What are these rails which snap into the side of a hard drive and allow it to slide into a bay called? And also, where can I get some more? [more inside]
posted by billybunny on Dec 7, 2009 - 11 answers

Can I remove a partition and use my hard disk as normal? Rather long explanation... [more inside]
posted by R a c h e l on Dec 1, 2009 - 8 answers

Is my hard drive dead? Can I save it, at least long enough to back it up? [more inside]
posted by Dee Xtrovert on Dec 1, 2009 - 19 answers

Mystery noises and BSOD on my newish Acer Aspire One netbook. Am I screwed? [more inside]
posted by tealsocks on Nov 18, 2009 - 2 answers

My hard drive reads data like clockwork. Really! What's going on here? [more inside]
posted by Lord Fancy Pants on Oct 23, 2009 - 25 answers

Hard drive(I think) corrupted - I'm drowning in information. Help? [more inside]
posted by R a c h e l on Oct 12, 2009 - 11 answers

Yesterday, my portable hard drive got knocked over while it was being read from and began making a vicious gurgle. My husband unplugged it before I could try to disconnect it. When I turned it back on, it's still sounds terrible. [more inside]
posted by droomoord on Sep 11, 2009 - 19 answers

Computer froze completely during a game, all subsequent downloads of various installer files were corrupt. BSODs galore. Now, when I turn on my computer, no video input is detected whatsoever. Next step? [more inside]
posted by TimeTravelSpeed on Jul 13, 2009 - 19 answers

I'm in the market for a new laptop. Should I get a PC or Mac? What specs are important for me to look at when making a decision? [more inside]
posted by reenum on Jun 2, 2009 - 31 answers

My computer is having problems with recognizing capacity of hard drives or recognizing the drives at all. [more inside]
posted by reenum on May 4, 2009 - 5 answers

I need to move several gigs of music files from one external hard drive to another. But, there are a few problems... [more inside]
posted by reenum on Apr 23, 2009 - 16 answers

Is my iBook G4 dying? [more inside]
posted by Brachiosaurus on Apr 2, 2009 - 7 answers

External hard drive fell off table, have I lost all my data? [more inside]
posted by Nickel on Mar 20, 2009 - 8 answers

Bad drive... but I can read files from it! [more inside]
posted by IAmBroom on Mar 5, 2009 - 9 answers

Help a poor fool fix his computer. New motherboard has only one IDE slot. Have two old hard drives and two old CD drives. What to do? [more inside]
posted by kurtroehl on Feb 2, 2009 - 11 answers

How can I change the generic name "USB Mass Storage Device" in my Vista system tray "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog? [more inside]
posted by msbrauer on Dec 30, 2008 - 6 answers

Computer Diagnostic Help and Interpretation, Please: My son inherited an 8-year-old Dell Dimension L933r from his grandpa. It had been upgraded to Windows XP and had an additional hard drive installed. It was working smoothly for us for almost a year, but recently it went into an infinite reboot loop (which we couldn't resolve ourselves) and we took it to an independent computer repair guy (details and questions inside). [more inside]
posted by amyms on Dec 13, 2008 - 16 answers

Running XP on my computer, off of someone else's internal hard drive [more inside]
posted by senterstyle on Dec 3, 2008 - 10 answers

Please help me figure out whether or not to format an unformatted hard drive that still has data I need on it. [more inside]
posted by mjklin on Nov 24, 2008 - 7 answers

Why does my Lenovo ThinkPad T60 running Windows XP 60 Gig HD show 12.5 Gig capacity? Screenshot of the weirdness: http://screencast.com/t/5wUUE5BORI
posted by zalary on Oct 26, 2008 - 8 answers

My external hard drive seems to have stopped working. Is there any way to get my data off of it and onto another drive? [more inside]
posted by reenum on Oct 14, 2008 - 6 answers

Tell me about Network Attached Storage ( NAS )? In particular what current manufactuers should I avoid for a typical 1 terabyte (or greater) RAID array? I'm also interested in general information and pitfalls for NAS devices and implementations. [more inside]
posted by loquacious on Aug 10, 2008 - 13 answers

Data Backup Filter: I have about 6TB (yes TB, not GB) of data. I need to back it up BEFORE it crashes. I also need a good way to share it on the network. How can I do this? Details within... [more inside]
posted by arniec on Jul 8, 2008 - 28 answers

I am upgrading my PC and I have questions regarding transferring my data. This is probably a total newbie question but I can't seem to find a straight answer anywhere. [more inside]
posted by Zaximus on Jul 1, 2008 - 8 answers

I am having a very unusual problem with my hard drive and CANNOT recover any data from it after trying numerous methods. Please help me with your technical expertise. [more inside]
posted by deafmute on Jun 29, 2008 - 7 answers

Question about laptop hard drives: "Plug-in module"? [more inside]
posted by dondiego87 on May 12, 2008 - 5 answers

Why would my hard drive show up in the BIOS, but not in Windows? [more inside]
posted by DulcineaX on May 7, 2008 - 10 answers

Can an ATA-7 hard drive be used as a replacement for an ATA-6 hard drive? [more inside]
posted by stopgap on Apr 17, 2008 - 5 answers

What the blazes is making my hard drive work so hard? [more inside]
posted by Zinger on Mar 6, 2008 - 19 answers

Help me figure out how to salvage my hard drive! [more inside]
posted by agent99 on Dec 10, 2007 - 7 answers

Is Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 really a good full hard drive backup solution? [more inside]
posted by joshrholloway on Oct 24, 2007 - 4 answers

if my computer crashes will I lose my data on my second internal harddrive like I would on my first? [more inside]
posted by Rustbeard on Oct 14, 2007 - 14 answers

Is my USB hard drive recoverable? Due to some bad wiring on my part, one of my USB ports rendered my external hard drive useless. [more inside]
posted by adverb on Sep 14, 2007 - 6 answers

What is the easiest way to make a bit-perfect copy of a potentially failing laptop hard drive? The copy target would be a new 2.5" drive that I'd then install in the same laptop. [more inside]
posted by killdevil on Aug 11, 2007 - 37 answers

Shipping hard drives - need good robust packaging... [more inside]
posted by fluffycreature on Aug 7, 2007 - 4 answers

I was happily surfing when suddenly my computer died. The LED light on the front was still on, monitor still on, modem still connected, but the screen was black, and remained black after rebooting. Is this a hard drive failure or something else? [more inside]
posted by happyturtle on Aug 3, 2007 - 18 answers

Why is a hard drive preventing my computer from turning on? [more inside]
posted by JulianDay on Jun 11, 2007 - 4 answers

Am I killing my laptop by holding it sideways (like a book)? [more inside]
posted by Rock Steady on May 25, 2007 - 12 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 by goodnewsfortheinsane on Mar 4, 2007 - 25 answers

Shopping for a cheap used laptop: What are the minimum specs I should be looking for with respect to CPU, RAM, HD? I'm planning to use WinXP (maybe I'll settle for 2K), Open Office, and FireFox (including some AJAX-heavy web sites such as gmail, Google Docs, del.icio.us), with a wifi card. And not much else. I want to avoid "I'm always waiting for this stupid slow computer!" but not spend much more than the minimum needed to avoid that.
posted by Leonard of Vince on Dec 18, 2006 - 24 answers

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

Why won't "Instant Wireless Compact USB Adapter Configuration Utility" uninstall, and why does it seem to take up 14.2GB of my hard drive? [more inside]
posted by billtron on Nov 8, 2006 - 6 answers

So it looks like my iMac G5 hard drive died some time this afternoon while the computer was on and I was not in front of it. Great! I'm still covered by warranty, so there's that. BUT. When the hard drive died... I, err, may have been in the process of downloading porn through BitTorrent. (Nothing illegal, but y'know, it's porn.) Obviously I have to bring this computer in for repair, and will probably have to give the HD to some kind of data-recovery service, and so when some techno-wizard hopefully gets things going again, there that porn file will be, sitting right out on my desktop. This happens all the time, right? Are they going to be scandalized? (I am in NYC, so my guess is no, but...) What level of humiliation or other problems am I looking at here? [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Jul 23, 2006 - 16 answers

Debian won't find my hard drive! Please help! I have details so there's [more inside]
posted by tdreyer1 on Jul 12, 2006 - 14 answers

My hard drive recently started sparking, then smoking and burning. I quickly turned off the computer, but now I need to recover my data. I can see the spot on the hard drive that is black, so I know where the problem is. Is it safe for me to spend thirty minutes or so backing data off of this damaged drive? Alternatively, is it possible to repair the drive, at least enough to backup my data? Or have I lost everything? [more inside]
posted by gd779 on May 31, 2006 - 35 answers

Where shall I shove a new HD? [more inside]
posted by ROU_Xenophobe on May 16, 2006 - 13 answers

DataRecoveryFilter : Computer died. Internal hard drive saved and put in an external usb enclosure (Maxtor). Tried to read user data (Documents and settings\user): Access denied. Windows Xp. Don't have a computer in which I can put the saved harddrive (and boot from). What can I do? [more inside]
posted by aroberge on Jan 4, 2006 - 22 answers

I'm hoping to recover some corrupted files that (I think) got messed up during a transfer to a Firewire drive. Could you be a lamb and step inside? [more inside]
posted by Hankins on Aug 30, 2005 - 0 answers

New motherboard cannot detect harddrive and it's driving me nuts. Let's solve this crazy mystery together >.< [more inside]
posted by EvilKenji on Aug 16, 2005 - 14 answers

My wife's computer died (autopsy pending). I took her hard drive out, put it in an Adaptec external enclosure, and hooked it to my machine via USB. It runs fine and I can see the directory tree, but it won't let me access the important stuff under her profile in Documents and Settings -- just says "Access Denied." Is there any way around this? [more inside]
posted by words1 on Jul 13, 2005 - 11 answers