A Windows 2000 hard disk got clobbered by the XP installer and is "unallocated". What are my next steps? [more inside]
posted by kristi on Nov 16, 2009 - 3 answers

I have these two "folders" in my C drive that are just two of my external hard drives. I would either like them gone or to be given a really good reason to keep them. [more inside]
posted by theichibun on Jul 13, 2009 - 4 answers

Running XP on my computer, off of someone else's internal hard drive [more inside]
posted by senterstyle on Dec 3, 2008 - 10 answers

Best HD imaging software/solution? One large external USB2.0 HD, would like to image the primary partition of several XP computers. [more inside]
posted by porpoise on Oct 2, 2008 - 8 answers

I have two computer hard drives installed onto one machine, and no CD for the first hard drive. The computer doesn't recognize USB ports nor the DVD drive on one of the hard drives. How can I fix that? [more inside]
posted by magnoliasouth on Jul 23, 2008 - 4 answers

Various quandaries in building a new PC [more inside]
posted by ROU_Xenophobe on May 13, 2008 - 21 answers

My windows didn't want to boot up, so I bought a new hard disc installed Windows on it and made the old one slave. The old hard disc reads as completely empty. Why? [more inside]
posted by A! on Nov 4, 2007 - 15 answers

I (apparently) messed up my partition, and now Windows thinks my hard drive is half the size it actually is. Help. [more inside]
posted by 4ster on Apr 22, 2007 - 5 answers

So it's come to this - I see no other option than to ask a "help me fix my PC" question. After some troubleshooting the STOP errors seem to have been resolved, XP now boots successfully but is excruciating slow to the point of being unusable. Details and specs below the fold. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Mar 4, 2007 - 25 answers

Is it possible for Windows 2000/XP (or more properly, an NTFS disk volume) to "collapse" under the weight of too many files? [more inside]
posted by chef_boyardee on Feb 1, 2007 - 12 answers

TechSupportFilter: having problems with an ata harddrive [more inside]
posted by willmillar on Aug 23, 2006 - 9 answers

How can I watch what is being written to my hard-drive? [more inside]
posted by MintSauce on May 31, 2006 - 4 answers

DIY data recovery from failed disk drive: what low level diagnostics can I run? [more inside]
posted by StickyCarpet on May 22, 2006 - 8 answers

i lost a partition in a reformat, but the data is still on my harddrive. i want to get the data off. i have r-studio, but not enough disk space on the existing partition to put the other data on it, and i thought i shouldn't create a new partition to put the data on, as that could mess up remaining data. i don't have an external harddrive. is there any way i can safely get the data off? thanks! [more inside]
posted by willmillar on Apr 7, 2006 - 7 answers

Why does adding a third drive to my WinXP system cause the error "NTLDR is missing" upon subsequent boot? In the past it's worked fine like this. [more inside]
posted by stupidsexyFlanders on Mar 9, 2006 - 11 answers

iPod newbie on Windows XP needs help... [more inside]
posted by Al_Truist on Jan 5, 2006 - 10 answers

My wife's computer died (autopsy pending). I took her hard drive out, put it in an Adaptec external enclosure, and hooked it to my machine via USB. It runs fine and I can see the directory tree, but it won't let me access the important stuff under her profile in Documents and Settings -- just says "Access Denied." Is there any way around this? [more inside]
posted by words1 on Jul 13, 2005 - 11 answers

What should I do with my new hard drive? [more inside]
posted by jewishbuddha on Apr 21, 2005 - 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

Yet another boring tech question: my main hard drive died on me. It's a Seagate, so I ran their diagnostic tool and it tells me I have 2 critical structure errors. What does this mean? Is there a way to fix it, or do I have to reformat, or worse, toss it out? Vielen Dank!
posted by muckster on Aug 20, 2004 - 9 answers

IDE hard drive conundrum: "Error loading OS" (more inside) [more inside]
posted by luser on Jul 6, 2004 - 13 answers

I just did a full WinXP reinstall. In the process, I took an 80 gig drive which was partitioned to 10/30/40 gig partitions and repartitioned it to 10/10/20/15/25 partitions. Unfortunately, that 40 gig partition held my "My Documents" holding a bunch of Word documents spanning the years and a lot of digital photos that are irreplaceable.

I've tried a few file recovery programs with limited success (recovered around 20% of my files) however I think the problem is the repartitions have split a lot of the files across two or more partitions. Is there a way I can recombine these partitions and try the file recovery programs again??
posted by PWA_BadBoy on Apr 21, 2004 - 3 answers

Windows XP question... My parents computer is set up that most items are stored on a 20 GB harddrive (or possibly a partition- listed as c:) while they have 100 GB available on d:... When I install software, is it perfectly acceptable to run it off the D drive, and is there a way to switch the set up so most items save to the d drive? [more inside]
posted by drezdn on Feb 23, 2004 - 8 answers

What's a good program to automate backing up one hard drive to another one on the same box in Windows XP?

Something that made a complete backup of certain folders every morning would be ideal.
posted by signal on Dec 15, 2003 - 19 answers