For those of you who work in computer labs, what is your policy for dealing with flash drives that have been forgotten by a student? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Nov 10, 2009 - 26 answers

EastCoastFilter: Is your lovely town a best-kept secret? Looking for a magical sort of place to visit in or near DC, Virginia, or Maryland, something with the sort of historic downtown/art scene/subtle eccentricity vibe of Savannah, Ga. or Charlottesville, Va. [more inside]
posted by actionPetential on Oct 1, 2009 - 25 answers

So I was trying to install a slave drive into an old Gateway box and now it won't see the OS. Help! (Long, confusing story ensues) [more inside]
posted by peewinkle on Dec 4, 2008 - 10 answers

my dad has a dell laptop and has recently replaced the hard drive, how would he retrieve info(e.g. pix) off of the old hard drive and onto some other type of storage device, flash card or such. are there places near burlington, WA that can do this?
posted by docmccoy on Sep 21, 2008 - 8 answers

Computer (XP SP2) won't recognize any usb drives, but will recognize my usb mouse? [more inside]
posted by imposster on Sep 19, 2008 - 3 answers

I have a Fantom Drive 500GB 7200RPM USB 2.0 External Hard Drive - MDU500. The connection for the power cable came loose from the board and nothing I tried could get it to power up. I removed the drives and connected them to a Linux box running Ubuntu 8.04. It saw the two drives as one and even knew the drive name I'd given it. However I cannot get it to mount. The error message in Linux suggests trying SoftRAID or dmraid. Dmraid didn't work. (At least I couldn't get it to.) The message also suggested trying to access the drives in Windows. Windows XP will also see the drive as one unit but wants to format the drive. Can someone provide me some advice or direction in how I might get this drive to a state where I can move my data onto another drive? [more inside]
posted by s1gn1fy on Jul 24, 2008 - 5 answers

Can I safely remove my USB drive from a Windows computer without stopping it? [more inside]
posted by teaperson on Jul 11, 2008 - 14 answers

I am looking to buy 2 1T drives. I'm doing some final cut work but mostly for media storage. I'm looking at the Western Digital 1 TB My Book Premium Edition II Triple Interface ($236) and the G-Tech Q drive which retail at $445. That's almost twice the price of the western digital. [more inside]
posted by captainscared on Jun 17, 2008 - 9 answers

I am looking for a large volume external hard drive. 1tb or more. I hear that drives of that size are not yet reliable. I will be digitizing my music collection and want to store it on a reliable drive. Any recommendations or experiences? Also how can I take care of this drive so it will last forever or almost forever?
posted by citybuddha on Apr 27, 2008 - 14 answers

Help me make sense of my wonky RAID-5 failure. [more inside]
posted by Jezztek on Apr 20, 2008 - 5 answers

I'm trying to get all the pertinent documents off of a Gateway 2000 PC running Windows 98 on to a new Dell running Vista Home Premium. The CD drive on the Gateway doesn't work, it has a floppy drive, and the CAT5 cable doesn't fit in the telephone only jacks. I tried to use my USB stick, but it can't find the drivers as it's not connected to the internet. The new computer has no floppy drive, so I can't just put the driver on a floppy. What do you recommend for the lowest cost and easiest solution? [more inside]
posted by alcopop on Mar 16, 2008 - 26 answers

What is the best way to create an expandable storage array with eight 500GB SATA drives? [more inside]
posted by cgomez on Mar 8, 2008 - 11 answers

Is there some kind of trick to using these big card reader slots on the front of my PC? [more inside]
posted by CXImran on Dec 20, 2007 - 8 answers

Hard Drive Filter: Someone explain to me how SATA and AHCI work. [more inside]
posted by lou on Aug 28, 2007 - 10 answers

Looking for great scenic and historic drives in England, the wind whipping my hair as I wind through cottages and countryside. Thus far, The guidebooks and my google-fu are failing me. [more inside]
posted by MasonDixon on Jul 30, 2007 - 11 answers

my brother had a corrupt system file that causes windows XP media center ed. to not boot up. while in the recovery console, he accidentally clicked an option to restore the computer to factory settings. Is it possible to recover the data he lost?
posted by FireStyle on Jun 18, 2007 - 2 answers

This may be an easy one (at least I hope so - and no, it hasn't been easy for me). Is there a site, or more than one site, that is somewhat devoted to compatibilities in hardware? I'm looking at notebook cdrw/dvd-rom (slim) drives and it would be nice to know which models will - ostensibly, anyway - work with which laptops. Help if you can. Thanks.
posted by zephyrbill on Mar 29, 2007 - 5 answers

Need more hard drive space... am about to buy a 500 or 600 gb external (LaCie) drive and mentioned it to a friend and she said not to go higher than a 320 due to overheating problems. Experienced MeFites, what do you say? Also, being a Firewire person, I have a dumb USB 2.0 question: can they be chained together? Any other drive anecdotes that might be useful in my purchase are appreciated. I'm on a Mac. [more inside]
posted by dobbs on Mar 1, 2007 - 23 answers

I'm trying to get a DVD-+RW drive working with Windows 98 (first editon). While doing this, I noticed some issues this computer is having with other drives too. [more inside]
posted by Nikolai on Sep 11, 2006 - 7 answers

COMBINING Hard Drives. Roommate has fast, great computer. I have slow, antiquated one with (among other upgraded parts I've procured) a fast new hard drive (personally installed). Want to install my current drive in her current machine so that all roommates can use one system and still keep my files/ preferences. [more inside]
posted by mireille on Aug 28, 2006 - 20 answers

Are there any companies out there that will transfer files from obsolete removable media? [more inside]
posted by ssmith on Jul 14, 2006 - 5 answers

Can raided firewire hard drives from one mac be attached to another mac? In other words....here's my situation. I currently have a mac mini that I use as a backup fileserver. I have 2 250gb hard drives attached to this mac mini. Although it works fine and I'm not really looking to upgrade, the 256 mbs of original ram are not enough to run any programs on it very efficiently (as far as time is concerned). [more inside]
posted by eatcake on Jun 5, 2006 - 3 answers

Instead of getting a four-bay Firewire enclosure, could I just get a cheap PC case and use that to build a RAID? [more inside]
posted by ImJustRick on May 3, 2006 - 18 answers

Where has my primary hard drive gone? My primary hard drive disappeared after I installed a new CD-ROM drive! It seems my CMOS doesn’t see my main drive! Help! [more inside]
posted by zaelic on Mar 22, 2006 - 23 answers

Can I add more than just four IDE devices to my PC? [more inside]
posted by twine42 on Sep 11, 2005 - 11 answers

Where can I get customized USB thumb drives for a good price? [more inside]
posted by jeremias on Aug 1, 2005 - 5 answers

I just added a new DVD-Rom drive on my PC. Popped in a DVD film and it can play, but the images are jumpy, halting, and not really viewable. [more inside]
posted by zaelic on Mar 4, 2005 - 14 answers

Let's say you had a wooden box you wanted to turn into a PC case. Where would you buy a metal 5.25" bay assembly? I'm talking about a U-shaped piece of flat metal that will screw onto the wood box wherein a couple of drives can be mounted. There's just way too much noise in Google on this one. Thanks!
posted by scarabic on Nov 19, 2004 - 7 answers

I need a search tool replacement for the built-in windows XP search, or suggestions for it. I have a lot of files on different drives in different directories (C:\AA F:\BB ...) and I when I want to find a specific file that I know is in one of those directories, I have to select and search each directory one at a time. (searching all folders on all drives would take too long.) Anyway to make this quicker?
posted by Iax on Oct 18, 2004 - 7 answers

Do CD-RW drives have a limited number of burns? A couple of computer science majors at my old school told me this and I didn't really beleive it. However, my HP CD-RW has stopped writing discs (but still reads fine). I've had it since the summer of 2000 but granted it's 4 years old, I haven't really pushed it hard. I use it to read CD-ROMS and play music CDs occasionally, and have probably burned a couple-dozen music CDs. Is it kaput, in need of cleaning, or what?
posted by tomorama on Mar 13, 2004 - 13 answers