Question by : Single Hard Drive Platter – Data recording?
I have a late 1990′s single platter hard drive that has some important data on it, unfortunately it has suffered a head crash which according to the data recovery Company (It is a respected & well known one…) even though I have been lucky in one respect that only the top side of the platter has been damaged it would be pointless trying to recover any files from the undamaged side of the platter as I would only get partial file recovery & some files wouldn’t be accessible.
I could understand what they were saying if it was a multi platter hard drive that recorded data in a cylinder but I thought that single platter drives recorded data on both sides individually and not in a ‘cylinder’. It was running Windows 2000 OS if that helps.
What is partial file recovery? Does it mean I might get ‘half’ a document or is it a case that they can only get ’1′s &’0′s off the drive surface that they can’t do much with?

And yes, I know I should have backed up the data !!!!
Do I need to tell them to attempt a recovery, or am I wasting my time and money?

Best answer:

Answer by Acka
“Half a loaf is better than no bread”

Some data recovered may be better than no data recovered.

The partial recovery may just pull up the one file you need, and the other may be junk, who know until you try, to recover.

I am surprised they are turning down business, when they don’t even know which file you need off the failed drive.

It is possible to do this stuff yourself if the data recovery people won’t play ball.

have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ul97jWv2PKY for example

Scott Moulton is a King of Hard Drive recovery, have a look here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kx-D1nJcv0k

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Best answer:

Answer by Pill Popper
Go to My Computer > Acer and delete all the stuff in the files.
Or just press F6 when you switch your PC on, and it will give you a Re-Boot option and that will sort your Hard Drive wipe and everything else out

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Is this period of blank screen connected to adding an extra drive?

Best answer:

Answer by dodger49
I think only if you are dual booting with another os

What do you think? Answer below!

Best answer:

Answer by Lozza264
I had a laptop with those configurations in my first year of university and it was fine

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Best answer:

Answer by Mystery Customer
Every chance that the answer will be yes but the best idea would be to find out exactly what hard drive you have in the G4 & what the G5 will accept.

A service manual will give you the G4 spec and, touch wood, the owners manual for the G5 will tell you what it will take.

HTH

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Question by baby: If I buy a bigger hard drive for my laptop, will it make my computer run faster or just increase the memory?

Best answer:

Answer by rsist34
no and no
it will just increase the amount of stuff you can put on your hard drive.

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Best answer:

Answer by Lloyd
Yes mate but i am not that tech minded to know where to start.

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Question by : Where can I get good hard drive caddys for my old PS3 hard drive?
I am updating my ps3 hard drive and want to turn the old one as an external USB drive. Where can I get good, cheap caddys for this?

Best answer:

Answer by ebox1349
depends where you are! in the UK?
try PC World, any good Computer repair store should also have them in stock or be able to get you one reasonably quickly, buying online means you have to pay postage and packing and this simply increases the cost.

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Question by davidwestwell: Trying to recover data from a hard disk problem?
This is a 2.5″ hard disk. When connected via USB to look at the disk, it freezes my laptop or desktop. It contains important data which I need to recover and was the original operating disk running XP home but became faulty with error messages such as “not equal” on a blue screen.

Best answer:

Answer by Who Dares Wins
Try connecting it as a slave drive in your desktop. Even if the mountings do not match as this is only a temporary thing just make sure that the jumpers are correct for a slave and that the electric circuit board is clear of any other metal. As a temp fix use cardboard to keep it clear.

wdw

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Best answer:

Answer by Jetro
Go to My Computer
Select your ipod
Then go tools and then options
Then select show hidden folders
Then go into your ipod and all of your songs should be there all you have to do is drag and drop.

What do you think? Answer below!

Question by Cade T: can you download a ps3 game to an external hard drive and play on ps3 through harddrive?
like if i downloaded a torrent or burnt a ps3 game onto my errabyte hard drive then connected to ps3 can i play the game?

Best answer:

Answer by nanospasm
i dont know but i downloaded a film onto my 500 sumo hard drive from the internet and it worked a dream on my ps3… i guess it should work as long as its in the correct format?

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Question by Mailrhj: How do I format my hard disk without deleting windows?
I ran PC Recovery on my HP Laptop, it said it was successful but all the files (music, pics, etc) are still on the drive. They are not accessable apart from with Data recovery software. How do I delete them without totally re formatting my Hard drive and losing windows. I also don’t have an XP disc to re-install windows if I did have to format the drive. HELP!!!!
Thanks guys

Best answer:

Answer by jamesmicoff
At this point you have no option but to get an installation disk.

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any help appreciated.

Best answer:

Answer by Computer Tech
I do a lot of computer repair here and I don’t. I do keep records of the people and their computer. Like the name of the person and the specs of the computer. That is so if I work on it again I will know a little about it.
I also keep a lot of notes.

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Large External Hard Drives

There was a time when a 250GB external hard drive was considered to be extremely large and something of luxury. Nowadays the first 4TB drive is a reality from Western Digital and who knows how much bigger they will grow.

One of the interesting conundrums this throws up is do I need an external hard drive to backup my external hard drive? When most of us buy an external drive it is to back up an internal computer hard drive and protect valuable data, be it photos, mp3s, movies or important work files. However if the external drive is so large that it holds everything on your internal disk and some additional files, in a sense you are back where you started requiring another backup as protection. Luckily with even 1TB drives being relatively cheap, it is probably good practice to have a second external desktop drive to copy to. Modern drives are relatively stable but as we all know, technology can fail us from time to time and it is better safe than sorry.

With such large volumes of data to move eSATA connections are now becoming more common because of the speed with which they can handle data.

If your PC does not have an eSATA connection you can fit a card into the computer giving you the extra flexibility. The other alternative is a Firewire connection which is faster than the standard USB2 connection that the overwhelming majority of modern drives come equipped with. Having said that if you are not in a hurry to backup huge volumes then a USB2 transfer will do the job adequately and you can go off and perform other tasks while the process is running.

Whichever way you view it an external hard drive these days is vital for the home user. Whether your priority is extra capacity where the likes of audio and video data files consume more of your internal drive, or merely as backup I recommend you make a purchase now and enjoy peace of mind for the future.

Related Hard Drive Articles

Best answer:

Answer by JAFOOLY™
Yes and RAM. You can use EnCase of FTK to explore further if you know what you are doing.

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Best answer:

Answer by Johnny
your cord configuration is not the problem first the settings of the ps3 must be configured to auto detect then the folders must be in a certain arrangement for Linux to see them i cant remember the arrangement but if you google installing wallpaper on ps3 through thumb stick its the third result will post the link in a minute

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I need to buy the one I know it can support but don’t just know which one.

Best answer:

Answer by jasonicus
That USB connection is merely for updates to firmware, not connecting devices. You’ll need to connect it to a pc, then to your tv to run the data off of it.

What do you think? Answer below!

Question by steve c: did system recovery and lost a few files, but still got 120gig of data on hard drive, where’s all my music gon
did search but found nothing but wnen i click on properties of “c” ther is still 120 gig + none of my programs have gone …just the contents of my doc’s

Best answer:

Answer by cryosys
Try a recovery software like File Scavenger. It can help to restore your files.

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Question by xkloosive: how i can use internel hard disk as an external drive for back up?
I have an extra internal hard disk,is there any docking or cables available where i can use this drive as a bak up external drive?

Best answer:

Answer by eastlondon02
Just add as a secondary hard drive in your tower, I aint sure if there any cables to add it as a external hard drive. because a internal hard drive uses either Sata or IDE connections. A external hard drive uses USB. So i would say install inside your tower as a secondary hard drive to use a back up.

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Personal Tips For Protection Of Hard Disk Under Vista

Article by Robert Snoog

Now Windows Vista has great influence and popularity; however, when people are wild about beautification, shall they concentrate the protection of hard disk? Today, this article will spare the knowledge on hard disk safeguard, which is expected to bring some assistance to the net friends.

1. Volume Shadow Copy Service

Volume Shadow Copy Service， VSS has the function of quick data back-up and recover, and it adds snapshot function through volume manage module; After that, it could create the Image on the basis of Point-In-Time, therefore, the quick back-up and recover of data could be realized. From that, we could know VSS has considerable read and read-in operations to hard-disk, which certainly aggravate the burden of hard disk, so the longevity of hard disk will be influenced as time passes. Press “Start + R” key combination, and in the window input “services.msc” and press “enter” to open “service” dialog box, and find “Volume Shadow Copy” in the right window. Next double click “Volume Shadow Copy”, in the following window change the system default “automatic” into “disabled”.

2. Compression and Index Files

Some net friends will ask, “Do the compression and index files harm to the hard disk?” Yes, they really could influence the longevity of hard disk. Why? You can understand after you read the following section.

If you want to cancel the compress and index function, please right click the corresponding disks or files, confirm the tab as “normal” in the pop-up dialog box, and then cancel the option “compress this drive to spare disk space” and “create this drive index to quickly search”. If the user installs double systems (for example: Windows Vista and Windows XP), the partition which XP locates is the main activity partition, so Vista system has not two checkboxes in the above right-click menu.

3. System Search

The system search is related with the above file compression and index. When the system compresses and indexes a huge file, it needs to read the hard disk frequently with numerous data; moreover, when these operations are finished, the system will again search suited target files to compressed and indexed files if the user carry on search operations, so it is equal to the repeated “converse operation” of hard disk.

Aiming at the above analysis, we suggest canceling the index file search to avoid the “seemingly methodic” search to hard disk every time.

Open Windows explorer, click “tool” →”folder option” (if you can not see “tool”, please press “Alt”), in the pop-up dialog box please switch to “search” tab. In the Vista default setting, only there is the index for file, the file and content could be searched, but if there is no index in advance, the Vista only compares the filenames and finds whether the filenames contain the search option or not. It is no doubt to reduce the search efficiency of this search method, and aggravate the burden of hard disk.

4. Disk defragment and system recover

Many friends, who have some experience on computer, know that the damage from disk defragment and system recover to hard disk is not only in Windows Vista system. However, in Windows Vista system, this problem is still existent, so we shall not ignore it.

Frequent disk defragment has no benefit but damage to hard disk. Disk defragment must analyze the bottom of hard disk and judge which data is movable and which data is immovable, and then sort the files. Before the sorting of hard disk data configuration, it continuously and randomly reads and reads-in the data into other partition, and moves the data into the suitable position. All these operations greatly influence the longevity of hard disk.