What's a good, preferably free, diagnostics program for Windows? [more inside]
posted by Grinder on Mar 31, 2009 - 6 answers

I have a portable usb hard drive that I use for keeping all my documents / backups on. Windows seems to love using this drive for everything, for example I am installing IE7 from windows update, and it is using the drive to hold all the temporary files during the install. Because of this the drive is always in use and I can never eject it. [more inside]
posted by Syntoad on Feb 17, 2009 - 5 answers

I have an external usb drive running off my Windows 7 computer. It keeps switching back to Read-Only, so when I try to send files to it, it merely appends a file and adds a number to its name, instead of re-writing the entire file. I've tried to change it back, but it does not stay changed. The minute I refresh the page, the read-only status comes back! Is there some setting I'm missing? Is there something in Windows 7 that's causing this to happen?
posted by noir on Feb 11, 2009 - 2 answers

How can I change the generic name "USB Mass Storage Device" in my Vista system tray "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog? [more inside]
posted by msbrauer on Dec 30, 2008 - 6 answers

Windows Illiteracy Filter. Help me help my mother via long-distance to understand the difference between memory and hard disk storage, and how to access information on her Windows XP machine that will tell her how much memory she has, if there are any empty slots, what type of memory her computer requires, and how large her hard drive is, including used/available space stats. [more inside]
posted by Devils Rancher on Nov 29, 2008 - 14 answers

Hard drive issues: Frequently when I attempt to open a folder on my Windows Vista partition I will have to wait 5 seconds or so for the drive to spin up (I hear it). Is there some way I can fix my cache or otherwise set up the drive so that it doesn't need to spin up every time I access files on my root drive? [more inside]
posted by Aanidaani on Nov 22, 2008 - 3 answers

Can I use B: as a drive letter, on a modern windows PC, without messing things up? [more inside]
posted by penciltopper on Sep 29, 2008 - 11 answers

Can I get my WD external hard drive back to the way it was? [more inside]
posted by droplet on Aug 19, 2008 - 8 answers

My fantastically unstable IBM T42 (which is on it's 3rd, soon to be 4th, life) died a little while ago, no longer booting into Ubuntu. However, it loves to boot into Windows. How do I nuke both? [more inside]
posted by tmcw on Jul 11, 2008 - 8 answers

I think I'm finally switching to Ubuntu on my main machine. I have two 160GB external drives, currently both with NTFS, currently mirrored (by software, not a RAID). With what and how should I format/use these guys? [more inside]
posted by tmcw on Mar 14, 2008 - 8 answers

I have a big external USB hard drive with three partitions for infrequently used files and backup. I was wondering what kind of file to make to have it automatically open a folder showing the drive when I power on the device and not ask me what I'd like to do with each of the other drives. [more inside]
posted by royalchinook on Feb 21, 2008 - 7 answers

How do I stop windows from automatically searching for media when a new drive is plugged in? (Minor annoyance.) [more inside]
posted by univac on Nov 29, 2006 - 3 answers

How do I configure a 2.5" 60 gig usb external drive to boot Windows XP on a PC as well as be able to boot Mac OS X 10.4 on an Intel MacBook?
posted by h2 on Oct 10, 2006 - 4 answers

Sony VAIO SZ shutdown - startup issues. [more inside]
posted by trinarian on Jul 31, 2006 - 1 answer

Can I dual boot from an XP drive that came from older (dead) computer? [more inside]
posted by DZ-015 on Jul 10, 2006 - 3 answers

How can I access restricted files on a Windows partition? [more inside]
posted by benjh on Jun 18, 2006 - 3 answers

Windows XP crashes whenever it accesses a specific file. The problem: I don't know what file it is. What would cause such a serious error and how do I fix it? [more inside]
posted by monsta coty scott on Feb 18, 2006 - 8 answers

Changing drive letters in Windows 2000 [more inside]
posted by vanoakenfold on Jan 28, 2006 - 6 answers

Firewire and Windows XP: I bought an external Firewire Drive on Ebay. When I plug it into a PC, it's not recognized, and the driver search does not go well. Similarly, if I start up my Powerbook G4 as a Firewire device, and hook it to my PC, Windows is again puzzled. What can I do to help Win XP succesfully work with these devices? Or should I send back the drive and pick my Firewire devices more carefully? [more inside]
posted by weston on Dec 12, 2005 - 25 answers

Is there any Windows XP utility that will tell me what program is accessing my hard drive? [more inside]
posted by crazyray on Nov 23, 2005 - 10 answers

Help me transition to Mac. I have a home computer (Windows) that just crapped out. There was a power surge or something and the Power supply and motherboard are now toast. The hard drive is OK. I have an iBook, and now I want to get a Mac Mini for home. My question is.... How do I get the files off my old (standard ATAPI) hard drive and into my iBook? Is there some sort of adapter that I can buy to plug into my USB port? What options are available?
posted by TheFeatheredMullet on Oct 4, 2005 - 10 answers

I just received a new Acer laptop. The hard drive is 100GB, but it arrived divided into two partitions. According to the Windows XP Professional disk management window, the drive is divided as follows ... [more inside]
posted by punishinglemur on Aug 11, 2005 - 22 answers

Back in the dear dead days of DOS, I used to speed up things by creating a virtual disk in memory so that searches and other disk-I/O-intensive operations would run faster. In later version of DOS, there was a RAMDrive command. Is there an equivalent utility in Win XP (Home or Pro) to park Temp files and similar items in a lettered drive in RAM? Or does Windows take care of that automatically?
posted by KRS on May 25, 2005 - 10 answers

Hard disk management. I have several hard drives, running from 20GB to 120GB. My primary C: drive is on the 20GB drive, and the other day I noticed it was taking quite a while to do things, the C: drive was down to about 20MB of disk space! What I'm looking for is a disk manager that would look at hard drive and tell me what folders are taking up what space on the hard drive, so I could prune the offending directories. I'm on Windows 2000, and would prefer freeware.
posted by patrickje on Nov 8, 2004 - 11 answers

I've just bought a Lacie 160 gigabyte firewire drive. It's to be plugged into a Windows XP machine, but also to be written to and read by a Mac OSX machine. I want to format it with the FAT32 file system, but Windows won't let me. Is there a way to force the drive to format as FAT32? [More inside...] [more inside]
posted by skylar on Oct 28, 2004 - 5 answers

Can a USB flash drive be used as your Windows swap space? What are the positive aspects of a design such as this?
posted by Keyser Soze on Sep 7, 2004 - 18 answers

I'm running my system under win2k Pro. In my OS folder are a bunch of subfolders with names like $NtUninstallKB810217$ Any reason not to delete them? I could really use the reclaimed drive-space (nb: I googled, and found links, but all want money to view the answer. How very un-askme!)
posted by Fupped Duck on Jul 20, 2004 - 1 answer

Can I access a Windows 2000 formatted hard drive in an external hard drive enclosure with an Apple computer? [m-to-the-i] [more inside]
posted by plemeljr on May 25, 2004 - 8 answers

I have 100GB and 160GB hard drives in my XP computer. I tried using Norton Ghost to move the 100GB info to my latter drive, and it worked but with serious partition errors (windows not booting). I then moved a large amount of data to my 160, the 100 not really having changed. Everything in windows functions, but when I use Partition Magic 8 I get the following error: "Disk 1 appears to have partitions created using a different drive geometry (255h 63s original, 240h 63 current) You should back up...." etcetera. More inside. [more inside]
posted by Keyser Soze on Mar 7, 2004 - 2 answers

I've just bought a new 80gb hard drive (Hitachi deskstar).
It shows up as 80gb in the bios, but only as 13gb in f-disk.
What's wrong, please?
posted by the cuban on Feb 8, 2004 - 5 answers