Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with harddrive

How to protect these drives?

estherbester — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:28:21 -0800

Where could I purchase a bunch of Seagate's Seashell plastic hard drive cases? I want to store a bunch of bare hard drives with data that will probably be accessed only intermittently (the data would be transferred to new drives every few years, if all goes to plan).

Some of my Seagate drives came in those Seashell cases and from what I can tell they seem to be a better way to protect my drives than in those static-shielding bags. Is this true, and if so, where could I buy these Seashells separately? Seagate doesn't seem to sell them, and I don't know why they wouldn't.

Alternatively, what would be a good way to store all these drives?

Help me backup my system.

arniec — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 09:39:08 -0800

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... Yes, this topic revisited again. None of the questions asked so far have helped in my situation.

It seems the era of digital video and digital audio has created a storage nightmare for me. I have 6TB of data spread across 5 external hard drives (3 500GBs and 4 1 TBs, not all full). They are all currently connected to a Windows PC.

I have 1 blank 1TB drive which I just attached to my Mac Mini as I'm trying to retire my Windows PC and migrate all data to the Mac FS so I can run it off my Airport Extreme's USB port (the Airport Extreme won't read NTFS).

I've looked at "mirroring" my external drives nightly using a backup program but this does not safeguard me in case of electrical storm, fire, angry wife, etc. Besides, there must be a limit to the number of external drives I have...I'm running out of outlets quickly.

But I cannot imagine putting all of this information on DVDs, the time and expense would be insane. Online backup systems are not optimal as there is sensitive personal data in the files and I don't trust the privacy of online backup solutions, but the cost for 6TB is prohibitive.

I do have a lot of "redundant" files that I am attempting to clean up (previous hard drive crashes in my Windows PC resulted in panicked "copy off all my files!" moments, and as such I'm sure at least 1TB of my data is redundant, but the time it's taking me to sort this out file by file is crazy). Are there any programs (Windows or Mac) that can find these and only back them up once, saving me on DVDs?

Do I have any other options besides "buy a lot more external hard drives"?

Moving old data to a new drive

Zaximus — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 12:19:50 -0800

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. I will be installing a new motherboard, CPU, graphics card, RAM, and 640GB hard drive into my case. I am planning on doing a clean install of XP and SP3 onto the new drive.

Once the new system boots up, I want to plug in my old 160GB HD (also SATA) and pick off all the files I want to keep, which would mostly be several gigs of music and the entirety of the My Documents folder. The old drive also has XP installed on it.

As long as I ensure that I boot up from the larger, newer HD, this should work fine, correct? Is there much risk involved in this process? If the total amount of data to be transferred is less than 10GB and I don't need to clone the entirety of the old disk and old OS, is there a safer way to go about this?

Thanks in advance.

How to store hard drives?

speek — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 08:44:10 -0800

Is there a foolproof way of storing internal hard drives for external (hot swappable) use? We're using multiple hard drives for archival and storage purposes, all sata drives. We're thinking of putting them all in their own separate anti-static ziploc bags and shoving them into a fireproof safe, that way they'll be safe from pretty much everything.

I was wondering if anybody had any better ideas? foam molding for example?

How can I get data off a bad hard drive?

deafmute — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 23:28:11 -0800

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. A few weeks ago the hard drive for my Dell Inspiron 1520 became unable to boot into Vista after freezing suddenly. When trying to boot, I get a BSOD with the error message "Stop: c000142{DLL Initialization Failed} Initialization of the dynamic link library winsrv failed. The process is terminating abnormally." When attempting to launch startup repair, boot into safe mode, or boot off of several different Vista DVDs I am greeted with a cursor (that I can control) on a black screen that never goes anywhere.

I ran Dell's built-in diagnostic program, and after being given several hard drive related errors, Dell (very quickly) sent me a new hard drive. Now I need to send them the old one, and I would like to recover my data from it before wiping it and sending it back.

I first put it in an enclosure and connected it to Vista, but Vista does nothing more than prompt me to format the drive.

I then ran Spinrite, which, after 27 hours(!) of operation returned no bad sectors or errors of any kind. What's unusual, however, is that my old drive does not exactly match my new drive in terms of partitions. The data partition is flagged as being too large for the size of the drive, and I am advised to change my BIOS's "understanding" of the drive (which I can't do). It is also missing a partition labeled as "hidden CTOS memory dump". I have no idea what this means.

I then booted off of a Knoppix cd and attempted to mount the drive there. I was able to mount the two partitions containing Dell's hidden diagnostic and recovery data, but Knoppix was unable to recognize the existence of a third partition containing my data.

Google searches have proved inconclusive (particularly in the case of my BSOD error message). Please help me get my data!

Should I buy an eee PC?

smithmac_99 — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:01:59 -0800

How do I get DVD video onto a optical driveless PC? So I'm thinking about getting one of those mini laptops such as an ASUS eeePC or some such. My main concern is the lack of an optical drive. I think it's a little silly to buy an external optical drive that you have to lug around with you if you want to watch DVD's.

So actually, I have a couple of questions and if you own one of those eees, I'd love your input.

1) Is it possible to compress a DVD movie on my mac, transfer it to a USB flash drive and watch it on an eee?

2) Does the battery life on one of these computers even make it possible to watch a movie while travelling?

3) The new eee 1000H actually can be configured with a 80gig hard drive. Would this be the way to go over one of the smaller ssd drives?

4)I'm a total linux retard. Is it tough to learn? Should I get one with XP? Will my mac play nicely with both or either?

Thanks for your help!

How many hard drives does it take, before WinXP can see them?

jadepearl — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 08:42:29 -0800

External hard showing "weird". Better known as, sharing an external/portable hard drive between osx and winxp. I have tried out no less than 3 of these Lacie external hard drives.

They are formatted FAT32 and register perfect on my macs at home. However on 2 WinXP machines they register as a regular drive, are listed as "full" and nothing can be loaded or read from them. This all started because they initially could not be found on the winxp though device manager "saw" them just fine and disk managment found it "healthy". I got it enabled and allocated a drive. Now it does not show in disk management. This is what I have done so far:

1) Reformatted one on a mac for pc -- still not "mounted" though seen by device manager. Forced allocation using disk management. Unable to format on the PC to NTFS after it mounted. Unable to read or write because "full" or not recognized;

2) Plugged in a "virgin" FAT32 drive after forced allocation and it can be seen but now only registering as a drive with no further info and again, "full" cannot read nor write nor found by disk management;

3) MacDrive 7 unable to find or read the drives initially until I forced allocation and again, no read nor write nor formatting. App keeps asking where the mac drive is;

WinXP service pack 2 on my machine; hard drives connected via USB 2.0; Novell Zenworks and network drives are a part of my environment.

The drives are new and Lacie is generally a reputable firm. FAT32 should be able to be read by a WinXP machine. This is a consistent problem after trying 3 drives. Any advice would be nice.

Could the fact that iTunes skipping be a sign that I need a new hard drive?

phr4gmonk3y — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:22:50 -0800

I just got my Macbook back from the Apple Store today after they replaced the logic board on the unit. I've noticed that every song I play in iTunes seems to skip. Finding this odd, I opened up the Activity Monitor and looked at disk usage. It seems like whenever a read to the disk is made, iTunes seems to begin skipping. Furthermore, I have the same problem after trying to play mp3's via mpg123. I'm worried that the skipping could be a sign my hard drive might be failing. I recently installed a brand new 250 GB hard drive from Newegg about a month and a half ago, so I'm somewhat skeptical. Is it a reasonable concern?

Clone hard drive for future use

billtron — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 06:47:40 -0800

My XP Home running laptop hard drive has started making clicking and grinding sounds. Previous questions cover cloning the hard drive. This is more desirable than reinstalling everything or just backing up My Documents and Settings. Is it possible to create a clone or an image or something that is stored on my home server indefinitely, so that once my hard drive does die I can use it to recreate the current settings on a new drive?

Save my data before the disk asplode

djgh — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 13:21:04 -0800

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? I've got a 250GB hard drive which I put in an enclosure (cheap CompUSA one). It's got a red light and a green light. Recently, the red light will come on after a little bit and stay on (so not the blinking "transferring data" signal).

After the light comes on, the USB connection freaks out - if it's connected, it freezes, if it's not connected and I plug it in, it refuses to connect. (Disk Utility will show the drive, but not the partition. The partition refuses to mount, and the icon doesn't show up on the desktop).

What steps should I take to make sure I don't lose everything (it's my main music'n'movies drive...)?

I'm assuming that at some point it will be beneficial to pop the drive out and test in another enclosure, but assuming that doesn't work (worst case scenario and all), what should I do? i.e., the disk itself is suffering issues (plus, it's probably very good to have a backup anyway...).

I'm on OSX Tiger, if it helps, and have access to another 40GB or so (another external drive). The drive is currently sat disconnected on my shelf, not even powered.

Where's the best place online to shop for a hard drive?

Guy_Inamonkeysuit — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:43:15 -0800

I need a new hard drive for my laptop. Best place to shop? In this thread - http://ask.metafilter.com/91894/Something-is-killing-my-FTP - I discussed my computer woes. After taking off to nuke from orbit, it's clear that either my restore CDs are corrupted, or my hard drive is hosed. I'm ordering a new recovery CD from Gateway, but I'm also going to get myself a new hard drive. But it's a jungle out there -- what's the best place to score a new drive? My machine is a Gateway 7330 GZ laptop, with an 80-gig drive running 4200 RPM. Do I do Tiger Direct? Or what? Thanks in advance!

Help with wirelessly backing up laptop?

Phire — Sun, 18 May 2008 15:55:35 -0800

Help, Backup-Filter: "Access Denied" error when using Memeo's AutoBackup Software to wirelessly backup a laptop HD to a password protected external hard drive that is directy connected to the wireless router via USB. Asking for a friend:

I'm currently trying to use Memeo's Auto Backup program (v2.50.2785) to backup my laptop's Hard Drive to my external hard drive wirelessly.

The program is the Seagate branded version, and it came with the Seagate FreeAgent Pro 750 GB external HD. The external HD is currently attached via USB to my Linksys WRT600N wireless router. I have mapped the network drive and can access it normally through windows explorer.

The software is able to select the HD as a backup location but it cannot actually write any files to it, due to an "access denied" error. I think this is due to the fact that the router has a mandatory password on the HD, which seems impossible to remove. I haven't been able to "give" the password to the backup program, either.

Additional potentially useful info: Even though no backup files are written, the file structure and location linker files for the back are still written to the HD... How did it gain access for that?

This only happens when the external hard drive is connected to the router. If the hard drive is connected directly to the laptop, it works fine.

Any thoughts on how to get this to work properly would be appreciated.

Standard new PC blues

ROU_Xenophobe — Tue, 13 May 2008 07:25:54 -0800

Various quandaries in building a new PC I am thinking hard about building a new pc to replace my 2003 P4-2.8G-AGP machine. Basically, I'm planning on following the current Ars Technica "hot rod" minus a monitor and minus the sound card & speakers.

The needs here are general-purpose home machine, including gaming, usually low-level statistical work (done before my finger leaves the enter key sort of stuff), and occasional takes-a-weekend serious number crunching.

Also, I maybe wouldn't mind springing for one thing beyond their rig.

So, specific queries:

(1) They go with DDR2 800 RAM instead of the DDR2 1066 that the MB can take. Would spending $50 to get the 1066 make an appreciable difference? I am not planning on overclocking.

(2) Would I see a worth-it performance increase if I got a 10K RPM hard drive for the OS/programs and used a 7200RPM for data, instead of just one 7200RPM drive?

(3) Worth getting an SLI MB? Or will it be more cost-effective to just get a single card with a newer GPU in 2 years?

(4) 65nm quad-core vs 45nm dual-core, in a machine that does general-purpose duty.

(5) Lifespan of the LGA775 socket? We got burned building biscotti's machine w/ a socket-939. Will I be able to easily find replacement cpus in three or four years?

(6) Vista or XP? No, seriously. Both are nigh on free to me, and if I'm going to end up wanting Vista in two years I'd just as soon install it now.

Question module

dondiego87 — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:59:40 -0800

Question about laptop hard drives: "Plug-in module"? I'm looking to double the HD capacity on my Macbook, from 80 GB to 160. Looking at the Western Digital Scorpio 160GB SATA drives on Buy.com, I see that there are two versions. One goes for $115 while the other, which is branded as a "plug-in module," goes for $80. Obviously, I'd like the cheaper one. What does "plug-in module" mean, both theoretically (what's the difference, if any) and practically (can I install it in my Macbook or not)?

Thanks!

Backing up Multiple Computers to One Hard Drive

1-2punch — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:02:59 -0800

Are there any issues with backing up multiple computers to one external hard drive? And which drives come with simple, one touch backup software? I'm thinking about something in the 500 gig range, just so we've got a little flexibility, but I could probably make do with 250.

And I'd like software that just scans my computer for changes and makes updates to the backup.

Recommendations?

Help me find my old hard drive.

DulcineaX — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:28:02 -0800

Why would my hard drive show up in the BIOS, but not in Windows? My boyfriend's main hard drive seems to have failed. When we tried to boot it yesterday, it gave us the message that the "self monitoring system has reported that a parameter has exceeded its normal operating range" and would not boot into windows. I ended up putting in a new hard drive and installing Vista to that drive, so now we can at least get the thing booted. But now, once in Windows, it only sees the new hard drive and the old storage drive (that didn't have Windows on it).

I'm trying to figure out how I can just see the original hard drive in order to get data off of it. It shows up in the BIOS, but once in Windows it's not listed in My Computer. I've also looked under Computer Management in Administrative Tools, and it's not listed there either.

Other random info:
- There are four hard drive bays in the computer.
- These are SATA drives.
- I have more familiarity with this stuff than any of my friends/family, but I'm not exactly a guru or anything.
- I'd like to avoid taking the drive somewhere if possible, because I'm a little paranoid about my data getting erased. I know that the information might just be gone, but I'd like to keep Geek Squad etc. as a last resort.

If there's any more information that I can provide please ask; I'm getting a little desperate at this point...it's finals week of senior year in college and could really use some of that data! Thanks so much for any advice.

Hard drive pain.

gjc — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:15:04 -0800

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. My question is more of a "please confirm my diagnosis" and "what have I missed" sort of thing. Hard drive does not spin at all. In fact, it does nothing at all. Doesn't spin, click, hum, vibrate, whine. And the PC doesn't see it.

I looked at the controller board and could find no burnt spots nor any visual indication that something was fried. I even pulled off the board to make sure the contacts were clean. Completely fine, visually. If I give the drive a twist along the axis of the platters, I can hear them move, so I know the platters aren't stuck. And there is nothing rattling around inside.

So my thinking is that the controller simply went belly up, and if I go out and get another identical hard drive and swap controllers, it will function long enough to get the data off. I have done this in the past with success, on an older IDE drive of the 4GB vintage. This drive is a 7 year old SATA drive.

But there are comments on websites saying that there is "tuning" information on the controller, and thus it won't work. I'm not sure I believe that- sounds more like scare tactics perpetrated by data recovery people to drum up business. But maybe not? Is the bad sector table stored on the board?

Anyway, thanks in advance.

ATA-7 to replace ATA-6?

stopgap — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 09:57:41 -0800

Can an ATA-7 hard drive be used as a replacement for an ATA-6 hard drive? My laptop's current hard drive is a 60GB ATA-6 (PATA) 1.8" hard drive. I would like to replace it with a 120GB hard drive, but the only 1.8" 120GB drive I can find is ATA-7. I just want to be sure that this will be backwards compatible. The computer is a Dell Latitude X1 if it matters.

Bonus question: before I order the new drive and pry open my computer, does anyone know whether the PATA connector on 1.8" drives is the same size as on 2.5" drives? I want to know if I can use a 2.5" enclosure temporarily while I clone my old drive onto the new one.

power - i dont has it. =(

damnjezebel — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 19:25:31 -0800

I consider this to be google cheating, but I honestly know nothing of this. Get me a power supply - model #atx-300-12e or the equivalent. Asap. Please. Power supply went kaboom. Actually more like *hush*kaboom*hush* since I didn't actually hear a sound. I need to replace the power supply.

I know the model number is #atx-300-12e. But apparently, I can't find it on the sites I normally check out - I've found it on a few random sites, but right now i don't want to buy from a site I've never heard of. I've never had to buy a power supply before, and I'm totally lost. I won't have the cash to upgrade it for about a month - if that's your suggestion - but until then, I do need power and I need it immediately. Please point me to something that'll work! PLEASE.

piggy back question: hypothetically speaking, how do you get a harddrive unstuck from a slot it's supposed to go in and out of? I mean, with it being unscrewed and everything good to go and all, short of sawing through it with a dremel of some kind?

Damn you, computers!

jytsai — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:08:24 -0800

I lost the little jumper that sets the SATA drive from SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) to SATA I (1.5 Gb/s). Where can I buy/steal a replacement?

Is my Ikea desk killing my MacBook Pro hard drive?

fenriq — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:47:19 -0800

Bizarre Hard Drive Failure Filter: Is it possible that my desk from Ikea is helping to send my hard drive to an early grave? Okay, I know this is going to sound insane but here goes. When I use my MacBook Pro on my desk the hard drive will soon start whining and screaming and sounding like it is about to explode. When I use the same exact computer on my table in the kitchen, it is almost perfectly silent. I can use it on the table in the kitchen for hours without even a slight whine. But within minutes of placing it on the desk from Ikea, its like there's a helicopter in my office.

The noise gets so loud I can't hear my television. And right now, on the kitchen table, it is almost silent.

Can anyone make heads or tails of this?

The sound does occur far less frequently when I use the computer while laying in bed and it sits on a pillow (these suckers run HOT!) but it appears that the issue is exacerbated by the desk.

Anyone have any insights? Yes, it is under warranty and I have the box ready to send it back to Apple but I'm pretty they don't use Ikea desks and they may not be able to replicate the problem.

Disk Utility says the disk is totally fine but I found I cannot upgrade to Leopard because of some failure (can't remember now) and I did try it several times.

How can I see total drive space in my pc?

mrbenn — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:05:36 -0800

Can anyone help with a program to show total drive space in a PC across multiple drives? I would like to be able to see total available and free space across the 5 seperate hard drives in my Windows Vista system. It can obviously be done through My Computer and a calculator but is there a software solution (preferably freeware or open source) that can do the job. All the programs I can find through the usual means show folder sizes, percentage free etc but always for ONLY 1 drive. I

Grind, Grind, Grind goes the Hard Drive

26.2 — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:38:27 -0800

Can this laptop be saved? All was good. Then it sounded like there was a part loose and rolling around inside my laptop for a few seconds. The hard drive started running slooowwwly with some additional crunching and grinding noises. On reboot I got an I/0 error then a no bootable drive error. This is a spare l laptop that I keep for friends to use when they hang out at my house. It's a 4 year old Dell Latitude 600 running Windows 2000. Also, it's been used hard. It was dropped a few weeks ago and I had to open up the machine to reseat the some of the connections to the PCMCIA card to make the wireless work. I wish I could tell you that's the first time this laptop was dropped.

Files are all backed up on my external hard drive, but not the operating system or applications.

Can it be saved and is it worth the bother?

FAT3000?

tmcw — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:33:58 -0800

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? Currently both drives have about 60 gigs used. I have 80 or so gigs on my laptop. I'd like them to be accessible by Windows in a clutch, and eventually (about a year) I'm getting a mac laptop, so I'll need to switch to that too. But my primary goal is to get a good Linux / Windows formatting scheme for the meantime. They're filled with music and school documents - no applications at this point. I'm aiming to use VirtualBox or similar (any suggestions?) to run Windows, so that might decide their accessibility?

Thanks!

Help get data from a raid partition

KirTakat — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:43:24 -0800

I would like to recover data from two SATA hard drives that were once part of a single logical partition under Linux A year ago I got a Thecus N2100 that I was using to store a bunch of miscellaneous data on. I was having some speed issues with it (video files streamed VERY slowly), so I decided to try updating the bios. During the middle of the process the system locked up, and it never recovered. So now I have two hard drives that were configured as a single logical drive that I would like to get some data from. Vista detects the drives fine, but obviously can't access the data. SpinRite says that each drive is actually separated into two partitions, one is a Linux partition, the other is a "Raid Autodetect." The drives themselves are SATA drives and, other than not being able to access the data, are seemingly fine.

So how can I get this data off the drives so I can reformat them? I'm using a Vista system primarily, and I've connected the drives using a SATA to USB connector. If there is a good Linux live disc that can do this, I'm perfectly willing to do that. Suggestions?