Computer Drives & Storage

The files on your hard drive become fragmented over time and can lead to less efficient performance and slow down your computer. Windows 7 allows you to schedule periodic system defrags, or to...

Making copies of your data and moving those copies to long-term storage is called "backup." There are several ways to do this, which ranges from backing up individual files and folders to making...

Computers depend on quick access to immense stores of data. The movable heads in a modern hard drive make this speed possible by scanning the data wherever it may be on the disk, instead of...

Your IBM microdrive is an integral part of your digital camera's ability to do its job. If you have a professiona-level camera system, you may find yourself relying on several of these drives...

Formatted mini-DVDs are most often used in digital video cameras, saving the content onto the disk. Each one of the files saved onto the disk is stored as a mini movie, so when the mini-DVD is...

When your Gateway computer stops working, you may opt to take it to a technician to get it fixed, or you may opt to reformat the drive yourself. Reformatting should be a last resort to get your...

Before computers came equipped with the versatile USB port, computers had parallel ports. These ports are made up of several pins and allow hardware to connect to the system. It is possible to...

There are times when the autorun function on a CD or DVD doesn’t work. What are the ways to troubleshoot and fix? How to fix the CD or DVD autorun in a computer.

A corrupt or failing hard drive can be difficult to troubleshoot. If the drive has not completely stopped working there may be little evidence to support replacement. A noisy drive may not be...

Now you want to know how to destroy your old hard drive before throwing it away. We all know that physical hard drive damage is the best way to ensure your files never gets to the wrong people....

Transferring files from a SD card to a disk is easy and only takes a second. Plus, it is a good idea to back up files on a disk rather than relying on your computer as storage.

As you use your computer, its hard drive may eventually develop bad sectors. Bad sectors are sections of the drive that can no longer be used reliably and must be "worked around." When a bad...

Over the normal course of usage, your Zip disk will have large amounts of data continuously saved, deleted and rewritten to it. Eventually the disk may become corrupted if it is used often enough...

A CD writer is used to create music and data CDs. You can create personal music mixes, backup files and transport reports and other files. CDs can also be used for picture slide shows. CD writers...

Before flash drives and burnable CDs, data from a computer was saved onto a portable floppy disk. These disks were small in size, yet could only hold slightly more than 1 megabyte of information....

Adding videos to your SD card allows you to play them on your portable media device or transfer to another computer, or media application. They are ideal for storing video of different formats and...

A start-up disk, which is more commonly referred to as a boot disk, allows you to boot your computer's operating system from a CD or floppy disk. If you no longer have the original start-up disk,...

When a hard drive fails, it is often not an unexpected event. For many types of failures that can occur, the drive will exhibit subtle symptoms that can indicate a possible problem. If your...

Formatting your hard drive doesn't remove all of the information off of your hard drive. This guide will show you how to remove everything from your hard drive.

An SD card is a storage device especially effective for storing video files because they contain large memory capacities ranging from 1GB to 16GB and more. On a computer, you can transfer videos...

Erasing everything off a laptop is a simple task. According to pcworld.com, the best method to clearing a hard drive is using a boot disk. Simply deleting files off your computer into the...

CD-R is a recordable media with a storage capacity of 700 megabytes. To create a DVD-like disk it is necessary to write video files on a CD-R in the video CD (VCD) format. Such a disk holds up to...

If you have a large amount of room on your PC computer's hard drive, then you can create a new partition for that free space. With a new partition, you will be able to install a second operating...

A Storage Area Network is a Disk Array Enclosure (DAE) that allows many Servers to share data storage using high-speed fiber-optics. This article applies to the low cost and scalable AX4-5 array...

Although an external hard drive is difficult to beat in terms of convenience, it can experience certain problems that are not common with internal hard drives. Several possible causes must be...

Many computers arrive from the factory with a hidden partition containing data needed to restore the computer to its original configuration in the event of a severe operating system problem. If...

The hard disk drive, or HDD, is the most important part of your computer, because while the hardware is easily replaceable, the data that is lost when it fails may not be. A typical hard drive...

If your computer has been filled up with junk you no longer need or you plan on giving your computer to someone else, you may want to completely delete everything on the hard drive. Manually...

If you run out of room for file storage or simply decide to perform "spring cleaning" on your computer, it may be necessary to erase data from your floppy disks. There are multiple ways to delete...

Hard disk space in your computer is something that is never enough. As long as there is space, you have something to fill it up. Especially in laptops you can't even add another hard disk to...

An external hard disk drive can come in handy in a variety of cases. Whether you simply need extra storage space for your pictures and music, would like to create a bootable disk drive containing...

With the Disk Manager utility program, which is automatically included with the Windows XP operating system, computer users can partition any hard drive connected to their system. Partitioning a...

Most laptop and desktop computers no longer include 3.5" floppy disk drives due to newer drive types that are capable of transferring larger amounts of data much more quickly. If you have data you...

Creating a new hard drive partition in Windows XP involves the use of Disk Management. This application is installed with the operating system, and it is available to all users of the machine....

Moving up to a newer computer is always exciting. You will likely be able to run more programs, perform more tasks and enjoy faster speed. The main downside to purchasing a new computer is having...

Formatting a hard drive in WinMe is a convenient method of wiping the computer system and starting fresh with a new operating system installation. When deleting information from a hard drive using...

SanDisk is the biggest flash memory manufacturer in the world. One of its USB flash drives is branded Cruzer and comes in capacities ranging up to 32GB. After a lot of use, you may find the drive...

For many years, a floppy drive was found in nearly every computer. Although floppy disks (diskettes) largely have been replaced by flash drives and optical media, you may need to install a floppy...

If you've bought a new hard drive but don't want to install a Windows operating system, you can still make the drive bootable. A bootable hard drive is one that has a partition and is formatted...

Hard disk speed can significantly influence the computer performance. Even if the computer has powerful CPU, good memory, a slow hard disk can be a bottleneck in the computer. It could be...

The ability to boot from an external SATA disk drive is beneficial in several situations. External SATA devices, also known as e-SATA devices, connect utilizing the e-SATA specification which is...

The process of formatting a disk will remove all the information, data, and programs that are currently stored on the disk. When a disk is completely formatted, there will be absolutely no...

While troubleshooting a problem with your computer, you may have wondered about the meaning of the term "boot disk," and how to make one. Boot disks have been used to troubleshoot computer...

If you decide to format a hard drive, it's important to understand the steps needed to completely wipe the drive of any information. The "C" drive is typically the drive that contains the system...

If your laptop computer is running out of hard disk space, then it’s time to replace it with a higher capacity hard disk to accommodate your needs. This article will show you how to replace your...

Your hard disk is broken and you have replaced it with a new drive. But you want the data you had on it. What is the easiest thing you can do to recover that data. Your absolute best scenario...

Ever had a floppy disk stop working for no reason or one that never worked in the first place. Here is a way to repair most problems.

The Amiga A4000T is an older personal computer that was first built back in 1994. It was created to use several different internal floppy drives to run and install software and programming. But as...

While browsing system options on your computer, you may notice a utility program or tool that mentions the process of formatting. All kinds of digital media, including hard drives, CDs and USB...

Zip disks are a type of removable media similar to floppy disks, but with a much larger storage capacity. Over time, as a Zip disk is written and re-written multiple times, the files on the disk...