Here's how to boot between two Windows XP systems without using any special softwa First, Why? 1) Your system hard drive is getting old, and you want to be prepared for a quick switch-over to a new system hard drive when the old one croaks.

I have gotten 5 drives and 4 of them failed within an hour. Yes, the warranty replacements gotten directly from Seagate failed just like the orginal 2 new ones purchased from an online retailer. One of the original warranty replacements is still working, though I'm not really using it yet other...

Hi Guys - Pretty glad I found this group because reading the posts it seems that there are many tech-savvy people hanging around in here. I would first like to thank anyone who responds and helps me with my problem. It is greatly appreciated! This is gonna be long-winded and I...

If you want to explicitly select the OS at each boot-up and you'd like to stay out of the BIOS, don't comment out any of the "operating systems" lines in the boot.ini file. The BIOS will take the character strings in those lines in the same order as they appear in the boot.ini file of the Highest...

I built a nice, fast system for myself recently, and have been using the onboard SATA II controller for the 2 hard drives (1 velociraptor, 1 Hitachi 7k1000) and 1 optical drive (Blu-Ray burner) I'm using. I may install more drives in the future, but probably not. In any case, I'm wondering if...

Been using Acronis True Image for WinXP, but am now dual booting with Vista. Anyone recommend imaging software that can properly handle the dual boot? Thanks -- Derek

I just installed a new motherboard. To my dismay, current motherboards only come with one IDE (PATA) port, and I currently have 4 IDE drives. I'm converting my backup drive to USB using a external enclosure -- that takes care of one. My DVD burner is a little long in the tooth so I'm considering...

I'm currently using a Western Digital external hard drive which is 1TB. I have been running it for some weeks now and it has been fine up until now. When I plug the drive in at the moment it is recognized by windows, but not like it was befo it has lost the WD logo. Most importantly windows...

I have a USB2 hard drive, and I want to defrag the folders so they're located at the same spot on the disk. I know Diskeeper does this, but only on boot-time if you set the software to do it. And in this case, the machine must not be recognizing the USB device in time on boot-up, because the...

Does anyone know of a SATA dock/tray enclosure that fits in a half height case opening? I'd like to keep the "tray" as cheap and simple as possible, maybe even none. -- Al Dykes News is something someone wants to suppress, everything else is advertising. - Lord Northcliffe, publisher of the...

I have three extra Western Digital 250gb SATA drives that I'd like to put to use. My thought is to put them into a "rack" and make a 750gb RAID array out of them for additional storage on my PC, probably via a USB connection. I've heard of Drobo but is there a less expensive rack I can buy that...

I purchased the external WD Essential 320GB to replace my external WD 80GB drive. When launching programs from the Essential, it is very slow compared to the WD 80GB drive I replaced. Both drives are external and connected via a USB2.0 port. What can I do to speed up the access to the program...

Anyone know if this is a good quality product? Its the only one i can find in a 5 bay sas/sata type, for this price.. http://www.directron.com/storpacks35.html Thanks

Hi, My WD mybook external hardrive died, and now i need a new one for my laptop (which has th elaptop firewire conneciton, which isn't the same as the pc firewire connection that most external harddrives come with, thus need to use usb) So I'm thinking of getting the following toshiba 320 gb...

I need to to know if people with huge capacity SATA hard drives (500GB and up) have the following problem : Bought a new hard drive, install it, formatted the disk, install the OS, use it for 2 months, and then weird things start popping up. The hard drive that I am using is Western Digital's...

My MPF3204AT Fujitsu 20GB HDD's Power On Time Count just triggered a SMART warning after dropping below the threshold of 20. The raw value is currently 43763894 seconds, ie 12156 hours. OTOH my 120GB Seagate drive is currently at ... Power On Hours Count 9 0 99 99 0000000005DDh (1501) .......

My Book Office version Backup Software Thinking of buying the above. Not sure what backup sw is stored on the 750GB unit. Thoughts? Can this software perform a full HD exact image backup and exact image restore of an entire Hard Drive including all windows files?

My 250 gb drive has died. Windows no longer sees it at all. During boot I hear 3 repeating beeps (long-short-long), prior to boot. It delays boot process by about a minute. Smart has been enabled now, but it finds nothing. Weirdest thing is that IDE detection no longer shows the drive model, but it...

What is the best practice for extending your hard drive's life? I remember reading about putting the MBR after the first 64 mb, , of a drive? Or if that is not possible, then putting the first partition after 64mb? I remember reading this somewhere ( I can't remember where though, could it have...

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