Occasionally, one or more sectors on an otherwise good hard drive will go bad. When this happens, the data in those sectors may be lost, but the data on the rest of the disk will be unaffected and the disk is still completely usable. Those bad sectors cannot be repaired, but they can be marked as unusable. Once marked as unusable, the Operating System will know not to attempt to store data in those bad sectors. The total disk capacity will be decreased by the amount of storage space in Read More

If you’re still using a floppy disk drive, here are ways you can repair it if you have problems with it. New Computer For new computers with drives that won’t work try the following: Check the ‘troubleshooting’ list of common problems and see if there is a solution there. Make sure there is power going to the drive and inspect its power connection. You may need to buy a new connector. Check that the cable connecting the floppy drive is properly connected and is not crimped. Newly Installed Drive Be Read More

Broken hard disks can be both a nuisance and a major loss to business and personal affairs whenever files are lost or inaccessible. Fortunately, there are several things users can do to repair a broken hard disk before throwing it out in order to restore lost or inaccessible files.   Let the Hard Disk Cool Down The first thing users should do is allow their hard disk to cool down by shutting the computer off and unplugging it from the wall. The user can cool his/her hard disk down faster Read More

If you would like to replace your old hard drive with an upgraded drive, this is a simple process that can be done at home. Most new hard drives will come with installation instructions to make the task easier for you. Steps To install A Hard Drive Shut down the computer, and unplug all accessories attached to it. Continue by unplugging the computer completely from its power source, wait fifteen seconds, and “ground” yourself to prevent electrical shock. Remove the screws holding the computer’s cover in place. Remove the computers Read More

A key concept in data storage is that it is linear, logical, and systematic in nature. When someone ‘saves’ data to the hard disk, the disk will follow a logical system. A hard disk can be compared to a large, square piece of graphing paper composed of squares, a thousand long and a thousand wide. Each square can accommodate one kilobyte of data and thus a ‘strip’ having a thousand squares can store one megabyte of data. In such a case, the disk head will ‘fill’ in the upper leftmost Read More

A hard disk partition is a defined storage space on a hard drive. Most operating systems allow users to divide a hard disk into multiple partitions, in effect making one physical hard disk into several smaller logical hard disks. Reasons to Use Hard Disk Partitions A user may decide to split a hard disk into multiple partitions in order to organize his/her data more effectively. On Microsoft Windows machines, it is common to store the OS and applications on one hard disk partition and user data on another. When a Read More

The hard drive is where everything is stored on a computer. Any text document, picture or music file that you have placed on your computer is stored on the hard drive. Sometimes, though, the hard drive fails and you need to remove it. Or, you decide that you want to upgrade the hard drive so that you have more space to put things on. Regardless of your reasoning, removing the hard drive is a must before you can upgrade. The first step is to back the hard drive up. If Read More

Blu-ray is an optical storage format developed by Sony and Phillips. It was created to store large amounts of high definition video and sound. Blu-ray’s name came from the type of laser it uses to read and write data. The laser is a hue of blue-violet. A blue-violet laser has a shorter wavelength than the normal red lasers used today. How Does Blu Ray Work? Before answering how it works, it is important to understand why it is the superior disk. To begin with, a Blu Ray disk can hold Read More

Hard drive data recovery is the process of recovering lost data from a hard drive when the data cannot be readily accessed through normal retrieval methods. Whether the hard drive has locked up or has completely crashed, there is a good chance the data can be recovered with a variety of hard drive data recovering techniques. Reasons for Hard Drive Crashes There could be multiple causes for hard drive failures. A full blown hard drive crash is generally attributed to a hardware issue. The hard drive is a magnetic disc Read More

An external hard drive is any hard drive which attaches to a port on the outside of a computer case. External hard drives are extremely useful for backing up computers and for moving data between computers. External Hard Drive Interfaces External hard drives can be connected using several popular interfaces. One external hard drive may support two or more of these interfaces. FireWire FireWire, almost known as IEEE 1394, is a popular interface for Macintosh external hard drives, and became somewhat popular on PC’s before USB 2.0 was standardized. USB Read More