What is the process like for swapping hard drives in an xbox 360? [more inside]
posted by shmegegge on Aug 12, 2009 - 8 answers

Is my Macbook's HD broken? Unable to boot, more details inside. [more inside]
posted by djgh on Jan 31, 2009 - 11 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

The Last-External-Hard-Drive-I-Ever-Buy is stuck between heaven and hell. Can anyone please help me figure out how to rescue it? [more inside]
posted by LongDrive on Sep 2, 2008 - 5 answers

External hard showing "weird". Better known as, sharing an external/portable hard drive between osx and winxp. [more inside]
posted by jadepearl on Jun 23, 2008 - 10 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

Highly technical hard drive filter: My hard drive failed. Came home, and PC was sitting at the "where's my hard drive" BIOS screen, to my great horror. [more inside]
posted by gjc on Apr 27, 2008 - 9 answers

Can an ATA-7 hard drive be used as a replacement for an ATA-6 hard drive? [more inside]
posted by stopgap on Apr 17, 2008 - 5 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

What kind of transfer speeds should I be expecting from my new external Firewire 800 drive? [more inside]
posted by Venadium on Jan 29, 2008 - 10 answers

Every night at 12:10AM, the brand new primary hard drive in my computer begins grinding away for a duration of 10-60 seconds. Why? [more inside]
posted by Danelope on Jan 14, 2008 - 12 answers

Is there such a thing as a hard drive enclosure that supports both SATA 2.5in and 3.5in drives? [more inside]
posted by advil on Nov 21, 2007 - 5 answers

One of my hard drives threw a SMART error last night, but the symptoms are inconsistent with the self-diagnosis. What is the best way to do further testing? [more inside]
posted by Ziggy Zaga on Oct 31, 2007 - 9 answers

Are there any particularly awesome external firewire hard drive enclosures that I should be aware about? [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Oct 29, 2007 - 7 answers

How to wipe a dead hard drive? After backing up my data to a recently purchased external drive, it promptly failed (and produced a horrible, burning electronics odor). As I'm still within the 14 day return policy, I shouldn't have any trouble returning it. However: I want to wipe all of my personal data from the drive first. How to do that with a drive that won't mount? [more inside]
posted by aladfar on Oct 29, 2007 - 16 answers

Why does the drive letter for my external hard drive keep changing? [more inside]
posted by Joleta on Feb 28, 2007 - 10 answers

My friend is trying to finish his album on pro tools but is running out of hard drive space. [more inside]
posted by phaedon on Jan 12, 2007 - 11 answers

How does Windows XP label hard disks? [more inside]
posted by Symeon on Dec 14, 2006 - 4 answers

LinuxN00bFilter: Linux and/or dual boot from external USB HD (not pen/flash drive, but a real hard drive) -- how? [more inside]
posted by treepour on Oct 1, 2006 - 5 answers

I have a hard disk that I pulled out of a dead computer. It has been formated and has data on it. Are there any external adapters that I can plug it into so that I can use it as an external drive?
posted by mtstover on Sep 30, 2006 - 13 answers

My external hard drive claims to be full, but it's not! [more inside]
posted by JPowers on Aug 8, 2006 - 16 answers

Cellphone Filter: Help, getting a new phone this week! Looking for an awesome superphone. [more inside]
posted by spinko on Jun 25, 2006 - 13 answers

Time to get a new hard drive? I got a BSOD. When I restarted, my second hard drive was gone. I opened the computer case, unplugged the cable, plugged it back in and the hard drive came back. But for how long? Is this a sign that the hard drive is about to give up? The drive is about 3 years. [more inside]
posted by Termite on Jun 16, 2006 - 10 answers

Is there any hope for my dying/dead Serial ATA drive? [more inside]
posted by Venadium on Feb 8, 2006 - 9 answers

So I thought for certain the hard drive on my old desktop G4 was dead. Upon startup, I was getting the "whirr CLICK whirr CLICK whirr CLICK whirr CLICK" sound, followed by the flashing question mark on my screen. Out of frustration, I gave the HD the ol' Fonzie: I whacked it good three or four times. I am now typing this on said computer. What happened? [more inside]
posted by Item on Nov 21, 2005 - 25 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

What should I do with my new hard drive? [more inside]
posted by jewishbuddha on Apr 21, 2005 - 11 answers

My 160 gig HD is being scanned daily by Anti-Virus Guard. Seems like all this wear-and-tear would add up. Does this reduce the life span of a hard drive? Bonus if you know how to make Grisoft's AVG Free Edition scan less frequently.
posted by agropyron on Mar 21, 2005 - 9 answers

How robust/durable are LaCie firewire drives? [+] [more inside]
posted by psmealey on Feb 7, 2005 - 14 answers

MacFilter: Finally upgraded from my old 400 mhz G4 to a 1.25 ghz dual processor G4. I'd like to move the maxtor ata hard drive that I installed in the old machine to the new machine. Will I lose the data in the process? Or can I just take it out of one, put it in the next, and continue to access all my files as if nothing has changed?
posted by fingers_of_fire on Feb 5, 2005 - 19 answers

External USB Hard Drive FAT32 corruption via Mac OS 9! Help me Obi-Wan Kenobe! (More inside) [more inside]
posted by loquacious on Dec 21, 2004 - 1 answer

Making an "updatable" CD-Rom (lots of linked, searchable pdfs/ docs) that needs to check the web for updated documents and download them to user's hard-drive, subsequently seamlessly showing data from HD/ CD as necessary. Any resources on coding said beast? Google-fu fails me. [more inside]
posted by Pericles on Dec 14, 2004 - 7 answers

(Lost Data FIlter)
I attempted to partition my Maxtor 60 GB HDD earlier, while I had a 40 gb Maxtor external USB 2 drive plugged in. What I'm afraid happened is that when the computer rebooted, the drive letters change and Partition Magic 8 was going to work on the external drive.
[more inside] [more inside]
posted by Evstar on Nov 17, 2004 - 6 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

You know those fun little addicting Java games on the web? Is there any way to snatch them out of whatever buffer they reside in, and save them to your hard drive for future offline play?
posted by mecran01 on Sep 14, 2004 - 3 answers

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

Large external drive on ancient laptop: I've got a 160 gig USB drive I'm trying to access from a laptop running Windows ME. [more inside]
posted by muckster on Mar 2, 2004 - 13 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