Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with drive

Help me fix a hard drive that fails at 86%

patrad — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 20:54:46 -0800

How can I recover anything off this hard drive that fails low level scans at 86%? I'm fixing a friend's computer. He has a SATA 160gb Maxtor drive. First, the XP registry went and would BSOD on boot and recovery. After chkdsk failed a couple times and I could not fix or restore the registry, I installed Win7 on a new SATA drive. Once installed, it started to recognize the other drive and I managed to copy a couple folders over.

Then Win7 stopped recognizing the drive. Rebooted, and the BIOS sees the drive but Win7 does not. I can boot into PE and run drive diagnostics.

SeaTools just stops at 86%.
MHDD scans fine until 86.3% at which point it shows about 49 UNC (Uncorrectable Errors) and 27 AMNF (address mark not found)

Clearly something is failing at that point on the platter. At this point I'm stuck. What tool is best to be able to copy the 86% of the drive over to the new one and start file recovery if possible?

Driving in Brazil (RJ)

tss — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:31:02 -0800

We are considering renting a car and driving from Rio de Janeiro to Paraty and back. Advice? My S.O. and I will be in Brazil for the next week or so. We are staying in Rio, but for the last few days of our trip, we plan to spend time in Paraty. We've been thinking that we might rent a car and drive there from Rio, then drive back to Rio before catching our flight home. Does anyone have any experience with this, or pointers? More specific questions (answers to any one of them would be most welcome):

1. When is the best time of day to leave Rio de Janeiro, and when is the best time to return? We imagine that broad daylight is the best time to be driving in Rio, but are there any more specific times? (Luckily there will be a lot of broad daylight this week in Rio.)

2. What's the best way to leave Rio from the Zona Sul?

3. What should we expect from the BR-101 road along the coast?

4. What should we watch out for (e.g. traffic jams) when planning our trip back---to an airline flight we really would rather not miss?

5. Is there a particular kind of insurance we should get here, before we leave, or there, when we get the car?

6. We are confident, patient drivers in the US and wouldn't bat an eye at Manhattan or downtown Philly, say, but have not driven outside of USA/Canada or western Europe before. Is this car trip advisable or should we just take the bus?

I should add that we don't speak Portuguese, although we've had some luck reading webpages and such through triangulation from French, Italian, and Spanish. Naturally, we would plan to limit the need for conversations along the road by driving conservatively, during off-peak hours, at the speed limit.

EIEIOmega

rleamon — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:04:20 -0800

My Iomega external hard drive died... Any chance of getting it going again? Or getting the drive(s) out and into another case? It's an Iomega HDD2H, 640GB, silver case, and I'm pretty sure it's two 320GB drives in a RAID 0 configuration. (Specs are hard to come by for this, sadly.) The case has four screws attaching the outer enclosure that mainly serves to provide feet, but the inner enclosure holding the ddrives defied my initial attempts to open it -- no apparent screws or other modes of ingress. I found a suggestion to try another external power supply with it and happened to have an exact twin that came with another drive -- but no go.

I'd rather rescue the data somehow and have a hard time believing the drives themselves are the problem; it seems more like a power issue. But even if I could get the drives out, what are the chances I could use another RAID enclosure (which I happen to have) and retrieve the data?

Lastly, yes, it's out of warranty, and Iomega quoted a minimum $900 to get the data back. Yikes!

A million tiny pieces, on a USB drive.

tmcw — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:52:17 -0800

Transferring lots of files quickly to USB sticks? So, I'm trying to transfer map tilesets to USB drives ('sticks') - which means 1-12 gigs of data, but organized in files which are all less than 1MB. Transferring this with cp to a USB drive would probably take a week, so I've been trying to create images of the directory on my machine and then basically 'burning' the USB drive, with little success, since it appears that the Apple tools for this (hdiutil and asr) are either junk or too Apple-specific to deal with FAT32 - asr definitely can't.

So, how do people do this? I assume that they do, right? Ideas? Thanks

Dual-Bay SATA Enclosures

sdis — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 15:05:09 -0800

Dual-bay SATA Enclosures! Which ones let me copy from one drive to the other on a Mac? I have my eye out on this inexpensive one, and in the end, I want a box into which I can stuff two harddrives, copy stuff between them, and copy stuff between my internal laptop harddrive and them. Bonus points if I can hook it up via USB to my Airport Extreme and get two network drives.

Will this EagleTech one do what I need? If not, what will?

(Having trouble finding detailed info on this enclosure, although from various reviews, it appears that it supports RAID 0 as well as "normal", though I'm not clear what "normal" would be in this circumstance)

How can I access files from a fritzed Windows Home Server?

Hartster — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 06:28:15 -0800

How can I access files from a fritzed Windows Home Server? Yesterday, we had a power surge at home followd by a a power outage. When the power returned, the Tranquil WHS wouldn't boot: turning the power on just got a fast blinking blue light and nothing else (no drive activity or boot up etc). Unfortunately, I urgently need some files of that drive.

So I removed the SATA hard drive and stuck that in my (Windows XP running) desktop. I thought that had worked, but while my desktop can see the drive and all the files, clicking on a file or copying it gets nowhere, I get a "this file cannot be accessed by the system" message or some sort of variant depending on how I try and open the file.

Have I just not installed it properly? Is the file system corrupted by the power surge? Is sticking a drive with its own operating system in another desktop the issue? Is there another way to get hold of the files I need in the short term?

To an extent, I'm more bothered about getting access to the drive than getting my WHS up and running again, as I've not been using it as anything other than an overspecced external harddrive for a while now anyway.

(Also as a bonus question: if I do get it up and running as another internal hard drive, is there a way of mapping a folder on a drive to its own drive letter: e.g. map "F:/shares/music" to "M:")

How can I find what I'm looking for when I don't know what it is?

pedmands — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:14:35 -0800

I am always on the precipice of an epiphany, or so I think... I've had this lingering feeling for a long time, now; as if there's one last key to turn before the bounty. It's something that I haven't really learned to cope with, and its strength seems to ebb and flow in a direct relationship to my concentration. Like the Atlantic, the tide may seem to shallow its depth, but its mass is ever-present.

It's certainly a motivating factor in my life. I've pursued its nagging for hours at a time, but the promised payoff is always elusive. The impetus behind it is abstract and therefore frustrating, and when I inevitably turn up empty-handed, I feel a deep defeat. Hence the coping.

A few examples of this drive that some of you might relate to:

Broad: It's the feeling that, if I just find that one bit of information out there in the overwhelming stream of data, most everything will 'click'.

Specific: The knowing that if I work on this chorus a little more that the song will finally be the one I've been trying to write since I set out to capture it.

Personal: The insistence by my inner-self that when I stumble upon the right thought through free-association, I'll understand myself.

...

I consider it a gift; an affliction; a curse.

What is it, really?

Registry info from a crusty old drive?

ian1977 — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 18:23:45 -0800

Can I get old registry data off a 2nd hard-drive? I had a program installed on an old computer that won't fire up. I can take the hard drive and install it on a different pc...but I need to go to regedit to get the program's licence key. I go to regedit and it only seems to have programs listed on my main drive. If I move the program from the crusty old drive into the new drive, it doesn't seem to bring the licence info with it.

I just need the license info so that I can get the discount on version two of the software.

Is the license key hiding somewhere that I can find it? The FAQ of the software says I would normally be able to find it here: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Ross Bencina\AudioMulch\1.0\Registered User

At least for once, I have good backups...

tkolstee — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:46:01 -0800

iMac drives failing - first external, then internal. Seems to be hardware in both cases. Questions about troubleshooting or replacement inside. My 1TB external media drive (usually connected via firewire, but has USB as well) on my iMac went bad last week, randomly dropping off until it's powercycled. It was a WD MyBook, which I have now come to understand has an overheating issue. The firmware upgrade didn't help. I bought a new (1.5TB Seagate USB 2.0) external and migrated over the files using rsync. Opening the external case and pointing a desktop fan at the drive seemed to help it stay up longer, but SEVERAL times during the process it crashed, sometimes hanging the host computer with it. Several forced powercycles and hours later, I had all my data moved. One of these crashes happened in the middle of a Spotlight index job which I tried to kill to no avail.

I was just about to "retire" the old drive when it crashed once more, again hanging the iMac. I held down the power button on the iMac and forcefully rebooted it, and this time the system came up to the "question-mark-within-a-folder" icon. Booted from Snow Leopard install DVD, and tried to run Disk Utility. Disk Utility was having some problems detecting the filesystem/partitions on the internal drive, so I tried to repartition it to restore my Time Machine backup and found that its capacity was listed as 0 bytes.

I've gotten the drive to (briefly) recognize properly once, but most of the time the drive begins clicking as it's trying to read. When it was recognized I attempted a verify and repair, but the drive stopped working (and again hung the computer) in the middle of the process.

Is there any possible correlation (unstable power, magnetic interference, sunspots?) between the external and internal drives failing so closely together? It seems like this is a hardware failure where both drives are concerned; the external due to heat intolerance, and the internal due to unknown causes but making a telltale click. Could the internal drive have failed due to my powercycling the machine? I would think the machine should have brains enough to gracefully kill off its drive before shutting itself off....

Secondly, is there anything else I can do to save the drive? I'm assuming the click generally means the drive won't ever be good again. I know about the freezer trick and other temporary methods, but I don't care about the data on the drive as it's backed up and easily replaceable.

Third, if the internal drive is permanently dead, how easy is it to replace it with a new one? I have a 3.5" 250GB SATA drive that I can use to replace it, but have never taken apart an iMac before.

Lastly, is there anything I can do with the overheating external? It seems to work fine, so long as I direct a lot of airflow at it, but otherwise it crashes within 30-60 minutes of use. It seems to be getting more intolerant of heat as time goes on.

The receipt lists this as an "iMac 17/2.0/1G/160/SD/AP/BT/WLKBM, Part Number MA758LL/A". It was purchased July 29, 2007 so is not still under any warranty.

Are there any hard drive enclosures for 3.5" form HDs that can be powered off a USB port alone?

chefscotticus — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:30:29 -0800

Are there any hard drive enclosures for 3.5" form HDs that can be powered off a USB port alone? (ie, without additional AC plug) I'm looking for a HD enclosure to use with a Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA Hard Drive (WD15EADS) that wouldn't require me to plug an AC adapter into the wall. WD claims this drive uses 40% less power -- not sure if that matters.

It will be primarily connected to a MacBook (5.1) that has 2 USB 2.0 ports, but no FireWire.

1996 Dodge Stratus transmission stuck in limp drive mode.

isopropyl — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 02:32:29 -0800

1996 Dodge Stratus transmission stuck in limp drive mode. My girlfriend bought this piece of junk and has been nothing but problems. On a recent trip a wreck less driver stopped abruptly in the middle of a 7 lane highway and forced me to stop and quickly accelerate to switch lanes to not die. Shortly after i was unable to go faster than 38-40 mph without red lining. The engine persisted to overheat but we eventually got it home. I changed the transmission filter and replaced the current fluid with ATF +4 as suggested by the web site. This didn't fix anything and after extensive research i am almost certain it is stuck in limp drive mode. Supposedly the transmission was rebuilt less than a year ago but two mechanics also gave us the go ahead on this death trap. The engine is a V-6 and I believe it has a 41TE automatic transmission. I need to fix this!

Where to stop on a road trip from Texas to Nevada?

Anonymous — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 14:33:05 -0800

Road Trip Filter: Two guys driving from Corpus Christi, Tx to Las Vegas, Nv (passing through New Mexico and Arizona). What are some absolute "must see" or "must eat" places along the road? I'm flying out with my friend to help him drive back an amazing car (Porsche GT3). We have about 1500 miles to cover and two days to do it in.

I'm looking for suggestions on great roads to drive (think smooth, wide, traffic-free), awesome places to eat, places we just must see or activities we can't pass up. Bonus points if there are any racetracks on the way we can stop at for some fun :D

Neither of us are really interested in sight seeing. To give you an idea of what we are looking for think partying on 6th st in Austin, eating anywhere Man vs Food has been, or getting to shoot assault rifles at a range (because we can't do that in cali).

Sorry for going with "anonymous" but I'd rather be safe than sorry....don't need the internet knowing who I am AND where I'll be :)

much thanks in advance!

My external hard drive wont work

sockpim — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 13:23:24 -0800

until today, my laptop wont read and open up my external hard drive. i haven't unplugged it without safely removing it or anything either. it also makes this constant tapping noise, like the sound of a tap dripping. (which it never used to make) does anyone know what i can do to make my laptop find my external or fix it? cheers

Sorry, I can't come into work today, it's drizzling and my car is stuck...

firei — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 10:48:51 -0800

Possibly going to move and work as a caretaker of a small farm-sanctuary in upstate NY. The problem? It's on a windy, steep dirt road and my car is less than good. Help! I'm considering taking a caretaker's position in upstate NY (and by upstate, I mean near Beekman, between Poughkeepsie and Pawling). Everything sounds great - a house, utilities, stipend, and I'll be able to get another job for additional income. I'm supposed to go interview next weekend.

However, I took a drive up to the area earlier this week with a friend. All was going well until we got about a mile or half a mile away - when the road suddenly turned to dirt and began to climb. The dirt seemed pretty well packed, but we haven't had rain in a few days and there were lots of rocks scattered on the road.

I drive a 1992 Volvo 240 (that has been in several accidents and isn't super reliable anyway). I believe that it will be able to make it up the road in decent weather, but things like rain and snow on a windy, hilly dirt road frighten me. (Do they even plow dirt roads?)

I want to take this position, but not if I will be stranded up on the hill when it's raining or snowing. Plus, it's a good four or five miles to the closest store or main-ish road.

I will need to drive for:
-errands
-social outings
-a job! (unless i can find a reliable "work at home" job, but I'm not counting on it - though suggestions are always welcome!)

I've thought about getting an ATV, but I don't think you can drive them on the road. I've also considered trying to park down before the road changes to dirt and walking/biking up, but that would not be so appetizing in driving rain or snow. Would new tires help? A different car? A motorcycle?

$700 is my limit, but obviously spending less in preferable.

Any and all suggestions are welcome!

DVD/CD drive feeling unwell - suggestions?

AllieTessKipp — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 21:50:54 -0800

My DVD/CD and CD drives only work a little bit. I apologize in advance as this is very long and tedious. I am trying to be thorough so that maybe someone can read this and have a suggestion or ask a question to get more information that might prompt a suggestion for me.

I have Windows XP Home and I bought a Dell. I've been very happy with this machine. I am still happy with it, just puzzled by this issue. The computer is perhaps 5-6 years old.

My computer used to happily read, rip, and burn CDs and DVDs with no problem. A few months ago, I started getting errors occasionally when burning a CD. The last couple of months it has gotten worse and now when I put a CD, over half the time it will not burn. I was using Easy CD Creator that came with my machine, and then I got DeepBurner, which is free. They both work about the same amount of the time.

Now the DVD/CD drive that reads and writes will not automatically bring up the disk I put in like it used to do. I like for that drive, when I put in an audio CD, to just start ripping the tracks. I do this mainly for audio books I get from the library. I rip them to play on my little player while I walk, and then I delete them when I'm done listening. Sometimes if I buy an audio book on 10 CDs, I prefer to rip all the CDs and then burn all those tracks, after sticking them back together with Windows Movie Maker, to ONE CD instead of 10. This makes it easier when I want to listen to my book again. This works well for me. But now I am having all this trouble with the drives.

If I open Windows Media Player (I have 11), and click on "rip" it will let me choose from the two drives and then I can rip the CD. So on some level, Windows knows the CD is there. But if I double click on the CD drive listed under "My Computer" it just opens a blank empty window. If I right click and select "autoplay" it will ask me if I want to burn a CD (the answer is no, since the CD has stuff on it...).

My other drive, which is just one for reading CDs, still seems to work okay but it also is not showing up with the name of the CD in the My Computer list like it used to.

I started to have these problems about 6 weeks ago in earnest. Recently I started a new job and had to download some software, which mostly works fine except for some occasional glitch where the sound stops working on my entire computer. I don't know if these things are related. I did not have that issue come up today, where the last 3 days it happened multiple times each day. Last night I upgraded to Windows Media Player 11, and the software for work uses that program to play the sound files (I'm a medical transcriptionist).

I have done lots of looking around on Google and such and have followed many suggestions and none have offered a solution. There was some kind of upperfilters/lowerfilters thing to delete in the registry, which I did but that did not help. I have one of those disks with the little brushes on it for cleaning DVD drives and I used that but it did not seem to help. I did notice that the picture was a bit wobbly on that DVD, which did not happen before.

I am not a person who just takes the computer apart and looks inside. When it comes to the actual hardware I don't usually mess with that stuff. If I had specific directions, my husband can probably follow those and help me out. :) But he is at a loss here.

Thanks for any help or ideas you can provide.

BitLocker and the battery NomNoms

@homer — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:55:36 -0800

How much will BitLocker eat my battery? I've been using BitLocker on my laptop since Vista came out and continue to use it with the Windows 7 RC. In my experience the drive performance with and without BitLocker is about the same. What I don't know is if power usage is the same. I've read everything I can find about BitLocker and anything related to resource usage talks about disk reads and writes and system speed impact and how little impact there is. I can guess that since there is encryption and decryption that my battery life between charges is shortened. What I'd like to know is by how much. Are there any hard numbers from Microsoft or is there any way for me to calculate the extra load and figure out power usage from that?

Swapping xbox 360 hard drives...

shmegegge — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:42:49 -0800

What is the process like for swapping hard drives in an xbox 360? With the new dashboard update, and its ability to download full retail games to your hard drive, I'm considering upgrading from my 20 gig 360 hard drive. What's the process for migrating all of my data? is it possible to move my gamertag, save files etc... to the new drive? how does one go about doing this?

When should I disclose my low sex drive to a potential partner?

Anonymous — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 06:19:08 -0800

I have a low sex drive. When should I bring it up with someone I am dating? For the first time in almost 3 years, I have felt attracted to someone. This is rare for me. I’m a heterosexual woman in my early 30s. I have never felt strong sexual attraction. The first time I had sex I was in my mid-20s.

My low sex drive greatly affected my last relationship. I found intercourse painful and didn’t even like the feeling of oral sex. My partner used to say he would “do anything” for me and when I said I wanted to watch TV and cuddle, he would get upset. I’ve been single for almost 3 years and I rarely think about sex except to worry about it.

I am very fearful of being expected to have sex with someone. I do enjoy the emotional closeness from sex, but I don’t need sex very often. When starting a sexual relationship, the other person expects the sex will continue into the relationship. Sometimes, I don’t want to have sex for months at a time. I’m not trying to hurt my partner, but I just have no desire.

I also have trouble handling someone being upset with me for saying, “no” to sex. My last boyfriend used to pout and I would instantly feel completely unloved – as though I was only good for sex and he didn’t love me unless I had sex with him. We once went on vacation in a militaristic country, where I wouldn’t have felt safe alone. He made it clear that if I didn’t have sex with him, that he would just leave me there by myself, so I consented and just covered my face, cringed and said “ow” a lot until it was over. Now, not only do I have a low sex drive, but I’m terrified of what a potential partner will do if I refuse to have sex.

So… hive mind, when do you think I should tell this new person that I am not interested in sex? I think I could handle once a week at the very most, but would highly prefer every other week. As an alternative, should I start looking for older men? How old were you when your interest in sex declined? Finally, does my ex’s behavior regarding sex sound normal? Should I expect that type of behavior from most men?

Protecting a Laptop from the Internet

yellowbkpk — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:16:03 -0800

What's the best way to get a laptop ready for a sibling's trip to college? My younger sibling is getting ready to head off to college 600 miles away at the end of the month. We just ordered a standard 'ol Dell laptop and I'm looking for the best way to get it set up so that I don't have to worry too much about remotely fixing and diagnosing problems.

My plan so far:
1. Wipe Vista off
2. Partition the drive into 3 partitions: 2 equally-sized OS partitions, one larger data partition.
3. Install Win XP SP3 with all updates.
4. Install required productivity software, video, image, browsers, etc.
5. Somehow clone C:\ to the second partition so that it can be recovered in the event of a virus.

Any other ideas? What's the best way to protect the laptop from nasties that a teenager nowadays inevitably will accumulate while surfing the web without my intervention?

What's a good piece of software that can do step 5?

Long Weekend Road Trip Leaving from Central NJ

booksherpa — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 18:14:06 -0800

Help us narrow down our choices for an extended weekend road trip leaving from central NJ. My husband and I are debating where to go away for a long weekend later this month. We'll be driving, and plan to be away Friday to Monday. We can leave on Thursday night if the first night's destination is close enough.

Things we like:
- good food, could be gourmet or brewpub or bakery or farmers market or diner, as long as it's interesting
- used bookstores, the bigger the better (we've done Book Barn in Niantic)
- funky, artsy towns with interesting shopping (if there's lots of cool handcrafted jewelry, even better!)
- minor league baseball
- scenic drives
- state fairs and other quirky local events
- craft fairs
- random wish: I'd like to find a wine store that could sell me a case of Putney Mountain Winery's Maple Apple Wine. Mmmmm, tasty!

Things we don't want for this trip:
- nightlife/nightclubs
- camping/hiking
- bed and breakfasts (we're on the heftier side, and have points to use up as well)
- the beach (both grew up at the Jersey Shore, like water views, not so much with the tourists)
- amusement parks

We adore Vermont, and had considered a Saratoga Springs, NY/Middlebury, VT trip as both are places we've only seen a little of and had earmarked to explore further. We're trying to branch out and explore new places. We'd like to keep each day's driving portion to less than 3 hours total. Monday's drive can be longer.

We've already been extensively to: Bennington, Brattleboro, Manchester, Burlington, Woodstock VT; Northampton MA; Mystic CT. He spent 4 years at college in Boston, and a large city isn't our first choice. On the list of possible destinations, besides Saratoga Springs and Middlebury are Rhinebeck NY, non-Northampton bits of central MA, Providence RI and parts of Southern Vermont. I'll happily listen to discussion of other parts of New England, as well as points south of us - we just tend to have a New England orientation for road trips.

What's left to try on a dead SeaGate before paying for data recovery?

Avenger50 — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 03:30:53 -0800

500GB internal SeaGate hard drive disappears from Windows, Linux, and the BIOS. What can I try before I pay to have the data recovered? Tested it with a few different operating systems and a few different machines, and though it always "spins up" this year-old SeaGate drive, configured with no operating system and a single partition, doesn't show up anywhere to mount or browse, like it's just not there. Besides the well-documented freezer trick, what's left to try before I send it to one of several MeFi-recommended recovery companies for $1000 or more?

Ipod Hard Drive Replacement Fail!

sully75 — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:50:24 -0800

Just put a new hard drive in my 5G Ipod. It's sort of working but sort of not. Should I return the hard drive? Is my Ipod finally toasted? I've had this Ipod for 4 years now and use it constantly. I've replaced the LCD once (cracked it) and the earphone jack 2x. Recently the earphone jack broke again, and then the hard drive seemed to fry.

I ordered a new earphone jack off ebay, and a new Toshiba hard drive (this is a 60gb Ipod). I put both in last night. Earphone jack sounds great. Hard drive initially was doing good. But I feel a lot of pulsing, angry vibrations from it now. Last night, it was really grindy and then it crashed. I was able to start it right up again. This morning it's hard to add music to...keeps saying "Can't find the file" or something like that.

So I'm wondering, is it probably true that I got a bad replacement hard drive? Should I try to return the hard drive and get a new one? Or is it something that's wrong with my Ipod? I am able to add music to it, play it, make playlists, etc the way it is. It didn't used to pulse and make noise like this with the old drive. If it's working, does that mean that the hard drive is bad? Or could something else screwed up in the Ipod be making the hard drive fail?

Replacing a broken Macbook optical drive.

You Can't Tip a Buick — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:23:37 -0800

So I've got an older Macbook with a broken optical drive (it takes heroic measures to get it to eject discs), and I'm trying to figure out the best way to replace it. This is probably a ridiculously simple question to answer, but I wanted to get the hive mind's advice first anyway. My plan is to buy an external cd/dvd drive and just write off the internal as a loss, since the guides I've found for replacing an internal optical drive indicate that it's more of a major task than I'm prepared to take on, and having it professionally replaced would cost a significant fraction of the value of the computer. Is there anything I should watch out for with this plan? Any specific drives that people recommend? I've noticed while idly browsing in stores that most all of the drives I've found say "requires Vista" or something equivalent; does this actually mean that these drives won't work with a Mac?

External burner for MacBook Pro

dearleader — Wed, 27 May 2009 07:12:19 -0800

My MacBook Pro no longer burns DVDs, and from what I can see it would cost more to fix it than to simply buy an external one. Anyone have any recommendations for a good burner?

What are the pitfalls of installing my OS on a 1TB hard drive?

Sully — Mon, 25 May 2009 22:38:43 -0800

Due to a virus corrupting my USB drivers, I've been thinking about a fresh WinXP install. But I'm thinking of getting a 1TB hard drive (my current one is 250). My question is, are there any potential pitfalls in having a HD that is so big? Other than the fact that it might fail six months in and I lose a large chunk of stuff. The reason why I want a huge HD is that I like the feeling that I don't have to worry about all the crap I might put on my desktop, or how many videogames I want to install.