", true);
user_pref("browser.urlbar.autocomplete.enabled", true);
user_pref("browser.urlbar.autofill", true);
user_pref("content.interrupt.parsing", true);
user_pref("content.max.tokenizing.time", 2250000);
user_pref("content.notify.backoffcount", 5);
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 750000);
user_pref("content.notify.ontimer", true);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 750000);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections", 64);
user_pref("network.http.max-connections-per-server", 12);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-proxy", 12);
user_pref("network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server", 6);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.firstrequest", true);
user_pref("network.http.pipelining.maxrequests", 4);
user_pref("network.http.proxy.pipelining", true);
user_pref("network.http.request.max-start-delay", 0);
user_pref("nglayout.initialpaint.delay", 0);
user_pref("plugin.expose_full_path", true);
user_pref("ui.submenuDelay", 0);
user_pref("browser.sessionstore.interval", 3600000);
// faster loading
user_pref("content.notify.interval", 500000);
user_pref("content.switch.threshold", 250000);
// less memory usage
user_pref("browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers", 0 );
user_pref("config.trim_on_minimize", true );
///// end-copy-here /////

The above is what I have on my Firefox profile. I enjoy using Firefox due to the tweaks you can apply to it, including the tons of add-ons.

Next, some aesthetic tweaks to Firefox. For now enjoy the speedy and responsive Firefox.

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