There are currently 4 File Browsers open on my desktop, all displaying either the contents of my external hard drive or the folder where it's mounted (/media/). I didn't open them—they just showed up. This morning when I woke up there was 40+ File Browser windows open of the same. Another window just opened; it seems to occur at random intervals. I'm running Ubuntu Linux 8.10, wtf is causing this? [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Apr 2, 2009 - 11 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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