Web User - UK (2019-08-07)

Find more solutions atwww.facebook.com/webusermagazine 7 - 20August 2019^67

Ask the Expert

possibly more than you have available,

so there is a way to stor e them

elsewhere. Click the down arrow in the

top-right corner of th e desktop app and

select Settings. Scroll down, then click

Advanced and scroll down again to

Offl ine Songs Storage. Click Change

USB 2 and USB 3 sockets, and USB

memory sticks can also be USB 2 or

USB 3. It’s possible that using a USB 2

stick in a USB 3 socket – or a USB 3 stick

in a USB 2 socket – could be the cause

of th e prob lem. It shouldn’ t, but you

never know, so try matchingthe socket

and stick versions. Computers ha ve

multiple USB sockets, so try booting

from all of th em.

Somepeople have found that

formatting the USB stick using the free

program Rufus ( rufus.ie) solves the

prob lem. There’s a portable version so

you don’t even need to instal l it.

SOFTWARE

DownloadSpotify tracks

Q

Can you tell me if there is any

softwarethat can download music

from Spotify to an external hard drive?

Rob Hancock, via email

A

Music is copyrighted, so any

softwarethat allowed you to

download and save tracksfrom Spotify

would be illegal. There are programs

that claim to do it but we haven’t tried

them because there is a legal way to

save Spotify music for listening offline.

With a Spotify Premium account, you

can download up to 10,000 songs on up

to five differen t devices, including

computers, phones and tablets. This lets

you play music offline without an

internet connec tion whenever you want.

Using the Spotify desktop app, go to

the File menu and select Offl ine Mode.

Albums can’t be downloaded but

playlists can. Go to a playlist, click the

thre e-dot menu andselect Download.

Storing 10,000 music tracks onyour

PC’s hard drive could use a lot of space,

Q

Since the advent of

SSDs, I’ve seen repeated

advice not to defrag them

because it alle gedly

damagesthem and reduces

their life expectancy.

However, the same advice

has never been issu ed

about flash memory drives,

such as USB memory sticks.

Since these use the samebasic

means of data storage, do the same

rules apply?

Barry Singleton, via email

A

There are several reasons why

solid-state drives should not be

defragmented, and the main one is

that it has no effe ct on performance.

A very fragmented mechanical hard

drive is much slower than a

defragmented one, bu t an SSD

performs the same no matter how

fragmented it is.

Another reason is that solid-state

drives can only be written to a certain

numberof times. That numberis very

high and it’s unlikely you would reach

it in even 10 years of normal use.

However, defragging involves a lot of

writes and you are using up the quota

on something that has no benefi t, so it

unnecessarily shortens the drive’s life.

USB memory sticks ar e similar to

solid-state drives and the defragging

advice is the same– don’t bother, it

has no effe ct on performance and it

uses upthe write quota, shortening

the device’s life.

In theory, memory sticks should last

a long time, but we tend to lose them

and mistreat them, carrying them in a

pocket alongwith fluff, crumbs, loose

change and bunches of keys. This

shortens their life , too, sothey don’t

tend to last aslong asthe SSDs

instal led in PCs.

Defragging

memory sticks

HARDWARE

USB memory sticks use solid-state memory, just

like SSDs, and don’t need defragging

Location and choose where you want

Spotify to stor e the downloaded music.

SOFTWARE

Convert oldPhoto CDs

Q

Many years ago, prob ably in the

early 2000s when I first got a digi tal

camera, I had lots of photographs st ored

on Photo CDs. I still have these, and they

seem to be in goodcondition, but I can’t

access the photos they contain.

Is there a way to open or convert the

photos from a 15-year-old Photo CD?

Richard Lightfoot, via email

A

Photo CDs were invented by Kodak

in the 1990s and by 2000, many

companies offered to turn printed or

digi tal photos into Photo CDs. You could

also get softwareto do it yourself on a

computer. It wasn’t particularly popular

with th e public and never took off to any

extent, but keen photographers used it.

The PCD file format can contain

multiple copies of a photograph at

differen t resolutions, from 128 x 192

pixels, all the way up to 4,096 x 6,144.

It’s an old file format that isn’t used

today, but there are still a few software

tools that can read files and extract the

images , saving them in a more modern

Choose where Spotify keeps the music you’ve downloaded from the Settings