Do any retailers have the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 hard drive in stock? If not, should I just give up and buy a 5400.6? [more inside]
posted by alms on Apr 20, 2009 - 6 answers

I'm using Terminal (Ubuntu 8.04x64) right now to overwrite a 500g external hd with random information. There's been no action aside from a blinking cursor (by itself on a line, not in front of any prompt) since I entered the command yesterday afternoon:
[sudo dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdc bs=8m]

I understand it's going to take a while to finish. In the meantime, is there any way to monitor the progress of the operation?
posted by carsonb on Nov 8, 2008 - 18 answers

How can I access my WD MyBook World Network Storage Drive from my new (Ubuntu 8.04) computer now that my old (WinXP) box is dead dead dead? [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Oct 21, 2008 - 18 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 by gjc on Apr 27, 2008 - 9 answers

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

Are there any particularly awesome external firewire hard drive enclosures that I should be aware about? [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Oct 29, 2007 - 7 answers

How can I recover a file from an accidentally quick-formated laptop? [more inside]
posted by springload 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 by nnovik on Jul 6, 2007 - 9 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 by Mave_80 on May 9, 2007 - 10 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

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

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

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

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

How can I watch what is being written to my hard-drive? [more inside]
posted by MintSauce 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 by rwhe 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 by willmillar 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 by cg1 on Apr 7, 2006 - 8 answers

What should I do with my new hard drive? [more inside]
posted by jewishbuddha on Apr 21, 2005 - 11 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 by jruckman 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...] [more inside]
posted by soplerfo on Jan 17, 2004 - 9 answers