How can I recover anything off this hard drive that fails low level scans at 86%? [more inside]
posted by patrad on Dec 24, 2009 - 5 answers

I have a portable usb hard drive that I use for keeping all my documents / backups on. Windows seems to love using this drive for everything, for example I am installing IE7 from windows update, and it is using the drive to hold all the temporary files during the install. Because of this the drive is always in use and I can never eject it. [more inside]
posted by Syntoad on Feb 17, 2009 - 5 answers

Windows Illiteracy Filter. Help me help my mother via long-distance to understand the difference between memory and hard disk storage, and how to access information on her Windows XP machine that will tell her how much memory she has, if there are any empty slots, what type of memory her computer requires, and how large her hard drive is, including used/available space stats. [more inside]
posted by Devils Rancher on Nov 29, 2008 - 14 answers

Hard drive issues: Frequently when I attempt to open a folder on my Windows Vista partition I will have to wait 5 seconds or so for the drive to spin up (I hear it). Is there some way I can fix my cache or otherwise set up the drive so that it doesn't need to spin up every time I access files on my root drive? [more inside]
posted by Aanidaani on Nov 22, 2008 - 3 answers

Can I get my WD external hard drive back to the way it was? [more inside]
posted by droplet on Aug 19, 2008 - 8 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 by tmcw on Jul 11, 2008 - 8 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

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

Sony VAIO SZ shutdown - startup issues. [more inside]
posted by trinarian on Jul 31, 2006 - 1 answer

Can I dual boot from an XP drive that came from older (dead) computer? [more inside]
posted by DZ-015 on Jul 10, 2006 - 3 answers

How can I access restricted files on a Windows partition? [more inside]
posted by benjh on Jun 18, 2006 - 3 answers

Windows XP crashes whenever it accesses a specific file. The problem: I don't know what file it is. What would cause such a serious error and how do I fix it? [more inside]
posted by monsta coty scott on Feb 18, 2006 - 8 answers

Is there any Windows XP utility that will tell me what program is accessing my hard drive? [more inside]
posted by crazyray on Nov 23, 2005 - 10 answers

Help me transition to Mac. I have a home computer (Windows) that just crapped out. There was a power surge or something and the Power supply and motherboard are now toast. The hard drive is OK. I have an iBook, and now I want to get a Mac Mini for home. My question is.... How do I get the files off my old (standard ATAPI) hard drive and into my iBook? Is there some sort of adapter that I can buy to plug into my USB port? What options are available?
posted by TheFeatheredMullet on Oct 4, 2005 - 10 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

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