Splitting Files with 7-Zip

Some corporate networks don't allow employees to send / receive emails beyond a particular email size , say 5 MB per mail . If you want to share a file with your colleague(s) and the size of file in question is more than 5 MB . Here are the options you can use .

1. Share file via shared drive space available with you colleague
2. Try to change the file format and see if different file format takes less space . ( .xls to .xlsx ) .
3. Compress the file with any file archive software .
4. and the most efficient is that you use the file archiving software to split the file into pieces of less than 5 MB and send these parts of mail files one by one to recipient .

I will be covering the last / 4th option in detail here . Almost every file compression software ( WinZip , 7-Zip , WinRAR etc. ) allows you to split a file into smaller size multiple files . This article will tell you how to do it with the help of 7-Zip . The reason behind choosing 7 –Zip is pretty straight forward . its free and open source , you don't need to pay for it . Steps to be followed are as under .

1 Right click on the desired file ( which you want to split into smaller prices ) then go to 7-ZIP –> Add to archive .

 

Step –2 Now from Add to Archive window select appropriate format for archiving . Since most of the computers have WinZip , using Zip as file format is preferable .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step –3 Now  in the field “Split to volumes , bytes:” key the data as “4M “ which means 4 MB size per file and click Ok .

 

 

 

Now system will create multiple pieces of the original file not exceeding 4 MB in size .

These files can be shared one by one to the recipient and once all he/she receives all the files all he /she needs to do is place all the files in one folder and right click on the file with extension .zip.001 then go to 7-Zip and click on Open archive .

  And output will be original `17MB file in one piece .

Belarc advisor – Auditing PCs software & Hardware

While doing an internal audit of a manufacturing concern I found out that some of the computers used by employees of auditee organization were having chat messengers like Yahoo messenger & gtalk  installed . Then I checked  the information security policy & SOE [Standard operating environment] document , I couldn’t find these software present in SOE & as expected no approvals were in place to install these chat clients. So I decided to record & keep evidence for the same. 

Going & checking each machine taking screenshots for these machines manually was a bit of a pain. So I decided to try Belarc advisor on one machine (computer). This software exactly gives you stock of all HW & SW available on your computer with serial & license key numbers. This report can be printed or soft copy can be kept as evidence of audit. You can also try this . 

Go to http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html#tips click on download. 

Install it & run in on your system. It will give you this 

• ҉An html report of HW available on your system with their HW IDs / serial numbers and some other details . 
• Very interesting USB Storage usage in past 30 Days, This section tells you how many storage devices were connected to this system in past 30 days. 
• ҉All software installed in your system with their respective keys. & 
• ҉Fow all SW installed it tells you the location where these files are stored in your computer . 
• Another interesting part [ you can refer to screenshot below ] of this report is SW usage statistics . It bifurcates SW usages into following parts 
• SW used within last 7 days 
• Used between 90 - 7 days 
• Between a year - 90 days 
• And a Year ago 

This gives you an idea what SW to uninstall if you are short of Hard disk storage space or want to clean up your machine to reduce boot time . 

  

These are pretty much available in each & every report. As per FAQs posted on their website local Web page and does not send up your PC profile to a Web server or anywhere else.  & Its free for personal use. .  Commercial version of this Software has many more features. You can check on their website .

* SOE is a list of approved software which can be installed on every computer of that organization / department without any special approval. Software which are not part of SOE require approvals from IT security officer apart from management approval.  You can find details on SOE on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Operating_Environment