Tag: Hard Drive

4K Hard Drives – Prep Them Properly

Western Digital Advanced Format Hard Drive Label

Some of us may have come across the term “4K hard drives” or perhaps “advanced format” hard drives. For many, these terms would simply drown in the sea of other confusing computer terminology that techies have come to love and consumers have come to hate. So, the first question to get out of the way …

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Windows Home Server V2 Beta Available

Just a quick one this evening. For those of you who are interested, Windows Home Server “Vail” (for home or home office use) and “Aurora” (for small business use) have been released on Microsoft Connect. What has really got me excited are some of the new features, specifically: the ability to natively backup MacOS X …

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Free Up Space by Moving Your iPhone and iPad Backups

Yesterday, I was attempting to update the firmware on my iPhone and iPad but was running into an error, specifically: “iTunes could not back up the iPhone “Boyd’s iPhone” because the backup could not be saved on the computer.” This was due to the C: in my computer reaching its capacity. Using a 128GB solid …

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Always Eject External Drives Before Removal

Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media

Over the course of my career where USB flash drives and external flash drives have become more commonplace (compared to the 1990s where floppy disks and compact discs were king) I have been shocked by the number of people that simply pull out a drive without first ejecting it. In some cases, this has lead …

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Recuva – Get a Second Chance After Emptying the Recycle Bin

Recuva (2 - File Location)

Have you ever accidentally deleted one or more valuable files when you have been doing a tidy up on your computers and then watch that file disappear before before your very eyes never to return? Maybe you deleted the wrong photo off your camera or perhaps an important e-mail on your computer? I know I …

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Hard Drive Capacities – Know What You Are Getting!

Windows 7 - Disk Management

Over the years, you may have wondered whether or not you have been duped when you bought a new computer with a hard drive of a higher capacity that your current computer or maybe when you just buy a new drive to put into your existing computer. The shop of manufacturer may advertising one capacity …

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Parted Magic – Disk Partitioning Made Easy

Once in a blue moon, you might find yourself in the situation where you need to slice up that huge hard drive (or maybe a smaller  solid state drive) into multiple partitions. Partitions can make your data easier to manage by keeping logical types of data separate. For example, my computer is setup as follows: …

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100th Blog – Roll the Highlights Reel!

Today marks the 100th post on my blog and of course, no significant celebration of a milestone would not be complete without looking over some of highlights since the beginning. I’ve written some informative pieces looking at ways to improve the accessibility and reliability of the technology that we use in our everyday lives. In …

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iTunes for Windows – Good, Bad or Ugly?

Apple iTunes APIs

Not too long ago, Steve Jobs made a general comment regarding platforms in defence of the changes to the iPhone SDK agreement, specifically: We’ve been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform. Somehow, the extrapolation has been made that Steve …

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SuperGeek Arsenal – External Hard Drive Dock

Vantec NexStar Hard Drive Dock (Powered Up)

Any geek worth their weight in silicon will be prepared for almost any type technical problem or situation. One such device I reckon should be in a geek’s technical support arsenal is an external hard drive dock. A hard drive dock is important when you might have a computer that is refusing to boot up …

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