External Hard Drives - Good Article
Apr 29, 2014 09:20:55 #
This external drive article is geared toward the Mac, but it's good reading for anyone.
http://tidbits.com/article/14708
http://tidbits.com/article/14708
Apr 30, 2014 07:00:37 #
jerryc41 wrote:
This external drive article is geared toward the Mac, but it's good reading for anyone.
http://tidbits.com/article/14708
http://tidbits.com/article/14708
Thanks Jerry. This is a good article on BACKUP METHODS. Anyone wanting to learn about backing up their data on an external drive can learn something from this article. Too bad they don't write something like this for the PC market, but the ideas are almost transferable, just menus and terminology are changed. I think that ACRONIS has the feature to completely clone a drive or just copy certain sectors or files to a backup drive.
How did you make out with your son's PC problem anyway? I haven't heard if you solved the issues.
Apr 30, 2014 07:26:30 #
singleviking wrote:
Thanks Jerry. This is a good article on BACKUP MET... (show quote)
Once I replaced the video card, everything was fine. I also bought a DVI cable, and that made the screen look better. He had VGA before.
I did a complete copy of his C drive a while back, but it was difficult (for me) to find the right software. The terminology isn't always used correctly. I wanted an exact duplicate drive so I could just swap it out. I think what I finally did was clone the drive. His current C drive seems to have a hum I hadn't heard before. I tried one program, but when I got done, I realized that it wasn't an exact copy. anyway, all's well that ends well. Thanks again for your help.
Jerry
Apr 30, 2014 07:33:08 #
jerryc41 wrote:
Once I replaced the video card, everything was fin... (show quote)
If the drive is a WD, there's a firmware update that eliminated the chatter that sometimes occurs in their drives. Check out the website for WD to install this firmware update into the drive. You'll need a small flash drive to save the DOS file though and then boot the computer from the flash drive to install this firmware update.
Apr 30, 2014 07:37:18 #
singleviking wrote:
If the drive is a WD, there's a firmware update that eliminated the chatter that sometimes occurs in their drives. Check out the website for WD to install this firmware update into the drive. You'll need a small flash drive to save the DOS file though and then boot the computer from the flash drive to install this firmware update.
It's the drive that came with his HP. It's working fine, but sometimes it seems noisy, not chattering or clicking, just humming.
Apr 30, 2014 07:44:50 #
jerryc41 wrote:
It's the drive that came with his HP. It's working fine, but sometimes it seems noisy, not chattering or clicking, just humming.
Sounds like one of the older drives that don't spin down when not in use, but 1 TB HDDs boot drive replacements are now cheap, so you can get away with replacing it with a clone for under $60 to be safe in case this drive is finally biting the dust. Better safe than sorry. And to really update this computer, you could use a 60 or 120 gig SSD for around $100 or less that will speed up boot times and access times. I've seen 60 gig SSD drives going for under $60 recently.
The trick to implementing smaller SSD drives as the boot drive is to move all the folders to another drive to save space on the boot drive. Do this under "properties" and just put all the folders and programs on an HDD since they're only accessed when needed.
Apr 30, 2014 07:52:15 #
singleviking wrote:
Sounds like one of the older drives that don't spi... (show quote)
Hopefully, his drive will keep working, but if it doesn't, I have the replacement stashed safely away. His computer is only three years old, but it gets used a lot - video editing.
Apr 30, 2014 07:56:21 #
jerryc41 wrote:
Hopefully, his drive will keep working, but if it doesn't, I have the replacement stashed safely away. His computer is only three years old, but it gets used a lot - video editing.
Then it would have been a lot smarter to replace the old video card with one of the newer generation cards that supports 3 screen video and audio editing on the one card. But they cost $400 or so.
Keep that in mind around CHRISTMAS time.
And Tiger just offered a 240 gig SSD for $89. Wow are they getting cheap lately.
Apr 30, 2014 08:26:43 #
Apr 30, 2014 11:54:27 #
If you're using an external HD with a USB link, be sure you "dismount" the drive when you're through. On PCs this is typically a little icon in the tray. If you just unplug the drive you may scramble the FAT, and then you've got problems. Another good argument for an UPS, since a power outage in the middle of disk activity may scramble an external drive, as well as an internal HD.
If you want to reply, then register here. Registration is free and your account is created instantly, so you can post right away.