An ISO image is basically an uncompressed archive file of the digital media or the disk which is created by copying an optical disc, from sector to sector, into a file. Currently, many tools are available on the market to create, mount, and manipulate ISO image files. One such image tool is Jihosoft ISO Maker Free. This utility allows you to backup disk as ISO image, create ISO image from files and folders, extract contents of an ISO file, and burn ISO image to DVD disc. Here’s a look at the four main functions of Jihosoft Free ISO Maker.

Byte Backup - Backup Disk as ISO Image
From the detected drive list, select the disk or partition yow want to create a backup image file. Once you confirm the selection, the program will immediately take sector by sector image of selected region.

WinSCP is an excellent free GUI client for sFTP (Secure FTP) protocol on Windows, however the same is not available on Apple Mac OS X platform. Also, there are not many free frontend clients for OpenSSH's sftp/scp protocls on Apple Mac OS X, from the very limited options "Fugu SSH" takes the crown for being the best. Fugu provides a friendly, intuitive graphical user interface to the text-based Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) client that comes built-in with Mac OS X, featuring user-friendly options like secure drag-and-drop file transfers, remote file editing and remote file preview. Fugu allows you to take advantage of SFTP's strong encryption without having to sacrifice ease of use. Additionally, Fugu can make secure file transfers using Secure Copy (SCP), and can create SSH tunnels to faciliate secure interaction between machines.

hdparm is a powerful command-line utility for Linux and Windows operating systems to set and view ATA hard disk drive hardware parameters. The utility also allows users to test disk read/write performance with cached and buffered modes. The utility allows users to view and change SATA/IDE disk-drive hardware parameters like drive caches, sleep mode, power management, acoustic management, and DMA settings which are generally set to suboptimal conservative defaults to their optimal settings for best performance. Checkout the example output below for disk information command followed by disk performance test.

root@myserver:~#  hdparm -I /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:

ATA device, with non-removable media
        Model Number:       WDC WD2002FYPS-02W3B0
        Serial Number:      WD-WCXXXXX64757
        Firmware Revision:  04.01G01
        Transport:          Serial, SATA 1.0a, SATA II Extensions, SATA Rev 2.5,                  SATA Rev 2.6
Standards:
        Supported: 8 7 6 5
        Likely used: 8
Configuration:
        Logical         max     current
        cylinders       16383   16383
        heads           16      16
        sectors/track   63      63
        --
        CHS current addressable sectors:   16514064
        LBA    user addressable sectors:  268435455
        LBA48  user addressable sectors: 3907029168
        Logical/Physical Sector size:           512 bytes
        device size with M = 1024*1024:     1907729 MBytes
        device size with M = 1000*1000:     2000398 MBytes (2000 GB)
        cache/buffer size  = unknown
        Nominal Media Rotation Rate: 5400
Capabilities:
        LBA, IORDY(can be disabled)
        Queue depth: 32
        Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard, with device specific minimum
        R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16  Current = 0
        Advanced power management level: 128
        Recommended acoustic management value: 128, current value: 254
        DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
             Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
        PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
             Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
        Enabled Supported:
           *    SMART feature set
                Security Mode feature set
           *    Power Management feature set
           *    Write cache
           *    Look-ahead
           *    Host Protected Area feature set
           *    WRITE_BUFFER command
           *    READ_BUFFER command
           *    NOP cmd
           *    DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
           *    Advanced Power Management feature set
                Power-Up In Standby feature set
           *    SET_FEATURES required to spinup after power up
                SET_MAX security extension
           *    Automatic Acoustic Management feature set
           *    48-bit Address feature set
           *    Device Configuration Overlay feature set
           *    Mandatory FLUSH_CACHE
           *    FLUSH_CACHE_EXT
           *    SMART error logging
           *    SMART self-test
           *    General Purpose Logging feature set
           *    WRITE_{DMA|MULTIPLE}_FUA_EXT
           *    64-bit World wide name
           *    IDLE_IMMEDIATE with UNLOAD
           *    WRITE_UNCORRECTABLE_EXT command
           *    {READ,WRITE}_DMA_EXT_GPL commands
           *    Segmented DOWNLOAD_MICROCODE
           *    Gen1 signaling speed (1.5Gb/s)
           *    Gen2 signaling speed (3.0Gb/s)
           *    Native Command Queueing (NCQ)
           *    Phy event counters
           *    Idle-Unload when NCQ is active
           *    NCQ priority information
           *    DMA Setup Auto-Activate optimization
           *    Software settings preservation
           *    SMART Command Transport (SCT) feature set
           *    SCT Long Sector Access (AC1)
           *    SCT LBA Segment Access (AC2)
           *    SCT Error Recovery Control (AC3)
           *    SCT Features Control (AC4)
           *    SCT Data Tables (AC5)
                unknown 206[12] (vendor specific)
                unknown 206[13] (vendor specific)
Security:
        Master password revision code = 65534
                supported
        not     enabled
        not     locked
        not     frozen
        not     expired: security count
                supported: enhanced erase
        424min for SECURITY ERASE UNIT. 424min for ENHANCED SECURITY ERASE UNIT.                 
Logical Unit WWN Device Identifier: 50014ee25b269017
        NAA             : 5
        IEEE OUI        : 0014ee
        Unique ID       : 25b269017
Checksum: correct

root@myserver:~# hdparm -Tt /dev/sdc

/dev/sdc:
 Timing cached reads:   27130 MB in  2.00 seconds = 13583.27 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads: 312 MB in  3.02 seconds = 103.42 MB/sec

aria2 is by far the best download accelerator for Linux, now you can enjoy the acceleration power of this multi-threaded downloaded utility for your apt-get package installations and upgrades.apt-fast is a shellscript wrapper to apt-get/aptitude which utilizes the more efficient and powerful aria2 download accelerator to fetch binaries from multiple mirrors with multiple connections in parallel per package resulting in drastically improved download times.

Shell's and terminal emulators are dull and boring, but this is going to change with the new age terminal emulation utility Final Term. This beautiful and powerful emulator lets you take full control of the command terminal in Linux with it's super-utilitarian hardware-accelerated user interface and easy to use "never seen before" features like "Semantic text menus" which are smart enough to know which pieces of terminal output represent like filenames, PIDs, web URL, IP's etc. providing context-relevant commands for each of them with text file-based plug-in system for extension and personalization, "Smart command completion" with algorithmic sorting so you get the most appropriate command at the top in drop-down list and "ASCII art scrollbars" which automatically show GUI scrollbars for progress from commands like Wget, allowing you to monitor progress while the output is scrolled away to name a few. Do watch the video and grab it for your flavor of linux from the links shared after the "Read more" jump below.

Sneaksy is a super-minimalistic, hidden folder solution which protects sensitive data from unauthorized access. The portable and open-source application works on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 platforms. Sneaksy is very simple to use, just download and launch to get started - there is no UI as such, on first run a small red-box will display on top-left corner of the screen where user inputs the desired password which will be visible so you can confirm what is entered. On subsequent runs you will need to use this password and it will no longer be shown, pressing enter will further shrink the password prompt in the corner unlocking the "Files" folder on desktop allowing authorized access. Click on the only visible "Red" handle in the corner to lock and hide the folder and exit the application.

A long ago we shared free utility WindowsTabs which allowed users to enjoy tabbed file-browsing in Windows explorer. "Clover 3" is another such new utility, which brings Google Chrome styled tabs to Windows Explorer. The free Windows explorer extension enables multi-tab functionality similar to Google Chrome browser with a convenient bookmark toolbar for fast access to frequent locations on file-system, support for controlling tabs using keyboard shortcuts further enhance it's usability to get file-explorer tasks done quickly.

Imagine the fun of controlling your computer using hand-gesture's just like Jedi in the Star Wars movies, Flutter is an free application for Windows and Mac computers which enables you to do exactly that and that too without requiring any specialized hardware or sensor. The Flutter App uses your computer camera to recognize hand gestures allowing controlling of application actions from a few feet away without the need of any keyboard or mouse interaction, the utility specially comes in handy for controlling audio/video playback and presentations from a distance.

Even if you do not require a video editing software, every now and then we need to make changes to our videos and professional video editing utilities are just an overkill for these little tasks. Free Windows utility SmartPixel allows you to do that with an added advantage of built-in video capture feature.

SmartPixel allows video editing for beginners featuring an easy to use interface to record and edit video-clips. SmartPixel software has two modules, SmartPixel Camera and SmartPixel Producer.

With SmartPixel Camera, people could capture the screen or a webcam stream in HD quality. It uses D3D video recording mode so it is compatible with all the popular games such as Dota, WOW, Diablo, NBA 2K series, LOL, Call Duty etc. It also features options to remove original vocals and insert lyrics subtitles to make a personalized music video.

SmartPixel Producer on the other hand is a video editing utility, a user could simply import video clips via SmartPixel Camera or other places for editing and can insert effects, subtitles, music, backgrounds, dubbing, scribble paintings etc. The final result can then be exported as FLV, AVI, MP4 and other general formats to upload to the video sharing sites such as youtube and vimeo.

While Windows built-in Add/Remove system tool efficiently takes care of the job, tools like Advanced Uninstaller and Easy Uninstaller adds an addtional layer of funtionality and ease-of-use to tackle the task. While all three of them can handle the duty of getting software uninstalled from your system, a user must make it's own choice on what to keep and what to remove. To help make that tough decision, cloud-connected and crowd-powered freeware for Windows "Should I Remove It" scans all the installed applications on your computer and ranks them based on what other users have kept or removed.

This approach efficiently helps users identify and remove unwanted software's which others are uninstalling like spyware, adware and bloatware.