Category: Storage

Why I Won’t be Buying iPad 2

Today, a lot of people asked me whether or not I would be eagerly waiting to purchase an iPad 2 when it is eventually launched in Australia perhaps some time later this month (although last year’s delays for countries apart from the USA did cause some angst amongst customers). I was expecting to be asked …

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Reviving Dead Hard Drives Through Unconventional Methods

Many of us have had a situation where the hard drive in our computer just dies unexpectedly. It’s a pain and an inconvenience which can be exacerbated by the absence of backups. Sometimes, hard drives just require a minor file system scan to get things working again or, in more severe cases, the controller board …

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Panasonic 3D Blu-ray Home Theatre Sound System (SC-BTT755) Review

With a day to spare, I have completed the review video for the Panasonic SC-BTT75 3D Blu-ray Home Theatre Sound System. I received this system back in December last year and have put it through its paces across a range of activities including: CD audio playback, DVD videos, Blu-ray videos (3D and standard videos), regular …

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Reclaim Space – Remove Windows 7 Service Pack 1 Backup Files

Removing backup files created during service pack installation

One of the hot topics today is the general release of Service Pack 1 for Windows 7 to the public. Whilst it isn’t a ground breaking update in terms of adding new features to Windows 7 (a lot more of the action is related to Windows Server 2008 R2) it does contain a few important …

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Automatically Reinstall Common Applications After a Format with Ninite

Ninite Website

If you have been following the blog you might be aware that I undertook a clean install of Windows 7 on a laptop. Of course, there’s a process to go through in order to backup existing data, reinstall Windows and then copy back the required data from the backup. However, some of that data is …

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Mount Your ISOs Quickly with MagicDisc

If you download a lot of software (legally, mind you) sometimes they will come in the form of an ISO file which is basically an image of an optical disc (be it a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc). Normally, these files had to be burnt to a physical disc before you could actually start installing …

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Capture a Disk Image Quickly with DriveImage XML

DriveImage XML - Backup Wizard

From time to time I help people undertake the often laborious task of doing a clean installation of Windows on a computer. The installation itself is fairly painless but there are other tasks involved that can take up a considerable amount of time, including: backing up the existing data (although I recommend people have regular …

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Drive Extender Alternatives for Windows Home Server 2011

Last year, I covered the shock announcement that Microsoft was dropping the Drive Extender (DE) technology from its second version of Windows Home Server (formerly codenamed “Vail” but now dubbed Windows Home Server 2011). In a nutshell, DE provided some critical functionality including: storage pooling (the ability to combine multiple drives into one large storage …

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Reclaim Space – Remove an Unnecessary Windows Hibernation File

Yesterday, I wrote an article about a great little utility called WinDirStat and its ability to create a bitmap of what files and folders are consuming the most space on your drives. One thing I did discover was a huge 9GB hiberfil.sys file on my C: partition that was serving no real purpose as I …

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Visually Track Hard Drive Space with WinDirStat

WinDirStat - Folder Summary Screen (Completed)

Here’s a quick tip for this evening. If there is one thing that Windows has lacked all of these years it is a way to quickly assess from a macro level which folders are taking up the most space without having to take a “divide and conquer” approach by right clicking each folder, going to …

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