Inconsistent information about bad sectors on a hard drive -- what's going on, and what should I do? [more inside]
posted on May 20, 2008 - 14 answers

I have an external firewire hard disk sitting on top on a powered monitor speaker on my desk here. Is this a terrible idea? Will it shorten the life of the drive? What's a safe distance? [more inside]
posted on May 9, 2008 - 8 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

Are there any repositories of historical prices for hard drives? [more inside]
posted on Apr 13, 2008 - 5 answers

How to recover from sync-ing a RAID 1 the wrong way? [more inside]
posted on Feb 6, 2008 - 11 answers

I still have hope for my dead HDD. How do I bring it back to life? [more inside]
posted on Feb 5, 2008 - 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

How can I recover a file from an accidentally quick-formated laptop? [more inside]
posted on Jul 10, 2007 - 8 answers

One of the disks in my hardware RAID 0 system drive array is failing, but it's still booting for the moment. Is there any tool I can use to clone just the failing physical disk to another identical one? [more inside]
posted on Jul 6, 2007 - 9 answers

Please help me save my master's thesis... [more inside]
posted on May 17, 2007 - 7 answers

I want to install a bigger hard drive to my laptop. How do I clone the current hard drive to the new one so I don't have to reinstall windows on the new disk? [more inside]
posted on May 9, 2007 - 10 answers

Are there any utilities for windows that continuously read/write to a hard disk? [more inside]
posted on Mar 28, 2007 - 15 answers

So it's come to this - I see no other option than to ask a "help me fix my PC" question. After some troubleshooting the STOP errors seem to have been resolved, XP now boots successfully but is excruciating slow to the point of being unusable. Details and specs below the fold. [more inside]
posted on Mar 4, 2007 - 25 answers

Is it possible to use a USB hard disc enclosure with a CD-R/RW? [more inside]
posted on Feb 8, 2007 - 11 answers

How does Windows XP label hard disks? [more inside]
posted on Dec 14, 2006 - 4 answers

I need a good 500GB backup device for a Mac - any recommendations? [more inside]
posted on Dec 10, 2006 - 14 answers

Could turning on hard drive compression actually speed up access on my laptop? [more inside]
posted on Nov 25, 2006 - 10 answers

Hello! I have a backup strategy, which I think is okay but I would like some advice on whether my use of the external hdd is sensible. A little [more inside]
posted on Oct 22, 2006 - 5 answers

How can I get my dad's computer's HDD to stop thinking constantly? [more inside]
posted on Oct 8, 2006 - 14 answers

OK, let's say I'd like to download this thing, but it's a 56 GB thing (well, it's a bunch of things, let's say, for educational purposes only, .par and .rar files). My hard disk is only 30 GB (about 11 GB of currently free space). But: I have a 250GB external drive (firewire) that I sometimes use to store stuff. Can I download the big file (it'll take, I guess, an entire day) straight on the external drive? Or is my Mac (G4) going to blow up for some reason? thanks!!!
posted on Sep 6, 2006 - 23 answers

When my hard drive started clicking, I backed it up. What now? [more inside]
posted on Sep 2, 2006 - 5 answers

How can I watch what is being written to my hard-drive? [more inside]
posted on May 31, 2006 - 4 answers

My USB2 hard drive will only stay mounted if I keep accessing it. If I don't, within 5 hours or fewer, I can't access files on the drive or even do a directory listing. I can then unmount the HD, power cycle it, and it will mount again as if nothing had happened. If I keep accessing the disk, say by continuously playing an MP3 mix on it, the disk acts completely normal: uptime now (with MP3s playing) is something like 20 hours without the shadow of a problem. [more inside]
posted on Apr 18, 2006 - 12 answers

i lost a partition in a reformat, but the data is still on my harddrive. i want to get the data off. i have r-studio, but not enough disk space on the existing partition to put the other data on it, and i thought i shouldn't create a new partition to put the data on, as that could mess up remaining data. i don't have an external harddrive. is there any way i can safely get the data off? thanks! [more inside]
posted on Apr 7, 2006 - 7 answers

I just got a new 250GB SATA hard drive and a SATA to USB 2.0 enclosure to put it in. When I plug everything in & hook it to my iBook, I get the following error: "You have inserted a disk containing no volumes that Mac OS X can read. To continue with the disk inserted, click Ignore" (3 options: "Initialize...", "Ignore" or "Eject"). How do I get it to work? [more inside]
posted on Apr 7, 2006 - 8 answers

Can our Mac be killing any hard disk we put in it? [more inside]
posted on Feb 21, 2006 - 10 answers

How do I best clone a hard disk with bad sectors, when the PC spontaneously reboots upon hitting said bad sectors? [more inside]
posted on Oct 4, 2005 - 7 answers

How can I set up my dual boot system with Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux? [more inside]
posted on Sep 29, 2005 - 6 answers

How to recover data from an initialized drive in Windows Server NT? [more inside]
posted on Aug 11, 2005 - 10 answers

I have a P-3 Dell desktop with Win98 that is a few years old and has been buggy of late, even with all the virus and adware scans I can do on it. I also have a laptop with XP and the XP install disks (I have reinstalled XP on this one). I feel like it's time to start fresh with the desktop, so my question is two-pronged: 1. Would it be easier to just buy a new hard drive (since a 20 gig one is relatively cheap) than to reformat the existing one and reinstall everything? 2. Would you reinstall Win98 or go with XP (assuming that it WOULD install on this box and I don't know any reason why it would not)?
posted on May 23, 2005 - 15 answers

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

My new Powerbook's harddrive is full (93 GB) so I tossed many huge DVD files. Now I can't empty the trash. How do I force it to empty the trash?
posted on Mar 30, 2005 - 8 answers

I purchased a 160GB external LaCie USB 2.0 drive last month from CompUSA, and today it quit working. I have an iMac G5 running OS X 10.3.8, which told me the drive could not be recognized, and whenever I turn on the drive, it gives me a pulsating screeching sound as it tries to access itself. I called LaCie, who says its a hard drisk mechanism failure (read: "our shit crashed and lost your data") and will repair the drive, but everything on it is lost unless I recover it beforehand somehow. DriveSavers is going to cost me some $2,000 or so which is outrageous, considering I'm a college student, and the drive was investment enough itself. It has some 40GB of music, and almost 100GB of video -- I'm looking for a service that can recover my data cheaply, and without voiding LaCie's warranty would be a plus. Does anyone know of any alternate solutions, have you heard of this happening to someone else or has it happened to you? WTF?
posted on Feb 28, 2005 - 11 answers

Does anyone know how to erase the master boot record from within Windows XP? [you're gonna love this...]
posted on Jan 17, 2004 - 10 answers