Posts tagged harddisk
Mobile data storage devices External hard disks Vs Thumb Drives Vs Mobile CD DVD writers – comparison
Dec 13th
It often becomes necessary to bring your data stored in storage devices with you. The size of the floppy disk is 1.44MB, therefore the use of floppy disk is getting lesser and lesser. The storage capacity should be high but at the same time it should be easy to carry around. Immediately it reminds you of CD rom disks. But recently there are more options available such as external hard disk drives, zip disks, mobile CD writers, mobile DVD writers and thumb drivers.
These storage devices are used to copy audio, video, images or data files from your hard disk and carry it with your anywhere you go. Here let us discuss all these devices and their features.
External hard disk
The external hard disks come in 20GB, 30GB, 40GB, 60GB, 80GB and 120GB. They are connected to the computer using Firewire or USB. Both AC and DC supported external hard disks are available.
If you have an external hard disk with the inbuilt battery, then if there is power supply the battery will be charging itself and if there is a power failure then the battery will supply the power. So your work will not be interrupted.
Some external hard disks use USB to connect to the computer. The required power will be taken from the USB board itself.
Some external hard disks come with software required to take backups of data.
You can read more about external hard disks from www.adstech.com , www.cmsproducts.com , www.maxtor.com, www.simpletech.com
External hard disks with PC Card (Type B) interface are also available to connect to notebooks. You can read about it at www.toshiba.com
Mobile CD and DVD writers
Instead of just the external hard disks there are many multi function writers with USB and firewire interface.
External CD writers are few. There are many DVD+RW, DVDR and DVDRW DVD writers in the market. Both cable charged DVD writers as well as USB DVD chargeable writers are also available.
You can read about DVD writers at iomega, sony, plextor and addonics websites.
Addonics company’s multi function recorder is a CD writer, DVD reader and MP3 player. You can connect this device to TV projector directly if needed.
Thumb drives
Now the size of the drives have become so small that you can hang it in your neck or key chain. These are called thumb drives.
16MB, 128MB, 2565MB, 1GB, 1.5GB or higher thumb drives are available. All these are with USM interfaces. They will extract power from the USB itself.
Kangaru, Thumbdrive, disk onkey, verbatim, imation are some of the companies that provide thumb drives.
How to assign or change a drive letter in your hard disk?
Dec 13th
While assembling a computer, usually drive C attains main role and others become subsidiary, while using pen drives the OS automatically assigns an alphabet and later delete it. Do you know you can assign a name using A to Z alphabets? Disk Management snap in software in windows XP provides this feature. A and B letters are assigned for your floppy drive C is assigned disk containing OS. If you don’t have floppy drive you can use A and B for other drives. But you may install floppy drives some day so we will leave out A and B and see how to assign other alphabets.
To assign all favorite letters to a disk drive (or) part of (or) a volume for the first time do as said below. First start log in as user.
1. Then click start=> control panel option, it will list sum of option then select Performance and Maintenance. (Note: This option will be enable only on control panel. So we should open it.)
2. Now click Administrative tools and then double click on computer management. Now some of option listed on the left side of it then selects Disk management.)
3. Now right click on the drive, as you want to create letters, and then click on change drive letter and paths.
4. From that click Add
5. Now default computer mark the type of letter from “Assign the following drive letter” Now you can make changes only by selecting some other type of letter.
We see how to change the type of letter for a drive on its parts
1. Select start=>control panel a window will be open then select “Performance and Maintenance” from that window.
2. Now click on “Administrative Tools” after that double click on computer management. Now you get sum of option from the left side of window here we select the Disk management.
3. Right click on the drive (or) the part on we want change the letter type after that select “change drive letter and paths” from it.
4. Now click on “change” option carefully
5.Now select the type of letter from “Assign the following drive letter” option and give ok to it
6. Carefully give yes when a dialogue box open with the message of whether change the type of letter. Now you got to selected letter types enabled on the drives.
To change the already existing letter, use following
1. Click start=>control panel. Now you get new window. Select performance and maintenance option from that window.
2. Now click on Administrative tools after that double click on computer management. Now select the disk management option from the left side of the window.
3. Right click on the drive (or) part as you want to change the letter type, then “change drive letter and paths”
4. Now carefully click the “remove” option
5. Now you got a dialogue box, which contains the warning message. Click Yes on it. At this time you got the certain type of letter will be removed.
Like this you would apply this option for your drive.
How to maintain your computer and keep your harddisk clean?
Dec 13th
When you bought the computer the engineers may have given these advise to you. Or when there was some problem in the computer and you went for repair the support engineer may have cautioned you about these tips. You may even have tried these once and then forgot about it. It becomes a MUST to keep your harddisk healthy and clean for your computer to function properly at all times. Therefore I advice you to print these tips and paste it in your computer room so that you always remember to follow these advice.
- Virus Scan: At least every fortnightly you should scan your computer for viruses. Or atleast configure your Anti-virus software to auto scan at preset intervals. Almost all the Anti-virus software comes with this scheduled scanning feature. This is called AutoProtect. Set this feature ON. Likewise if there is a virus then what to do, do you want to delete it, if not possible to delete then quarantine it etc. You can set these options in your Anti virus software. Also remember to update the virus definition files of your Antivirus software often. Or select the ‘Live Update’ option so that the Antivirus software is always upto date.
- Another essential software you should have is ‘Adware / Spyware’ removal program. Though this is not as important as the Anti virus software it is better to have a Adware Spyware removal software. Only then you will be notified of malicious spy programs that spy on your private information. ZoneAlarm is a free software that detects Adware and Spyware in your computer. So download and install this free software.
- Some unwanted files occupy your harddisk space. Your computer will detect these unwanted files and delete them to free your harddisk space. For this you have to do ‘Disk cleanup‘. In your windows explorer select ‘C’ drive and right click and choose ‘properties’. In the new window that opens, you will see a small pie chart which shows how much of your hard disk is currently occupied and how much is free. In this window you will see the ‘Disk cleanup’ button. If you click on this the Disk cleaning process will start. It will show you how much space can be freed. If you are doing this first time, you will be surprised that the unwanted files occupy so much space.
- Due to curiosity you may have installed many programs and applications in your computer. Some of the applications you may have used once or twice and may have forgotten about the application. It is a good practice therefore to remove these unwanted applications from your computer every now and then. To do this, goto Start,Control Panel and click on ‘Add/Remove Programs‘. In the ‘Add/Remove programs’ window you will see a list of all the programs installed in your computer. It will also show you when was the last time you used each program. Here you can select the unwanted application and uninstall.
- You can also manually look in to your ‘My Documents‘ folder or any other folder that you frequently use to store your files and see if there is any unwanted file and delete it.
- If you use ‘Outlook’ to view your emails then all your emails get stored in your inbox and trash folder. You can clear unwanted emails from outlook to save a lot of space.
- Similarly you can also clear history from your internet explorer. Your browser keeps in history some files from each website you visit. So if you have not cleared history files from internet explorer for quite some time then it may occupy a lot of space in your harddisk. Therefore it is best to goto ‘Tools,Internet options’ and then ‘Delete Temporary internet files’ and clear history from there. You may also ‘Delete cookies‘ and ‘Delete Files’.
- You may have kept shortcuts to many programs and applications in your desktop. It is a good practice to keep your desktop clean by deleting unwanted icons from desktop. Remember that deleting shortcuts does not delete the application. You should uninstall the application from ‘control panel->Add remove programs’.
- Also remember that just deleting files DOES NOT free space. Because windows will store all the deleted files into ‘Recycle Bin‘. So you have to ‘Empty the recycle bin’ in order to delete the files permanently and free space in your hard disk.
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