What's the best way to go about installing a solid state drive in a new laptop? (And is this even a good idea?)
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jul 30, 2012 -
12 answers
The bad news: catastrophic hard drive failure! The good news: it's my back-up drive. Help me replace it.
[more inside]
posted by BitterOldPunk
on Apr 29, 2011 -
8 answers
I'm having trouble disassembling an old desktop PC to get to the hard drive before I can destroy it and throw everything out. Is there a quick and easy way to destroy the drive in situ, using everyday household objects?
[more inside]
posted by tel3path
on Apr 6, 2011 -
36 answers
Hardware-level hard drive data recovery. Anyone in the business care to share for a DIY attempt?
[more inside]
posted by zippy
on Jun 3, 2010 -
13 answers
I have a HP Mini 110 with a 160 GB HD running Ubuntu. I'm pretty happy with it, but I don't really need all that space (currently I'm filling a tiny portion of it) and would prefer a faster boot time. What kind of improvements in speed should I expect if I swap out the hard drive with an SSD? What is the level of expense and difficulty involved in the install? Would I be better off just getting a newer notebook with an SSD already installed? What is the best source for a suitable SSD?
posted by Artw
on May 10, 2010 -
15 answers
I'm in the market for a new laptop. Should I get a PC or Mac? What specs are important for me to look at when making a decision?
[more inside]
posted by reenum
on Jun 2, 2009 -
31 answers
Can anyone help me pick a new hard drive for my first generation MacBook?
[more inside]
posted by alan
on Mar 11, 2009 -
8 answers
Help a poor fool fix his computer. New motherboard has only one IDE slot. Have two old hard drives and two old CD drives. What to do?
[more inside]
posted by kurtroehl
on Feb 2, 2009 -
11 answers
So I'm installing a new Seagate 500GB SATA HDD in my PC, when I notice, for the first time somehow, a jumper that limits the drive to 1.5 GB/s. What's that all about?
[more inside]
posted by Avenger50
on Jan 14, 2009 -
6 answers
I am having a very unusual problem with my hard drive and CANNOT recover any data from it after trying numerous methods. Please help me with your technical expertise.
[more inside]
posted by deafmute
on Jun 29, 2008 -
7 answers
My external hard-drive's on the fritz. What can I do to make sure I get all my data off it before it goes?
[more inside]
posted by djgh
on Jun 3, 2008 -
5 answers
Shopping for a cheap used laptop: What are the minimum specs I should be looking for with respect to CPU, RAM, HD? I'm planning to use WinXP (maybe I'll settle for 2K), Open Office, and FireFox (including some AJAX-heavy web sites such as gmail, Google Docs, del.icio.us), with a wifi card. And not much else. I want to avoid "I'm always waiting for this stupid slow computer!" but not spend much more than the minimum needed to avoid that.
posted by Leonard of Vince
on Dec 18, 2006 -
24 answers
I have been unable to boot from my brand new SATA hard drive. If I boot from an IDE drive, I can read from and write to this drive with absolutely no problems whatsoever. But when I try to boot, I get a "DISK BOOT FAILURE" error. I've tried many things to get this to work, and I'm quickly running out of ideas. List of things I've tried and hardware details inside.
[more inside]
posted by Plutor
on Dec 27, 2004 -
13 answers
What are some good 7200 RPM 60GB+ 2.5" drives that are suitable for installation in an Apple TiBook? Recommendations on where to buy?
posted by namespan
on Dec 16, 2004 -
8 answers
I have two hard drives: one with windows/software and another with all of my stuff (mp3s, photos, documents, etc). I was listening to music when it suddenly stopped in the middle of a song. The computer was frozen. I rebooted and my second hard drive with all my stuff isn't recognized in windows. No error messages, the drive just doesn't show up. Reinstalled windows. Still nothing. The hard drive is recognized fine by the BIOS. I was running XP, now I'm running 2000. I haven't cried yet becuase I'm not convinced that all of my data is gone forever. What can I do?
posted by TurkishGolds
on Sep 15, 2004 -
6 answers
Having trouble setting up 2 SATA hard drives as a stripe set in WinXP Pro. (more inside)
[more inside]
posted by Ynoxas
on Aug 23, 2004 -
4 answers
Would installing a new (smallish) hard drive in my machine and dedicating it solely to the Windows swap file (i.e., instead of having it on C:) improve performance?
posted by oissubke
on Jun 26, 2004 -
13 answers
Yet Another Hard Drive Failure: My laptop started hanging periodically, and eventually stopped booting. Suspecting a hard drive failure, I swapped drives, and sure enough, it works fine now. Except, of course, for the old hard drive. I've put that in a USB enclosure and I've been able to recover some of the data in fits and starts. However, it continues to lock sporadically while the data is being read, and XP will occasionally drop the drive, no longer showing it in explorer. Is there a better way to recover my data, given the inability to stay connected to it via USB?
[more inside]
posted by monju_bosatsu
on Apr 20, 2004 -
8 answers
Continuing with my
stupid computer.... I bought a new Gateway since they're closing their stores. I then put the old hard drive in the new computer. Then the computer wouldn't start. Is this a function of a bad hard drive? It didn't fit in the drive bay, so did I ground it out (I sat it to rest on the case.. is that a bad thing?)? When I took the old hard drive out of the computer, it booted up fine, which leads me to think that it's the hard drive that's causing both systems to lock up. Do I just need a new hard drive for my old computer? Thoughts?
posted by ajpresto
on Apr 9, 2004 -
6 answers
I want to know if I run the risk of Hard Disk damage by having large (8 inch sub+midrange) speakers near my computer. I have a Western Digital 100GB 7200 and a 160GB 8MB cache disk installed.
[more inside]
posted by Keyser Soze
on Jan 21, 2004 -
2 answers
I have a WinXp machine with three hard drives, each one holding 100GB. I'm researching backup alternatives, and there are tons these days (tape drives, external firewire drives, jazz drives, etc.). I'd like to find a solution that strikes a nice balance between ease of use, cost and durability. Any suggestions?
posted by grumblebee
on Jan 8, 2004 -
8 answers
