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 on Jul 24, 2008 - 4 answers

My fantastically unstable IBM T42 (which is on it's 3rd, soon to be 4th, life) died a little while ago, no longer booting into Ubuntu. However, it loves to boot into Windows. How do I nuke both? [more inside]
posted on Jul 11, 2008 - 8 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 on Jun 17, 2008 - 9 answers

Halp! Need advice on a storage solution for a man with media! [more inside]
posted on Jun 12, 2008 - 5 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 on Jun 3, 2008 - 5 answers

SATA I or II? Hopefully very simple question about hard drives [more inside]
posted on May 20, 2008 - 6 answers

What's the best backup solution for (Ubuntu) Linux? I need a backup as complete as possible of a home directory of ~10+ GB, nightly, etc. I have two large external USB 2.0 drives for the purpose... [more inside]
posted on May 18, 2008 - 11 answers

SATA Hard disk , suddendly not spinning up. No click of death, no sign of expected failure. [more inside]
posted on Apr 29, 2008 - 12 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 on Apr 27, 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 on Apr 27, 2008 - 14 answers

What kind of external hard drive should I buy? [more inside]
posted on Apr 20, 2008 - 27 answers

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

I went to a community college and the computers they had were able to reimage them self each time you rebooted the computer. You could trash the whole OS and render it useless but when you turned it off and back on it was in an OOB state. Where can I find something like this? It would be perfect for work.
posted on Apr 9, 2008 - 8 answers

Why can I see the file structure of an external Hard Drive, but not be able to read or copy any of the actual files? A friend of mine's computer crashed on him recently. He was able to boot up, but when the system tried to start Windows, he got a message saying that a certain necessary file was missing. He gave me the Hard Drive in an attempt to pull his important files off of it so he could reformat the drive and start anew. It is an SATA 3.5" drive for a desktop computer. I have attached it to my Windows XP SP2 laptop via a USB 2.0 to SATA cable. My computer recognizes the two partitions on the drive and mounts them accordingly. I can see the files on the drive. However, when I try to read or copy a file from the drive, I get a "Cannot Find the Specified File." error. What do I do?
posted on Apr 7, 2008 - 10 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 on Mar 14, 2008 - 8 answers

Ahhh! My Mac crapped out! Can anyone recommend a good data recovery company that is dependable but won't charge me an arm and a leg to retrieve my files? I really hope so. I have a lot of photos and files that I would be SO distraught over losing. MY MORALE IS IN YOUR HANDS!!! [more inside]
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - 13 answers

How long will it take to do a 7 pass US DoD 5220 Compliant data wipe on a 120 GB Hard Drive? [more inside]
posted on Feb 6, 2008 - 7 answers

Old Computer Filter: I was cleaning out a few boxes the other day from my closet and found my ST-251-1 MFM drive that I had in my first IBM based PC. It had a whopping 40MB. Even though I know it may not boot up after all this time, I still can't help but wonder if it will and would love a chance to see a snapshot of what I was doing computer-wise in 1986. Does anyone in the Hivemind know if there is an adapter/card/whatever to plug an old MFM drive into IDE or USB?
posted on Feb 1, 2008 - 13 answers

NoIWillNotFixYourComputerFilter: I've got a 500 gig that won't show up in Windows XP. Help! [more inside]
posted on Jan 29, 2008 - 7 answers

short history: I started to get blue screens on my outdated laptop so I decided to just buy a new one. My new laptop came, I installed a fresh version of xp, rebooted, and plugged my old external in. I got the "Installing drivers for you new hardware" bubble in the task bar then after opening the external drive none of my files were there, but there was the four following: clean (Windows nt command script) install (folder ) windows (folder.. with a windows installation I didn't do!) $$ rename (text document) 230 gigs gone :( The only thing I can think of is the initial blue screens on my OLD laptop were caused by a virus that had infected my external drive? This had all my school notes, notes on books I've read, photos, backups of my old laptops partitions, all that kind of stuff from the past 3 years. I'm feeling kinda, sick, pissed off, and am wondering what the crap could have happened? Any help on this one would be VERY appreciated.
posted on Jan 11, 2008 - 17 answers

Who is the woman in this red band Walk Hard clip? She's wearing blue and says "Come on Dewey, join the party" about 17 seconds in. IMDB didn't turn up anything.
posted on Dec 21, 2007 - 3 answers

I have an external hard drive on my Christmas list. I'd like to make the shopping easy on them by giving specific choices. I've done some searching (here and via Gooooogle) but I need that extra oomph from the genius that is the hive mind. [more inside]
posted on Dec 9, 2007 - 12 answers

I am tired of the P4 Intellistation that picked out of the trash. For some reason all my hard disks keep breaking. I am really tired of having to constantly open up my computer and buying new disks. I'm in the market for a cheap, small Linux PC that can stream HD content over the network. Is there such a thing? Kind of like a Mac mini but not so expensive or powerful. [more inside]
posted on Dec 5, 2007 - 13 answers

Syncing up 2 USB Hdd on a Mac and Font converting software (PC to Mac) [more inside]
posted on Nov 27, 2007 - 4 answers

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

My LaCie 500 GB external hard drive is being uncooperative today - its main partition was deleted somehow. I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary, just plugged it in and Windows saw it as a blank disk. Although I see the lost partition in TestDisk, repeated attempts to recover it have proved to be fruitless. What should I do now? [more inside]
posted on Nov 20, 2007 - 7 answers

Can I back up / clone my Mac HD to an external HD then swap the Main and external drives? [more inside]
posted on Nov 12, 2007 - 15 answers

Is Firefox churning my Powerbook? When I have more than a few tabs open, I hear (and see- on my little menubar app) heavy hard drive activity. It feels like it gets stuck in some kind of endless swap and the performance of the machine seems to suffer. More importantly, the noise drives me nuts. I suspect Firefox memory management issues. I know Firefox has a bad rep in this dept. Suggestions? Tweeks? Opera?
posted on Nov 6, 2007 - 18 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 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 on Oct 29, 2007 - 7 answers

When using an external hard-drive with a Mac, is a speed advantage gained by using a drive formatted with HFS+ (over FAT32/etc.)? And while I'm asking... [more inside]
posted on Oct 29, 2007 - 11 answers

Here is the deal. I have a client who brought in a hard drive with a "smoked" circuit board. He is filing a claim on his insurance for it AND the data that was on it. Fine. BUT...he wants us to "prove" that the circuit board failure happened as a result of a power surge and NOT as a natural failure of the board. I don't believe that is possible at this point. I am a computer tech, so I am looking for input from attorneys, electricians, and anyone else who can proffer and opinion. Thanks in advance!
posted on Oct 15, 2007 - 14 answers

Disk cleanup/management tool, with flagging, a la Tivo/MCE. [more inside]
posted on Oct 3, 2007 - 0 answers

I have a Mac laptop, which replaced my PC which I used for many years.....I recently found out that there is some files and such on my PC that I need to take of my computer and store onto my new external hard drive....Yes, I should of did this before hand.... [more inside]
posted on Sep 20, 2007 - 12 answers

How long can a hard drive store data ? [more inside]
posted on Sep 7, 2007 - 11 answers

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

Can anyone suggest an affordable, stable external hard drive for archiving purposes? [more inside]
posted on Jul 19, 2007 - 21 answers

Homemade DVD server- Whats the best/easiest/cheapest way? [more inside]
posted on Jul 12, 2007 - 17 answers

What is the best wireless external hard drive and connection method? I intend this hard drive to be my music library for iTunes. I am trying to free up memory but still want iTunes to function like it does when the music is on the computer's hard drive. Is this possible? I have a macbook pro intel duo.
posted on Jul 11, 2007 - 14 answers

3rd TB hard drive failure in 6 weeks. Am I doing something wrong? [more inside]
posted on Jun 21, 2007 - 15 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 on Jun 18, 2007 - 2 answers

Hard drive data recovery: Possible to get a reasonable price for it? [more inside]
posted on Jun 11, 2007 - 14 answers

External Hard drive USB device not recognized, how do I fix? [more inside]
posted on May 26, 2007 - 9 answers

I am trying to wipe my hard drive... [more inside]
posted on May 5, 2007 - 18 answers

External hard drive failure: halp! [more inside]
posted on Apr 22, 2007 - 5 answers

HardDriveFilter: I'm getting some weird behaviour from my external drive. Help! And I don't mean it's wearing funny stockings and a mask! [more inside]
posted on Apr 5, 2007 - 7 answers

Is there a program out there that will help me organise my hard drives? [more inside]
posted on Mar 9, 2007 - 8 answers

I need a new laptop harddrive. Can I use any that is physically the same size, or must I stick with HP? [more inside]
posted on Mar 2, 2007 - 9 answers

My computer recently crapped out and I desperately need to get back the files on my hard drive. I bought a HD enclosure which did not help me out. I tried to change the permission on the files, but it kept telling me that I need to format everything. Is there any other way I could get my files back? (The computer is completely done, but the hard drive is alive.) [more inside]
posted on Feb 28, 2007 - 14 answers

Main hard drive is about to die...New hard drive ready... Is there some way to copy drivers for video card, sound card, printer, etc, from the current OS hard drive to my external hard drive and then put them on my new hard drive with the newly installed windows? [more inside]
posted on Feb 5, 2007 - 15 answers