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)
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posted by peewinkle
on Dec 4, 2008 -
10 answers
I love this song by Dolly, but what exactly is a "Hard Candy Christmas"?
posted by Ugh
on Dec 4, 2008 -
9 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.
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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?
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posted by Aanidaani
on Nov 22, 2008 -
3 answers
Mac, Leopard, La Cie external hard disk drive spins but does not mount. What's my best option for getting data off this drive?
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posted by gen
on Nov 2, 2008 -
21 answers
What are all the things I should do to prepare an old iBook of mine before I sell it to another person (who I don't know and isn't related to me)?
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posted by micawber
on Oct 27, 2008 -
3 answers
Can I temporarily swap out the controller board on my seagate hard drive without voiding the warranty?
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posted by grandsham
on Oct 23, 2008 -
5 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
Older Apple Hardware Filter: My Google-fu has failed me. Anyone have some resources on/experience with replacing Apple-branded SATA drives in a G5 XServe with non-Apple-branded ones?
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posted by liquado
on Sep 9, 2008 -
9 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?
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posted by LongDrive
on Sep 2, 2008 -
5 answers
MacFilter: Upgraded my hard drive using SuperDuper to clone, but Time Machine backed up the entire drive after the swap. How to prevent this?
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posted by kenliu
on Aug 30, 2008 -
5 answers
Replacing my laptop's hard drive. I think I've almost got it but have some questions about the cloning process.
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posted by nomad73
on Aug 29, 2008 -
8 answers
My external hard drive just crashed so can anyone suggest a Portland, OR, based data recovery service?
posted by tangyraspberry
on Aug 25, 2008 -
9 answers
My Seagate FreeAgent external HD may have been damaged in a move. Making clicking noises and not being detected by my computer.
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posted by Mr_Crazyhorse
on Aug 19, 2008 -
9 answers
Great MeFites, I come bearing but a humble request. I bought a MacBook Pro about six months before Leopard was released. When it finally came out, I installed it on a partition on an external drive, which I would boot from (because OS X is awesome like that, amirite?) so I could test out all my apps. Now I'm ready to commit to Leopard full-time - what's the best way to go about transplanting my Leopard partition?
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posted by indiewizard
on Aug 18, 2008 -
6 answers
Is there a desktop search solution that will index my external hard drives? So far I have had no luck with Google Desktop search.
posted by greenknightwatch
on Aug 16, 2008 -
9 answers
Can you tell me if this is a good harddrive and a good deal? Or even better, how would you go about finding out if its good? Thanks.
From dealnews:
Seagate 1TB Serial ATA 3.0Gbps Internal Hard Drive + $8 s&h
ZipZoomfly.com cut its price on the Seagate 1TB Serial ATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive, model no. ST31000340AS, to $149.99. With about $8 for shipping, that's a $10 drop since last week and the lowest total price we've seen for this drive. This drive features a 32MB cache (more than most) and runs at 7200 rpm.
posted by irie1972
on Jul 30, 2008 -
8 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?
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posted by s1gn1fy
on Jul 24, 2008 -
5 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?
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posted by tmcw
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.
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posted by captainscared
on Jun 17, 2008 -
9 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?
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posted by djgh
on Jun 3, 2008 -
5 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...
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posted by tmcw
on May 18, 2008 -
11 answers
SATA Hard disk , suddendly not spinning up. No click of death, no sign of expected failure.
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posted by elpapacito
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.
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posted by gjc
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 by citybuddha
on Apr 27, 2008 -
14 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 by KI6ILS
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 by soy_renfield
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?
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posted by tmcw
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!!!
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posted by lukeklein
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?
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posted by meta.mark
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 by damiano99
on Feb 1, 2008 -
13 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 by debu
on Jan 11, 2008 -
17 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.
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posted by Epsilon-minus semi moron
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.
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posted by Napierzaza
on Dec 5, 2007 -
13 answers
Is there such a thing as a hard drive enclosure that supports
both SATA 2.5in and 3.5in drives?
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posted by advil
on Nov 21, 2007 -
5 answers
