Tag: Hard Drive

Always Backup Before Upgrading

Just a simple but important concept for tonight. The title pretty much says it all but it is very surprising how many people take the risk of upgrading software of the operating system on their computer with the expectation that nothing will go wrong. In contrast, many businesses who take their IT environments seriously not …

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Adjust the Maximum Size of the Recycle Bin in Windows

Leading on from yesterday’s blog entry regarding the practice of emptying the Recycle Bin (or Trash in Mac OS X) I thought it was worth covering how to set the maximum size of the Recycle Bin in Windows to prevent it from growing too large. This is of particular importance on smaller drives in netbooks or more …

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Reclaim Space by Emptying the Recycling Bin or Trash

Here’s a quick tip. While some of us may think this is a very obvious tip others may not have any idea about the concept of the Recycle Bin (or simply “Trash” in Mac OS X) and the fact that stuff that’s in there still chews up hard drive space. Sure, these days with drive …

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Sometimes Unconventional Means Don’t Work But Don’t Be Discouraged

A few posts back I was looking into reviving a hard drive using unconventional means (in this case putting it in the freezer) based upon anecdotal evidence on the web that supported this method. Sometimes in technical support positions you have to think outside the square and when conventional methods don’t work there may be …

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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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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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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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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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The 2TB Barrier – What Does it Mean for You?

Throughout last year I made a couple of mentions of the 2TB (two terabyte) barrier for physical storage in modern computers but didn’t take the opportunity to flesh out exactly what it means for the regular consumer out there. In this article I am going to explain why this is important and what you need …

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SlySoft Discontinuing Lifetime Upgrades

It seems that many good things come to an end far sooner than we would expect or would hope. SlySoft, the creator of such software including CloneCD, CloneDVD and AnyDVD will be ceasing sales of software including free lifetime upgrades for software from 1 January 2011. Whilst this is disappointing news, this does mean you …

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