The Ultimate Performance Guide for Hard Drives

This is a post about getting ultimate performance and longevity from your hard drives.  Even those who run cleanups, checkdisk, and defrags may be overlooking some critical procedures to gain further performance.  Read on and find out what you may have been missing! Note: if you don't understand any technical terms in this article, I will briefly define them, but you should also look them up as they are essential to maintaining a computer.


Unless you're fortunate enough to have a computer running entirely on Solid State Disks (SSDs), you're probably still using spinning Hard Disk Drives (HDDs).  Many new computers still use HDDs because they're cheaper per byte and still engineered in their performance.  With these tips, your HDDs can even be ideal for games and video editing.

Every tool I mention in the article will be free and just as good (if not better) than the pricey alternatives.  I've tested several dozen programs and these provide observable performance that speaks for itself.  Why should everyone maintain their hard disk drives? Because in time a HDD and SDD inevitably suffer performance loss if not maintained (particularly HDDs).


INITIAL CHECK FOR HARDWARE PROBLEMS

First, you need to verify that your disks are still functioning correctly.  If your HDD has been used over five years, then you need to be extra cautious of hardware issues and data loss.  I recommend replacing drives that old, however if you want to be more daring, these tips will help it last longer. To check the performance of your drive, you'll want to download the latest version of Speccy.

Speccy

Speccy is a wonderful free program that reveals the finest specifications of your entire computer.  Once installed and open, go to the hard drive section and make sure all your HDDs have temperatures under 55C and "Good" status under the S.M.A.R.T. section.   This stands for "Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology" (or built-in hardware monitoring for both HDDs and SSDs).

You won't need to know anymore beyond their status for this guide; however you can bookmark the wiki article on SMART for later reading.  Now you DO NOT need to worry about an SSD drive temperature showing up as 128C as it's NOT running that hot. SSDs often don't have thermometers in them and many programs default to reading none or 128C as their temp.  However, it's not a bad idea to browse the other sections of Speccy to verify all other temps aren't showing in the red.

If all your drives pass this initial test, then you're ready to continue.  If the SMART status is bad on one or more drives, then it's time to get a replacement drive (and your system is probably suffering great performance loss from this already). If you hear obvious signs of malfunctioning in the drives such grinding, clicking, buzzing, humming, etc. - it's most likely malfunctioning even if the SMART status is good.  Don't trust either alone, always verify both the SMART status and the sound of your drives.  I've diagnosed and repaired over a thousand HDDs and the worst ones either don't detect, freeze your entire system, or take WAY too long for your system to detect and interact with.  Don't tolerate waiting more than 5 minutes for an HDD or SSD to detect, something is wrong by then.

Now if any HDD temps are over 55C, then they risk data loss and hardware damage in time.  Hot HDDs can cause numerous system problems including freezes, crashes, corruption, blue screens of death (BSODs), and surprise restarts.  You may need to install additional cooling around your drives or use a more efficient case for greater air-flow.  I particularly recommend any case with decent fan input on the front and fan output on the back. I currently use an Antec 900 fully loaded with fans that keep all my drives under about 35C at all times.

If you want to test your drive even further for bad hardware sectors, use HD-Tune which has both a Pro and Free version.  The Free version works just fine and you can download it here.  I typically only use HD-Tune to measure drive performance because I usually discover if a drive is bad well before this test.

CLEANING

CCleaner

Now that you've verified your hardware is still functioning properly, you're ready to increase its free space.  For starters, you never want any storage to be 95%-100% full.  SSDs are typically safe to fill up to the 90% area, but HDDs benefit tremendously from free space.  HDD performance expert J.C.Kessels says a 50% full HDD is guaranteed to run almost twice as fast as a 90-100% full HDD.  Even if benchmarks don't prove this exactly, sheer use and observation of a drive's performance will feel 50% smoother and responsive.  He recommends keeping back-up and rarely used data on a large external drive that is much safer to fill up to about 90% because it's not constantly connected to your system.  Even if your entire OS is installed on a speedy SSD, overloaded internal HDDs will still drag it down.  A failing drive will cause some of the most serious performance issues where the entire system will halt and wait for this one drive to get its act together.

CCleaner Enhancer

To begin the clean-up process, download CCleaner and CCleaner Enhancer.  Install CCleaner first, then run CCleaner Enhancer to expand its cleaning power tremendously.  Once you open CCleaner, you can generally check everything EXCEPT "Saved Passwords" for all browsers, "Windows Update Logs," and "Old Prefetch Data". Go ahead and look over everything else, unchecking anything you also don't feel comfortable with - such as anything associated with financial software, etc. However, I've used these on numerous systems without problems.

Some users may also want to uncheck "Cookies" for browsers if they don't want to sign-in to all their websites again. Passwords will still be saved if you unchecked those for each browser, but you may need to type the first letter of your login IDs in browsers for the saved ID/Password info to pop-up.  If you know your passwords or have them stored elsewhere, then that's even better! You should have them stored outside your browser somewhere encrypted.  I recommend clearing cookies on all browsers to not only make websites load faster, but also reduce conflicts and security issues associated with less secure outdated cookies.  The same applies to stale cookies in the cookie jar - yuck.

System Ninja

After this, download another tool called System Ninja to cleanup a bunch of leftovers these two still miss.  What I love most about System Ninja is how it also cleans corrupt Recycle Bin data that can take up gigabytes of data in what you "thought" was gone!   Yes, even in Windows 7, the Recycle Bin still faces this classic issue of corrupt leftover data in your drive's $Recycle.Bin folder (a hidden system folder on all drives accessed by the Window's Recycle Bin).  The longer you've used your drive, the more likely it is going to have corrupt Recycle bin data leeching away its free space.

Even if you reveal this folder, you often need to use advanced data commands in a Command Prompt (CMD) to truly empty it. SystemNinja will brilliantly take care of this and many other corrupt cache issues in the click of a button.  For Windows 7 that uses an entirely new system of folder thumbnails in one central location, System Ninja also cleans up all those obsolete .db thumbnail files left over from Windows XP.  If you've never used all three of these programs, you'll probably be amazed at how much free space you recover.  A typical user of the non-Enhanced CCleaner will also see a difference!

The next step is to manually scan through your drive and delete what you don't need anymore.  For starters, you can download the tiny program LargeFiles to reveal the top 100 largest files on each drive. When your drive is around 50%-65% full, you're ready to optimize the data with defragmentation.

TWEAKS

Now that your HDD health is verified with an optimal amount of free space, you're ready for some tweaks and data optimization. First, you want to make sure File Indexing and Data Compression are disabled on your constantly connected HDDs.  If you do a lot of file searches through Windows, then it's worth keeping Indexing enabled for faster searches, otherwise this is costing you additional needle movement that could be used for other things.


You can also unlock additional speed by disabling noise limiters on your drives.  Though HDDs used to be much louder, newer HDDs won't make much of any additional noise with these functions disabled anyways and gain a significant boost in speed.  Use the free version of HD-Tune mentioned earlier to adjust this setting on your HDDs.  For each HDD, go to the AAM (Audio Acoustic Management) tab, check Enable, and set the slider to High Performance (254).  You can even run a quick Average Access Time test to see if you're really gaining a performance boost.  My 1TB drive features 20 ms in Low Noise (128) and 14 ms in High Performance (254) with no noticeable increase in noise!  For this test, lower ms is faster.

ERROR CHECK - CHKDSK

In time, your HDDs and SSDs face a risk for slight or severe data and free space corruption.  Often, this can be resolved through a program already built-in to Windows called Check Disk (or Chkdsk).  This is especially crucial for laptops that are physically moved around a lot as well as drives that have been used for over a year without being formatted.  This will benefit both HDD and SSD drives, so run it on everything Windows can access.  Routine disk checks with chkdsk prevents data loss, crashes, and serious bottlenecks in performance.

To run Chkdsk, open your Computer (or My Computer) explorer on your desktop.  I highly recommend starting with the drive your Operating System is installed to which will always require a restart to perform.  Right click a drive and select "Properties" and then go the "Tools" tab.  Under Error-Checking, click "Check Now."  Check both check boxes in the new window and click start.  Recovering bad sectors is worth the additional time it takes as this can definitely resolve performance issues.  Only fixing the file system errors is a weaker maintenance procedure for people in a hurry to repair the data and don't have time to do a more thorough test.  Now this will take some time depending on the type of drive (SSDs will finish much faster), size of the drive, and amount of data on it.

Running Chkdsk on your OS drive will require you to restart so the program can run at the next boot-up before the OS is loaded and being accessed.  Other drives may not require a restart or they also might as well, go along with it.

FYI: if your drives continue getting an enormous amount of corrections in each time you run Chkdsk, their hardware may be bad, or you may have a virus, or you may have serious software conflict/problem that's literally corrupting your system. In some cases, a corrupt Windows OS (particularly one that's been used for years with several hundred programs installed and uninstalled) can also persist with corrupting data further and may require re-installation if you don't have back-ups of the fresh install. Often, I've seen system performance increase tremendously after Chkdsk fixed just a couple of things so it's essential to run at least once a month on all drives.  Even run it on your backup drive not always connected to the system.  Boot times also seem to benefit a lot from these checks too.

DEFRAGMENTATION & FILE OPTIMIZATION

With all the other steps completed, your now ready for some serious jet fuel - defrag and raw data sorting.  For this, you'll want to download these two fantastic programs: Defraggler and MyDefrag.  Now I've wrote about MyDefrag before and it still remains one of the top tools in my computer maintenance arsenal to this day.   I remind you, only run these programs on your HDDs and not your SSDs.  While defragging data certainly benefits HDDs, SSDs do not require defragmentation as data is located on memory chips in those drives which are accessed at equal read/write speeds regardless of fragmentation, location, etc. Defragging SSDs actually reduces their limited read/write cycles, though they have a huge amount that takes a very long time to reach.

Why do you need these two defrag programs? Well, Defraggler is better at defragging system files (good to run once a month or two) while MyDefrag is much better at organizing raw data.  Combined, they form an ultimate tune-up even paid-for programs can't provide.  Sure MyDefrag can also defrag files, but it still can't access many crucial system files or perform boot-time defrags. However, it has an extremely powerful raw location optimizer to give your system some incredible lightning-bolt response time that a defrag alone can't provide.

Notice the SSD, don't defrag it

First we are going to run Defraggler on all your HDDs to remove initial fragmentation. Then we'll run MyDefrag's Monthly System & Data Disk raw file location optimizers on your system and data disks respectively.  Install and open Defraggler, and run the "Defrag" mode (not the Quick Defrag) on all your HDDs.

I ignore System Disk since mine is an SSD

Once that is finished, install and open up MyDefrag.  Unless your OS is installed on an SSD, begin by highlighting System Disk Monthly and only checking your operating system's disk (or partition for those with multiple partitions [virtually separate disks] on the same disk).  This will take some time, but it's worth it, so let it finish overnight if you need to.

Once that is finished, close and reopen MyDefrag and select "Data Disk Monthly," then check all your data HDDs, skipping any data SSDs.  This process will most likely take much longer, so you'll definitely want to run it overnight, but it's seriously worth it with the amount of response time and reduced needle movement your system gains from it.  Once these are done, I personally recommend running a Daily Data and System Disk defrags every couple of days or at least the Weekly Data and System Disk defrag once a week.  Occasionally you can run Defraggler on your HDDs as well to defrag a few extra system files, but not too much as it'll mess with the nice turbo sorting algorithms implemented by all the modes of MyDefrag.

This may sound a bit complicated for some readers, but these two advanced file optimization algorithms are sorting all your raw data locations by alphabetical order based on the folder and file names.  All the files in a folder will not only have the same location in the MFT (the organization you see) but now also the same raw location on the disk (usually they are all spread out, even when defragmented). The system disk optimizer is only intended for the disk your operating system is on and the program's author J.C. Kessels confirms that System Disk modes don't further optimize your data-only disks, even if they contain programs as well.

ADDITIONAL TWEAKS / INFO

You can check to make sure there are no problematic or outdated motherboard controllers for your HDDs.  Right click "My Computer" and select "Properties." Then go to "Device Manager" and expand anything around the likes of "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers." Make sure there are no red disabled or yellow problematic icons on the device here.  If so, then you need to re-enable them or re-install the proper driver from your motherboard/computer manufacturer's website. Go to their Support section and look for Drivers. Speccy will reveal the exact model of your motherboard to search for.  You'll either download the latest chipset drivers or the exact "disk controller" driver. If you use a fairly new AMD/ATI based motherboard, these AMD chipset drivers may benefit you best.

You can also expand the Hard Drives area in Device Manager to make sure none are showing red or yellow icons.  In rare cases, an HDD can have a firmware update available on its manufacturer's website, however SSDs (particularly the OCZ brand) tend to have many firmware updates.  However, note that when updating an SSD's firmware, you may need to format the drive clean first, so be sure to backup the data or create an "image" backup of an operating system.

Read more HDD performance tips from J.C. Kessels here.

For those who have made it this far, I hope you've learned to gain much performance and lifespan from your Hard Disk and Solid State Drives!  Thanks for reading!

BitLocker - Password Protect USB Drives

Do you often leave your USB drive lying around?  Worried about unauthorized access to the device?  The latest versions of Windows offer something called BitLocker to defend against this threat.

Not only does it password protect your USB drive, but it encrypts the data just in case someone hacks into it.  By password protection, you'll need to enter your password to unlock the drive each time you want to connect it to a computer. 

In Windows 7 or Vista, simply right click your drive and select BitLocker.  Then follow the steps to set up a password and be prepared to wait a bit for the installation to finish.  Take a break and let the process finish.

The only downsides however are the limitations.  BitLocker only allows recent Windows operating systems to access your drive - such as Windows 7 and Vista.  Macs, PS3s, Linux, and other systems won't recognize the drive.

Another flaw is the fact that people often leave USB drives connected to systems they walk away from.  It doesn't automatically disconnect your device after a certain idle time, leaving it 100% vulnerable to unauthorized access if left unlocked. 

Still, it's a step ahead when it comes to data security and you can be reassured if your BitLocker defended drive falls into the wrong hands.  It's safe to say a good 98% of the people who get ahold of your unplugged USB drive will not be able to break through BitLocker.

MusicBrainz Picard - Verify (or Identify) Audio File Info

 Do you have a lot of music files with disorganized names and info?   Perhaps unknown MP3s ripped from a CD?  If either of these sound familiar, you may benefit from MusicBrainz Picard.

It's a program that scans the audio-footprint of your music and matches it with a massive database of verified song information to apply.  For many, this program can save them so much time it's hilariously useful.  For more rare songs, it investigates for the closest footprint match and suggests highly probable song info.

It's also useful for filling in additional information for your audio files.  They will look nicer with more accurate information when imported or opened with your favorite music player.  A life-saver for those looking to go back and sort through a huge collection of messy files from the 90s and 2000s.

With that being said, music buffs can download MusicBrainz Picard here.  How much does it cost? A simple little price of ... well, free.

Track Lost/Stolen Devices with Prey

image source: blogs.cio.com

We don't often worry about the potential theft of our devices but many of us do lose them.   Regardless of the case,  did you know you can track them down through the internet?

This special software Prey let's you do just that without the fuss.  You shouldn't have to lose things and why not take advantage of open WiFi and onboard GPS to get them back!

It features all kinds of ways to hone in on your device's locations through the internet. For mobile computers, it runs on Windows, Mac,or Linux.  For the smart phones, it supports both the Apple iOS and Android.

So how does it work?  First it tells your device's GPS & Wifi functions to privately broadcast the system's location to your Prey account online.  Second, it gives you backdoor access to lock it down before prying eyes get a hold of your personal info.  You can even turn the webcam into a security camera to take photos of thieves and unauthorized users.

So where do get this fine piece of software?  Download it at http://preyproject.com/. Again - Did I mention it's free? ha!

MyDefrag - Unlock Additional Speed in Hard Disks

If you don't already know what defrag means, then I suggest you learn before your system slows to a halt.  Unless you only use solid state drives (you'd know, because they're so expensive), then you need to learn the simple practice of defragging your tradition hard disks that use needles to access spinning magnetic platters.

So basically defragging is a simple practice that is a fully automated puzzle solver.  Think of your newly created data as jigsaw puzzles with the pieces just thrown into a box.  Defragging essentially consolidates these pieces (raw locations of data) into complete puzzles (solid chunks) to reduce the needle movement.  So if your still using hard disks with moving parts, then there are performance benefits to gain from defragging.

Does this move files in your operating system? No, those locations and file descriptions are all part of a constantly changing map (file table) to the raw data.  This map can get extremely complex when the raw data is fragmented.  Fragmented raw data creates extra unnecessary work for the map to access it (more needle movement).

It's not much to look at, but it sure speeds things up!

I've personally tested over a dozen of the top programs to take care of this task and none compare to MyDefrag.  In addition to consolidating raw data, it also pushes it to the beginning of the disk reducing needle movement even further.

The beginning part of the hard disk is proven to be the fastest. In addition to this double consolidation is an organization of raw data based on what it's used for.  For instance, the operating system's foundation is moved to the very beginning of the disc while massive video files are moved to the end.  Big files are slower to access regardless of where you put them, but small files definitely gain a boost from being at the beginning. 

This program features several modes for "System Disks" and "Data Disks."  Even a mode for "Flash Memory" - however I don't recommend ever defragging solid-state or flash since they access everything equally without movement.  This is also only for Windows users.  If your current Windows OS is installed on a hard disk (makes loading noises), then run the "System Disk Monthly" on it overnight and see how it performs in the morning.  If the disk showed up in MyDefrag as almost solid yellow (extremely fragmented), then your certain to see an improvement. Again, if you have a solid state drive - then you need not worry about ever defragging it for your ahead of the game. 

Download the latest version of MyDefrag here.  Did I mention it's free?

Tech Quote: Software holds back Hardware

"It's hardware that makes a machine fast. 
It's software that makes a fast machine slow. "
- Craig Bruce

Whether your watching YouTube videos or browsing Facebook, your computer's performance is constantly held back by the amount of data it constantly has to manage. Performance is especially important these days with a media-centered internet.

In most cases, your favorite websites load most smoothly on the most simple and maintained machines. Always think carefully about whether you really need something stored on your immediate computer or on an external drive. Install only what is essential and only keep everything else as long as you need it.

Top Gear's Jeremy Clarkson

Besides using virus protection and defragging cluttered hard drives, the mere practice of keeping most of your data on drives separate from the Operating System can seriously improve performance. Better yet, having the data on external drives that are only used when you actually need the data can improve things further.

It seems like no matter how powerful your system is, the more data and drives you have - the less performance you'll get. Operating systems are especially notorious for getting slow with both the age and quantity of software on them.

Even with speedy Solid-State drives, the data itself can accumulate new burdens on the system overtime.
 Then there's data corruption that can cause the most unpredictable bizarre behavior, unlike faulty hardware that usually just shuts off entirely.

The speed of storage is progressing slower than all the other parts because it is the most complex to deal with. There's all kinds of tweaks and tools to cash in on this issue, but the most simple and powerful matter is - and still remains - having as little data connected to your system as possible.

Valve's Steam Recently Hacked ~ How to Protect Your Account

Over the past decade, Steam has become the largest gaming platform software for both PC and Macintosh computers (even partially for the PS3).  If you still don't know of the software, it essentially provides the computer gaming community with the largest digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and social-media platform to date.  When you purchase a game through steam, you literally hold access to a 100% fully downloadable copy of it on any PC you want with a user account to access it.  It's revolutionized the gaming industry in many ways and now with the increased user traffic and publicity comes the inevitable hackers with unknown intentions.

On November 11, 2011 - Steam's main user information severs were hacked by unknown intruders who gained access to an encrypted database of personal information including passwords and credit card info.  Valve officially confirmed this security breach yesterday afternoon to all users of the platform and forums.  The forum accounts were the main focus of concern - with Valve requiring password changes for users but they are still assessing the potential damages to the Steam users outside of the forums as well.  Basically, they are unsure at the moment of how much was actually stolen or if the encrypted information could be cracked open.

How to better protect your accounts from these attacks.  
To avoid being the low hanging fruit that actually gets picked.  When a massive user database of random low-target (non-celebrity) people is compromised - the most secure accounts will be tossed aside.

1. Change your passwords for both Steam and their forums asap.  They have a password strength assessment tool when you create a new password and I suggest you make one that fills the entire strength rating.  Be sure to use random text (upper and lower case), numbers, & special characters.

2. Don't store credit cards on servers in the first place.  If you currently have one stored on Steam now, go ahead and remove it by going to your "Account History" and removing all stored cards (on the right).  Those who didn't store their numbers on the server should technically be safer.

3.  Set your accounts to private or friends-only.  Many web search tools such as Google are notorious for being so powerful that they can also exploit sensitive data from "publicly shared" accounts.  This is especially true with things like "cached websites" in the search.  Unless your absolutely sure the information is intended to be public, don't make it public.

4.  Use the authentication tools.  Steam has something called the Steam Guard that requires users to confirm account access with unique generated codes sent to their email each time they want to sign into Steam with a different computer.  This seriously reduces the chances of unauthorized access unless the attacker also has access to your email account (which should also have a difficult password).

5.  Don't share the email account used to manage other accounts.  For instance with Facebook, it's best to not share the email you use to manage your Facebook account.  Hackers can easily target the emails a user shares as a first step to gaining access to their passwords for other applications associated with the email.  If you really want to be safe, create a separate confidential email with a really difficult password to only manage your user accounts.  Also change its password every couple of months.

Firefox 8 is out! Faster, 64-bit, Twitter

The new Firefox version 8.0 just came out - featuring greater performance and an official first 64-bit release of the browser.  The 64-bit versions of any software hold greater potential for performance with 64-bit operating systems.  If your computer is less than 5 years old, you may be running a 64-bit system now.  There's also a built-in native twitter search built right into the browser's search field (right of the url field).

ExtremeTech.com reveals the 64-bit version of Firefox 8 is 10% faster than the 32-bit version. 

Here are their benchmark results.

 Download it here: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/

Hiren's BootCD - The Ultimate PC First Aid Kit

IT Techs can rejoice with this bootable LiveCD called Hiren's BootCD.  It's a burnable disc image that features one of the most elaborate PC toolkits I've ever seen.  All packed into one DOS-based Live CD,  it includes hundreds of tools to diagnose, repair, tweak, optimize, and configure just about anything in your computer's hardware and operating system(s). Many of the tools are also rare programs that are still the best for certain tasks - especially some of the hard disk tools from specific manufacturers. Some of the stuff has me wondering, "Where did he find this stuff?" If your into PC building or maintenance - this collection is absolutely essential.

Download the latest version here.

To give you an idea of how powerful this kit really is, here's a list its tool categories:

Antivirus, Antispyware, Rootkit, Registry, Remote Access, Encryption, Startup, System Info, Software/Hardware Testing, Tweakers, Backup, BIOS/CMOS, File Management, File System, Hard Disk, MBR, DOS, Network, Optimizers, Password Recovery, Process Analysis, Recovery  Cleaners, Device Drivers, Editors/Viewers, and LiveCD Internet Browsers to search google for additional solutions.

Donate Idle Computing to Benefit Humanity

 On November 16, 2004, IBM launched a project called World Community Grid in an effort to collaborate idle computers into benefiting humanity.  It shares project resources and processing tasks across multiple computers through a concept called grid computing.  There over several dozen projects to choose from including research processing for AIDs, Cancer, Alternative Energy, Clean Water, and Muscle Dystrophy.  The software can currently run on all the major operating systems including:  Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and FreeBSD. You can even configure it to only use a small fraction (like 10% of your power) when the system goes idle (which can also be configured).  The program immediately pauses once your system resumes from an idle state to give you back full performance.  Setting it to use a small fraction of your computer's idle power shouldn't raise electric bills much at all either.  Download the World Community Grid software here at: http://www.worldcommunitygrid.org/index.jsp.

Live Global Statistics for World Community Grid:

Be Ahead of the Internet Arms Race with PeerBlock

Download the latest version of PeerBlock

Firewall, Antivirus, & Antispyware software are essential security protection, but what about taking things further and blocking all activity from many known sources of threats? Meet PeerBlock, a program that maintains updated lists of verified bad, potentially suspect, and good IP addresses based on your choosing.  It's a bit more advanced than your average firewall and can safely be combined with (or reinforce) existing firewall software or hardware.

Strangely enough, most operating systems already have built-in IP blocking functionality with a Hosts file but these still remain empty & ignored by official security updates in OSs such as Windows. PeerBlock takes care of this issue with an alternative to the Hosts file that's constantly updated based on a massive community that stays up to date with the latest sources of threats on the internet. Whether you do a lot of file sharing or work with a lot of sensitive information, PeerBlock can protect you further in what is constantly an internet arms race between security and attackers.

The initial setup comes with the essential lists to choose from including known sources of intrusive surveillance (Anti-P2P), spyware, advertising, and education institutions for those paranoid of their theoretically above-average traffic monitoring. For advanced users, there are many additional lists to use at http://www.iblocklist.com/lists.php, however the initial lists should be fine for casual users.  If your interested in more lists, I've tested many & highly recommend adding: Primary Threats, Level 2, Level 3, Hijacked, DShield.  I don't recommend blocking education institutions unless you have no affiliations with them & no need to access their info whatsoever. Also be sure to Allow HTTP connections (website connections) or else you'll find a lot of pages with ads won't load as fast or at all as this feature is still a work-in-progress. You can turn this feature on and off as you please when you not browsing though.  The developers are still working on smoother web browsing with HTTP blocking.  In the rare case that a genuine connection gets blocked and you can temporarily disable PeerBlock or permanently allow that specific IP.