Although the following is a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product reviewed.
I’ve reviewed some sites in the past that allow you to search for all kinds of things, but what if you’re just looking to download mp3s? There’s a site for that, too, and it’s called MP3-2000.com.
Download Music For Free
The site works in a few ways. If you’re looking for free music downloads or just wanting to purchase tracks, you can browse music by the most popular downloads, newest added, or most recently searched. If you know the artist or song, you can click on a letter of the alphabet at the top of the screen to browse for it or you can search for it by name using the search box. I performed several searches with mixed results, starting with a few local bands. Having no luck with the local bands, I moved on to some just barely more known music like Bigod 20, which surprised me with a few results.
Once you’ve found the track you’re searching for, a few options are presented within a couple tabs. In the second tab, you can obtain a link to share the track’s page with others. In the first tab, you can play the song right in the page or download it right from the source. In addition, there are links to purchase the track or turn it into a ringtone and if there’s more tracks from the same artist, they’ll be listed below. As well as all the links, an area for comments is provided and even lyrics if they’re available.
Buy Music Cheap
For those wanting to purchase the music they find, a couple options exist. The first is the ability to buy the song or album from mp3sales.ru. I did a little searching on the safety recommendations for mp3sales.ru and didn’t find anything alarming. Curious, I also checked their Legal Info page to see how they’re handling licensing. It looks like they are fine according to Russian laws. You may have to check your local copyright laws if you’re outside of Russia, though. mp3sales.ru offered the Bigod 20 tracks at €0.10 per track or €0.80 for the whole album, which is great compared to the $0.99 I normally pay per track elsewhere. Some browsing around gave me the impression that this pricing was pretty standard for most of the music selling on that site.
The ringtone link took me to a page offering up to 15 ringtones per month, but it was at a cost of $9.99/month. I’d didn’t sign up to get a hands-on experience with it, but if you have, let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
Conclusions
MP3-2000.com is probably the easiest site to download music for free, with advanced searching, related tracks, and instant downloads in most cases. Functionally, my only complaint would be the suggestions of other music I might like because it was way off. If you’re concerned about the legality, you’ll want to remember that you’re bound to the laws in your own jurisdiction, so do your research.
Although the following is a sponsored review, as always I strive to provide an honest opinion of the product reviewed.
There are a lot of online sources to help you find files online, but many of them are limited to only a few upload sites and don’t remove old links. Others put really annoying sponsored links up that look like regular results to get you to click on a paid link. This week, I was asked to review a file sharing search site called General-Files.com. It promises a cleaner search of more files with a bunch of features.
Finding and Downloading Files
There’s not really a lot to finding files to download online. Generally, you search and something will come up. The problem I’ve had in the past is that I’ll search Google and half of the results are other file search sites that generate a fake hit for sponsored links. In this case, however, I skip Google and head to General-Files.com and search for my file. The search is pretty quick and returns just what I’m looking for in most cases. Some people will use sites like this to download movies for free, which can be illegal in some cases. Others will visit hoping to download free music, which comes with the same legal concern. This is not the case all of the time, though. Many artists will share their music online for free and it’s perfectly legal. I often use a site like this to find fonts, clip art, a viral video or image, or any number of things. The possibilities are virtually endless as this site includes results not only from Uploading, MegaUpload, RapidShare and many others, but it also returns direct links to files from around the web.
In addition to searching for what you know you want, you can also choose from their lists of Most Downloaded, Most Commented and Most Rated, as well as Hot Files and the Latest uploads. Just use common sense when you download random files. Finally, when you’re ready to download a file you can click right out to the site that hosts the file and begin your download one file at a time, or you can queue them up to download all at once.
Additional Features
For those who want to be more involved in the social process, you can vote for files on a five-star scale, comment on files, and even report some of the less savory content out there. You can also send a Good Report to indicate that the file is generally good, virus free, or erotic in nature. Reporting bad content warns others against downloading it and comments and votes help guide the “Most” and “Hot” lists mentioned above. It’s the same concept as liking and commenting on Facebook posts. And speaking of liking on Facebook, each file’s details page includes a Like button so you can help others find it, too.
One of the features I nearly overlooked is the Alert option. Alerts are turning up everywhere these days. From Facebook push notifications on your iPhone to Google searches, alerts are a popular way to find out right away when something happens. On General-Files.com, you can set a search alert to let you know via email when someone uploads a file matching your search criteria. This feature will be invaluable when you’re searching for a hard-to-find file.
General Conclusions
With any file hosting site or search, you need be aware of what you’re downloading. General-Files is a little more helpful in this regard when the reporting features are used. The clean, ad-free and fast search along with compiled lists and alerts make this file search stand out heads above the others I’ve come across. It’s in my bookmarks and should have a place in yours if you find yourself searching for files often.
Data loss is no fun. I know this first hand. As what some might call a power user, I go through hard drives and other digital media pretty quickly and I’ve had my fair share of them just quit on me with no warning. Of course, the first line of defense is to back up your important files regularly, but what if you didn’t do that or you have new files since the last backup? In those cases, you can send your drive out to a professional to recover your files, but you can also try to do it at home.
Recover Lost Files At Home
It seems like every year, there’s newer, cheaper, easier data recovery software on the market. Just last year, I paid about $70 for a program that I’ve sworn by since the first time I used it and this week, I was given a copy of MediaRECOVER Pro. It’s cheaper at only $49.95, is really simple to use, and pretty fast, at least compared to the program I was using before. To compare, I ran both on a 2GB Flip video camera. MediaRECOVER Pro took only 8 minutes to scan compared to 20 with the other software. (My test was with an advanced scan, while a normal scan was significantly faster) My other software also takes a minute or so to load before you can do anything, but MediaRECOVER Pro loaded right away. Both did equally well at recovering old deleted files. The install was pretty simple, too. I clicked “next” a few times and it was ready to go.
The software also comes in a cheaper version, called simply MediaRECOVER for only $29.95 The big difference between the two is that the Pro version includes the optical storage recovery and is only available for Windows currently. In both versions you can also see previews of your files in image form (when possible, ASCII, and HEX).
How To Undelete Files
When you run the software, the first thing you see is the main menu. From here, you can choose to perform a regular or advanced scan, perform a scan on optical storage like a CD or DVD, use Tools, or view the Help.
Most of us just want to dive in and get our files back. You can do this with the normal scan if you’ve just accidentally deleted files, but in other cases, you may need to do a advanced scan, which will scan sector-by-sector for your lost files. Initiating a scan either way is pretty straight forward. You select the drive you want to scan and can narrow it down to a partition. Then click the scan button and wait. The amount of time the scan takes can depend on the size of the drive and how many files it had on it.
Once scanning has completed, you just select the files you want to recover and click the save button to save them and you can get right to the folder they’re in with the browse button. In my test, I ended up with a video from a wedding that I shot over a year ago, which was a fun little surprise.
Professional Data Recovery Services
While FreshCrop, the company that makes MediaRECOVER, tries to “teach a man to fish”, you might say, not everyone is going to be able to just install and recover. There is the rare case in which recovery doesn’t work or you just don’t want to do it on your own. For those times, FreshCrop provides data recovery services. You package up your drive or flash card and send it out and they’ll do their magic on it. Looking at the prices, they’re a lot more wallet-friendly than all the services I’ve seen in the past.
Delete Files For Good
Sometimes you have the opposite problem. You have files on a drive or portable storage that you need removed permanently. After all, with programs like MediaRECOVER, you need to be sure sensitive data is unrecoverable by others. I hate to break it to you, but just emptying the recycle bin isn’t going to cut it. For this reason, FreshCrop included some extra tools.
In the Tools section, you can wipe the media of all files, format it for re-use, and even add Secure Delete, which will let you wipe files from Internet Explorer. These tools are a handy addition to this package.
Conclusions
Admittedly, I haven’t used many data recovery software packages, but I haven’t had to, either. What I had worked well, and this is not only better, but it’s cheaper, too. For $50, the Pro version (which I would buy) pays for itself the first time you recover your vacation photos or the video of baby’s first steps. Easily worth the money, it works very smoothly. Although you may not need it right now, it’s worth bookmarking for when you do. Personally, I keep a copy of my recovery software on a thumb drive with me just in case.
