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 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 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 on Jun 29, 2008 - 7 answers
Question about laptop hard drives: "Plug-in module"? [more inside]
posted on May 12, 2008 - 5 answers
Why would my hard drive show up in the BIOS, but not in Windows? [more inside]
posted 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 on Apr 17, 2008 - 5 answers
What the blazes is making my hard drive work so hard? [more inside]
posted on Mar 6, 2008 - 19 answers
Help me figure out how to salvage my hard drive! [more inside]
posted 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 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 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 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 on Aug 11, 2007 - 37 answers
Shipping hard drives - need good robust packaging... [more inside]
posted 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 on Aug 3, 2007 - 18 answers
Why is a hard drive preventing my computer from turning on? [more inside]
posted on Jun 11, 2007 - 4 answers
Am I killing my laptop by holding it sideways (like a book)? [more inside]
posted 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 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 on Dec 18, 2006 - 24 answers
Could turning on hard drive compression actually speed up access on my laptop? [more inside]
posted 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 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 on Jul 23, 2006 - 16 answers
Debian won't find my hard drive! Please help! I have details so there's [more inside]
posted 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 on May 31, 2006 - 35 answers
Where shall I shove a new HD? [more inside]
posted 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 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 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 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 on Jul 13, 2005 - 11 answers
I've had a bad experience with two hard drives being fried by one computer. Unfortunately... [more inside]
posted on Mar 10, 2005 - 3 answers
Anyone have any favourites when it comes to mobile hard drives? I'm looking to replace a 40GB+ Lacie Pocketdrive unit. [more inside]
posted on Feb 23, 2005 - 8 answers
External hard drive: I need something reliable, solid, and QUIET, in the 120-200GB range. Quiet is key, since it would be predominantly a music server and it's very annoying to have high-pitched hard drive whine in the background of everything I listen to. I'm currently using a LaCie 120GB Firewire drive, and it's been great except for the constant (not aggressively loud, but certainly noticeable) whine. Am I a spoiled brat, or is it possible to get a whisper-quiet external disk? (Tips for silencing or quieting an external drive are also welcomed.)
posted on Feb 13, 2005 - 7 answers
I have been unable to boot from my brand new SATA hard drive. If I boot from an IDE drive, I can read from and write to this drive with absolutely no problems whatsoever. But when I try to boot, I get a "DISK BOOT FAILURE" error. I've tried many things to get this to work, and I'm quickly running out of ideas. List of things I've tried and hardware details inside.
posted on Dec 27, 2004 - 14 answers
What are some good 7200 RPM 60GB+ 2.5" drives that are suitable for installation in an Apple TiBook? Recommendations on where to buy?
posted on Dec 16, 2004 - 8 answers
Hey, is it better to keep an external hard drive plugged into and constantly running, or is it safer (for archiving and the health of the drive, avoiding power failures that might otherwise zap an entire machine, etc) to only turn it on and connect it when you use it? Thanks as always for your thoughts.
posted on Dec 1, 2004 - 12 answers
I've got a 160GB hard disk capacity issue, plus a little bit of a chicken-and-the-egg dillema [come on in!]
posted on Nov 22, 2004 - 37 answers
Are there any precautions I should take when shipping a hard drive in regards to packing? I've heard that it's important to have a certain amount of padding around it, but I don't know what would be best.
posted on Oct 13, 2004 - 4 answers
My slave (drive) won't work. [More inside]
posted on Sep 3, 2004 - 9 answers
Really this is my last resort. I recently built myself a new computer (Asus K8N-E Deluxe) and everything's fine except I'm trying to transfer my old harddrive to my new harddrive. I had a slave in the old computer (Asus CUSL2 for those keeping score). It's 40GB and has ALL my important data. I think you can see where this is going. If it's plugged in and running, even set as slave, the computer won't boot. Obviously, more inside.
posted on Aug 27, 2004 - 13 answers
Having trouble setting up 2 SATA hard drives as a stripe set in WinXP Pro. (more inside)
posted on Aug 23, 2004 - 5 answers
I am going crazy about this, and google won't turn up anything useful. Laptop with no CDrom or floppy: Took HD out and installed XP using my desktop. Freezes loading mup.sys. I already installed the MB swap patch.
Basically what I am asking is: Can you copy the entire XP Pro CD onto your Hard drive, and set it as a boot option? Can it work? Does anyone have any ideas?
posted on Jul 22, 2004 - 5 answers
Would installing a new (smallish) hard drive in my machine and dedicating it solely to the Windows swap file (i.e., instead of having it on C:) improve performance?
posted on Jun 26, 2004 - 13 answers
I have one hard drive installed in my computer, and it shows up as E: . There is no C:. How can I tell the computer that the installed hard drive E: should be C:?
posted on Jun 1, 2004 - 13 answers
Another boooooring computer question - sorry!
How do I clone a HD in a win2k system? My system's boot hd is a 20g 5400 rpm. I'd like to swap it for a 20 g 7200 rpm which is sitting at the moment in an external firewire enclosure. I also have 150g in an internal RAID array.
More inside ...
posted on May 20, 2004 - 6 answers
Continuing with my stupid computer.... I bought a new Gateway since they're closing their stores. I then put the old hard drive in the new computer. Then the computer wouldn't start. Is this a function of a bad hard drive? It didn't fit in the drive bay, so did I ground it out (I sat it to rest on the case.. is that a bad thing?)? When I took the old hard drive out of the computer, it booted up fine, which leads me to think that it's the hard drive that's causing both systems to lock up. Do I just need a new hard drive for my old computer? Thoughts?
posted on Apr 9, 2004 - 6 answers
Windows XP question... My parents computer is set up that most items are stored on a 20 GB harddrive (or possibly a partition- listed as c:) while they have 100 GB available on d:... When I install software, is it perfectly acceptable to run it off the D drive, and is there a way to switch the set up so most items save to the d drive?
posted on Feb 23, 2004 - 9 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
I have a WinXp machine with three hard drives, each one holding 100GB. I'm researching backup alternatives, and there are tons these days (tape drives, external firewire drives, jazz drives, etc.). I'd like to find a solution that strikes a nice balance between ease of use, cost and durability. Any suggestions?
posted on Jan 8, 2004 - 8 answers
