Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with clearing

Clear a hard-drive, copy another onto it, then clear that other drive

The Devil Tesla — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 19:41:26 -0800

Looking for step by step instructions on how to clear a hard drive and then copy one drive (that boots Windows 7) to that drive I just cleared, then clear the old boot drive. My case currently has two drives, one connected by SATA and the other by PATA. Though this wasn't my intention, when I upgraded from Vista 32-bit to Windows 7 64-bit my old boot drive, the SATA one, was left untouched and the new OS was installed on the PATA drive.

I would really like to switch things around so the SATA drive is the boot drive and the PATA one is secondary, like it used to be. This is because the PATA one is a lot older than the SATA one. Everything on the SATA drive (the secondary one at the moment) is expendable and I'd like to clear that and then copy the currently bootable PATA one to the SATA drive and then clear it, resulting in the SATA drive being the primary one and the PATA being a big blank secondary drive.

I know next to nothing about this kind of thing, so I would be eternally grateful if someone could point me to the software I need to be able to do this and how I would set up this kind of operation on it. I've gotten a vague sense of how I should do this from other AskMes and a few howtos, but I'm not confidant yet that I could do it and nothing would go wrong.

Also, I'd much prefer if I could do this without buying any more hardware or software. I do have blank cds, dvds and a flash drive.

In a perfect world the solution would be to set things up, press go, and then walk away for a while until it's done, but yea, any help you can give me would make me super happy.

I can see the solution to this problem taking a bit more effort than some AskMes. If it does (or hell, even if it doesn't but you give me the information I need) I will e-mail you ten adorable pictures of bunnies as a thank-you gift.

Myopia Suddenly Clears

Forrest Greene — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:15:17 -0800

I have very myopic eyesight. Something like 20/400 plus astigmatism in both eyes. I've worn glasses almost fifty years, since I was seven years old. A few years ago, an odd thing happened. My wife & I worked on different schedules. She would awake, get dressed, & head out for the day while I slept in a few hours longer. I would usually wake up & visit a bit before she left.

One morning, I woke as she was dressing to find that although my glasses were on the side table where they had spent the night as usual, my vision was perfect. Looking through my unaided eyes, my whole field of vision was sharp & clear, bright, unblurred, maybe even better than with lenses.

It lasted as long as it took to realize it was happening, then slid back to my normal foggy state. I've never experienced anything like it before or since.

So. I could have been half asleep still, & imagined or dreamt the whole thing, but that's boring. An explanation that at least sort of matches the physical world is maybe I had an extraordinarily relaxing sleep that night, allowing the small muscles all around the eyeballs to relax extremely well, thereby allowing my eyeballs to temporarily reshape themselves better... maybe?

Well, I don't know. Has anyone else experienced this, or heard of it? Is there an opthamologist in the house?

One order of Tabula Rasa, please.

jildelicious — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:44:34 -0800

Help me cover my trail in both Firefox and Explorer, please! An acquaintance, with whom I have mutual friends, is coming to work on my computer tomorrow (help it run faster, etc). Problem is I don't want him to see where I've been on the internet, specifically blogs of mutual friends who don't want him to know they have blogs. (He's kind of snoopy, and I wouldn't be surprised if he checked to see where I go online.) I've been using both Firefox and Explorer, and want to clear them out so there's no record of sites I've visited. Can I do that, and if so, how?
Thanks in advance.

Selling surplus stock

Anonymous — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:10:26 -0800

How can I sell surplus stock in North America? We have a load of surplus stock, mainly contractor tools and equipment for the service industry. What methods could be used to sell online or are there companies who could take on the task of selling and shipping the stock online where they take their cut and we take ours? Using something like ebay is not really an option as it is too labour intensive for us. There may also be issues regarding our involvement becoming aware by our wholesalers as some of the sales would bypass them and go straight to end-users who are traditionally their customers.

How to cash a dollar cheque in a UK bank?

Pericles — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 03:22:09 -0800

UK bank filter. I get small cheques from an Ameican tech publisher, drawn on an American bank., for dollar amounts. My UK bank wants to take 28 days to clear them, and deducts an unspecified amount to do it. Any recommendations for UK banks that are in the 21st century? (The tech publisher won't use Paypal; they say that their US authors, who are the majority, prefer cheques).

What is this huge line across Canada?

excitementMD — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 12:43:36 -0800

What is this huge long line in Canada? A friend of mine was flying back from europe and saw this huge long grey line going across Canada. It looks to big to be a road. We're stumped! Does anybody know what it is? Look at it on Google Maps

Time to Reclaim Part of my Garden.

baggers — Thu, 18 May 2006 13:31:10 -0800

Part of my garden has been growing wild for some time: I've decided it is time to reclaim it. But my current tools aren't up to the job. Any suggestions? There is a part of my garden that I haven't paid attention to for a bit. It's getting kind of wild, and I want it back. The space is mainly chest-high grass and the like. I've tried attacking it with my line trimmer, but it's just not up to the job. What other tools or techniques could I try? Bonus points for non-chemical solutions: my cats hang around in the area (and there's probably a feral living back there as well), and I don't want to use anything that would be bad for them.