tech sectiontech sectionHard drives and other devices based on the Integrated Drive Electronics, or IDE, interface standard were originally designed to be internal devices to a computer system. The Universal Serial Bus, or USB, enables different kinds of devices to connect to a computer system externally. USB-to-IDE bridges enable IDE devices to quickly connect to a computer externally through a USB port. You can set up a USB-to-IDE bridge to enable this functionality.
NAS, or Network Attached Storage, is an external hard drive that provides expanded storage opportunities for each computer on your network. Regardless of the manufacturer, NAS devices can work with both Mac and PC computers, as they are set up with your network and not your individual computer. Once your NAS is connected to your network, you can immediately begin storing files and backups right on the drive.
When you power on your MacBook, it boots up from the startup disc that you last selected using the System Preferences startup disc option. The default startup drive is the MacBook's internal hard drive, but you might want to start up from a USB drive connected to the laptop. For example, you may want to run diagnostic tests on the internal drive, or you want to try working with a different operating system that's loaded on the external drive.
If you are a photographer or graphic designer, your computer monitor should be calibrated properly to represent precise colors on-screen. While most monitors provide auto-calibration through color temperature presets, you may need to fine-tune these settings. Using a Dell Studio monitor, you can adjust the RGB color temperatures manually.
The AirPort wireless router connects your high-speed Internet modem to a network, which in turn connects your computer along with other network users for data swapping, printing or media sharing. Devices such as storage drives, printers and Apple TV are visible to network users, which you can access through the Finder. If you wish for others to have access to your external backup drive, the AirPort device allows others to view data on your drive while on your network. While connected, you'll also need to enter your external drive's password to gain access as the storage device is protected to…
The MacBook Air is one of Apple's numerous laptop models and like any computer, it's capable of playing video. Whether you're watching streaming video or downloaded TV episodes, the MacBook Air can provide the same video playing performance as any notebook or portable device. If you want to transfer video onto your MacBook Air, you simply have to copy any video files from an external storage device.
OS X is an operating system used by Mac computers. If you are currently running an older version of the OS, it is a good idea to install the updated OS X and take advantage of all the additional features it provides. Typically the operating system is installed using the computer's built-in CD/DVD drive. However, if this drive is malfunctioning, you probably have an external USB CD drive connected to the computer. This is more than acceptable to use for the installation process, as the OS does not care what CD drive is used to install the information.
MacBooks were introduced by Apple Computer in 2006 as their introductory laptop offerings based on the Intel processor. MacBooks have lesser hardware features than the Macbook Pro line of professional laptops, and are designed with the home user in mind. MacBooks are also less expensive than the Macbook Pro. MacBooks are designed to run the Apple Mac OS X operating system, though alternative operating systems can also run on the MacBook. You can boot Linux on a MacBook from a disc.
Digital photos that are stored in a computer can represent previous memories and other important events in a person's life. Due to that importance, it is vital that digital photos be backed-up to a secondary storage location, such as an external USB drive. The two most common types of USB storage are hard drives and flash, or "thumb," drives. You can back-up your photos to a USB storage device with Windows Explorer.
As people build up large collections of music and video files, they often find that they run short of hard drive space, due to the large sizes of audio and video files. Adding an extra hard drive solves the problem. With hard disks rapidly increasing in size, the system storage can be substantially increased. Before purchasing a new hard drive, you should decide whether you want an internal SATA drive or external USB drive.
Most of today's laptops come with a track pad installed to navigate the screen without any need for external hardware. For many people though, having an actual mouse can be much more comfortable and be easier to use. With so many options available to use, you might turn one off from time to time. Enabling the device again will allow you to use your hardware once again.
Use a SATA hard drive in an external USB enclosure to store data or to transport data between different computers that are not networked together. Create a back-up of a computer or file server, or store media such as movies and music on the drive. Connect the USB cable to any computer with an available USB port, or store it in a safe deposit box with a complete back-up of all the important data that resides on a computer.
CD-ROM drives allow users to install programs and play digital video and audio on their computers. This is important, as sometimes this is the only method available of installing certain programs. The MacBook Air is a computer that is designed with portability and ease of use in mind. However, it does not have a CD-ROM drive for some very good reasons.
The Apple MacBook Air is a notebook computer advertised as one of the thinnest and lightest laptops on the market. Apple first released the MacBook Air in 2008, and in 2010 released a revised version with a new smaller size. Both versions of the MacBook Air are more expensive than many competing notebook computers. However, the MacBook Air has several features that may make it worth the price if you can afford to purchase it.
An Iomega Zip Disk allows you to back up the files on your hard drive. You can complete the backup once or have it automatically done on a weekly or daily basis. It's important to backup your files in the event your computer crashes or the files become damaged. With the Iomega Zip Disk, you can recover your files anytime with the use of a recovery program. Learn the proper way to recover your files to ensure you never lose a piece of important data.
When an external hard drive slows down your MacBook, the problem is usually either a lack of laptop memory or the program "Spotlight," an internal search engine. When you add an external hard drive to your MacBook, "Spotlight" will automatically search and index the drive. This process can take a long time, and it slows down your laptop while it is executing. The solution is to edit the program's preferences so it will not index your external hard drive. If editing "Spotlight's" preferences does not restore your former speed, you may need to add more memory to your MacBook.
The plug on a computer that a particular type of cord will fit into is called a "port," and express port replicators provide laptop users a quick way to plug in all their devices.
Most portable media devices sync data to a desktop or laptop computer via the USB port. The batteries in these devices can also be charged by that same powered USB connection. There may be situations, however, when you may need to change the default power settings of a particular USB port so the device connected to it does not interfere with the your computer's performance. For example, some types of devices connected to a computer's USB port can prevent the computer from going into its power-saving "sleep" mode. In Ubuntu Linux, there is a way to modify the power settings…
The Iomega Zip drive is a removable media storage device used for data backups and data storage. The Zip disks are similar to floppy disks in size, although the thickness and disk capacity is much greater. The Iomega Zip drive may have problems installing on your computer, formatting the disk properly or storing data. Troubleshooting a Zip drive or disk is generally a straightforward process that will not take a significant amount of time.
Iomega is a computer hardware company that makes a variety of external storage devices. If you are using an external disk form Iomega (such as a Zip disk) and some of the files appear to be corrupt, it is possible to recover the data information with a file recovery program you can download for free from the Internet.
The Mad Dog Multimedia External USB Case is an external enclosure that is used with internal hardware. The case fits around an internal hard drive, allowing you to hook up the device directly to a USB port on any Windows Vista computer. The case also works with all other versions of Windows. Because the case does not actually have any configurable hardware components, an installation disc is not supplied and no software drivers are required. Simply place a working drive in the enclosure, plug it in to a USB port and the drive is ready to be used.
The Windows 7 operating system lets you create system backups and store them on any external media including a USB hard drive. If your system crashes and you need to restore from your personal backup copy, you can accomplish restoration using the Windows 7 Recovery Console, which is a part of the installation DVD. Restoring a hard drive replaces all information with the backup, so you can recover a hard disk partition that fails due to corrupted system files.
A TRENDnet USB wireless router uses an antenna to transmit and receive Wi-Fi signals. Modify the antenna to increase the signal strength and range of the TRENDnet router. A few household supplies and several items from an electronics store or hobby shop will be needed. Several common household tools will also be required. The TRENDnet router itself will not be modified so this project should not void the warranty. Adult supervision is necessary if a child is involved because the project requires the use of a soldering iron.
If you've got an old hard drive sitting on your shelf, you can use a Maxtor external USB enclosure to change your IDE or SATA hard drive into a portable data storage device. The Maxtor external USB enclosure allows the hard drive to be connected to any computer with an available USB port. You can store media files, documents, and any other type of data you would normally store on a hard drive.
The Kubuntu 8.10 operating system is a Linux operating system. Unlike its Windows and Mac operating system counterparts (which automatically perform mounting operations whenever an external USB hard drive is attached to their computers), the Linux operating systems require you to perform a manual mounting operation. This consists of entering a few commands into the Linux Terminal program to mount the drive.
Wireless NIC, or network interface cards, can be divided into categories, depending on the type of wireless network to which they are connecting. They can be internal, or external by using USB ports. The different types vary in bandwidth, range and penetration.
If you have just purchased an external USB hard disk, you need to partition the hard disk. Partitioning sets up a file table on the drive and allows the computer's operating system to read and write data to the drive. Once a partition is set up and formatted, the USB hard disk appears in the Windows Explorer window as another hard disk on your computer.
USB is the standard method used to connect a computer to any of several peripheral devices, including cameras, flash drives, keyboards, computer mice and printers. FireWire is the name for the Apple Computer version of the IEEE 1394 connection method usually used with audio/visual components.
External USB drives are extremely handy. They make it extremely easy to transfer large amounts of data from computer to computer. Despite this, for extremely large amounts of data, this adds an intermediary step that can slow the file transfer process down. Instead, it's possible to temporarily turn an internal drive into an external USB drive and eliminate the use of an intermediary drive.
Booting from a USB drive takes less than 15 minutes and is useful for loading the operating system even if the hard drive is corrupted or malfunctioning. Typically, a computer loads off of its primary drive, CD/DVD drive or floppy drive. However, booting from a USB is possible and fairly easy. All it involves is changing the boot setup in the BIOS of the computer.
The Lenovo 2764, also known as the Thinkpad T400, is a powerful notebook computer. It can be equipped with up to 4 GB of DDR3 RAM, and can carry an Intel Core 2 Duo processor at speeds as high as 2.93 GHz. Graphics options include both an onboard Intel processor as well as a discrete AMD M82XT processor with 256 MB of RAM. With that processor, the T400 can generate resolutions as high as 2048x1536 on an external monitor.
Installing Ubuntu on removable media allows you to take a working version with you to any other computer. The caveat is that you need to be able to boot from a USB device on the foreign machine. Ubuntu can serve as your second operating system and not interfere with the first; you'll be able to switch between them by just rebooting the computer. Ubuntu developers even give you a tool that automatically makes an Ubuntu installation on an external drive.
Most video cameras manufactured now have some sort of a USB cable connection. This allows you to directly capture the video from your video camera into the computer. The exact process is going to vary depending on whether the camera saves the video to an internal storage drive or to a video tape. However, regardless of how the video is saved, both methods are capable of uploading to the computer.
Although notebook drives (both hard drives and CD/DVD optical drives) are typically smaller in size to fit into the compact space of the portable computer, the hardware isn't directly compatible with a desktop computer. In order to hook up it to an external USB data port, you do need a special converter to send the data from the internal notebook equipment to the desktop system.
It can be handy to have an external CD-ROM at home. Not all computers contain an internal CD-ROM, such as the MacBook Air. Also, the computer itself often outlasts its original CD-ROM. With an external CD-ROM, you can easily install the Mac operating system using a disc.
Your multimedia experience is greatly affected by the quality of your computer's sound card, whether you stream video and music from the Internet, or watch DVDs using your PC. Through the versatility and power of USB connections, you can use an external sound card to circumvent a shoddy, generic/factory card.
Making your own portable USB external hard drive can be much more cost-effective than purchasing a pre-manufactured hard drive. Making your own drive also allows you to customize the drives, use a SATA or IDE connection and make use of any extra unused internal hard drives. To make the drive portable, you must use a laptop hard drive and a hard drive case with a USB power adapter.
If you want to install an additional CD or DVD-ROM drive, and have a laptop or an older computer with no space left inside the tower, then you can use an external optical drive. All external USB optical drives utilize plug-and-play technology. This technology simplifies the installation of computer peripherals and removes the need for a driver disc or download. External drives can be installed with no computer knowledge or expertise.
While the Dell Studio 17 series of laptops includes the standard mobile touch pad, you may want to use an external mouse instead. The Studio 17 laptop has separate USB drives for connecting external devices, such as an optical or trackball mouse for gaming. A USB mouse will not function properly if the option isn't turned on the Dell's BIOS menu. Altering the BIOS to include USB mouse support is a simple and quick procedure.
The Iomega Zip 250 external USB is an Zip drive that functions just like a standard floppy disk drive, only instead of backing up 1.44 megabytes of information, it can hold 250 megabytes of data. However, while using the disk drive with any computer you can run into a few issues, typically resulting in the inability to save data to the drive. These issues can be fixed with a few troubleshooting steps.
It should not come as a surprise to anyone that laptop keyboards are often downsized to accommodate the size of the computers they are made for. The biggest change usually made is the exclusion of the "number pad" on the right-hand side of the keyboard in all but the largest laptops. While not a major loss in and of itself, often users will want or need larger keyboards--this is especially true of gamers--in order for more comfortable typing or to make use of the number pad. USB keyboards offer a fine compromise, being easy to activate and deactivate as needed.…
Although the MacBook Air comes with OS X pre-installed, you may wish to experiment with alternative operating systems or test-drive newer versions of Apple's operating system before committing to an upgrade. One solution is to install the operating system onto an external drive and use that device as your boot volume. Apple has made this process relatively simple; once you have installed necessary software on the device, you have two options for selecting it as a boot volume: the "Startup Disk" control panel and the "Startup Manager" window, accessible on startup.
Some computers may not have a CD-ROM drive or may need a second drive when replicating discs. An external USB CD-ROM drive provides an excellent way to add another drive without having to open the computer or interfere with internal components. Many external USB CD-ROM drives are powered by the USB port and do not require a separate power adapter.
One advantage of the Mac OS X operating system is the ease of use when working with peripheral devices. The Leopard operating system, designated as Mac OS 10.5, automatically identifies any compatible device that you connect to the computer. People use external USB drives with Macintosh computers to extend storage space and back up computer files. Many USB hard drives are preformatted to work on Mac computers. If your USB hard drive is not preformatted in a file format that Leopard recognizes, you can format it using Disk Utility, a program included with Leopard.
Linux is an open source, free computer operating system with over 600 distributions as of 2010. The most popular and user-friendly of these distributions is Ubuntu, which is constantly developed with an upgraded release available for free every six months. Ubuntu comes with a complete office suite, games, multimedia programs and desktop access to hundreds of applications. Because Ubuntu is developed with user-ease in mind, you won't have any trouble hooking up and accessing an external USB hard drive.
FAT16 and FAT32 are older file systems that were used by the Windows operating system for storing files. These files systems are still used in some instances, and you might have an external USB drive formatted in FAT16 or FAT32. If you want to change this file formatting to the newer NTFS formatting, which supports larger files sizes and other improvements, you can do so through a one-way operation that is built into the Windows operating system.
Network Attached Storage (NAS) drives are large storage devices that enable multiple users to transfer and archive documents and data. NAS drives connect to a router and include a utility to specify how users can access the drive and folders. USB external drives can serve as NAS drives if they are connected to a multifunction router with a USB port such as the AirPort Extreme base station. Alternatively, you can use a NAS adapter with software to convert a USB external storage device to a network router because it includes both USB and Ethernet ports.
USB Internet connections such as modems and wireless USB network adapters provide fast and reliable Internet access. USB tools for accessing the Internet can be installed and configured, even if you aren't computer savvy, through the use of wizards which guide you through the configuration process.
Windows-based computers have a specific utility for mapping new drives, called "Map Network Drive." Apple OS X-based computers, however, drive map automatically when a new drive is connected, whether through a network or as an external USB device.
SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) hard drives are the most widely used hard drives today. Most of the external hard drives on the market are using SATA hard drives. However, external hard drives are far more expensive than internal hard drives, given that they have the same features. Converting an external hard drive to an internal USB hard drive requires an enclosure that converts the SATA connection to a USB connection.
An external USB hard drive is a storage hardware device that allows you to store information such as documents, music and videos. They connect to the USB ports on your computer and transfer data at fast speeds. They are often used to backup important files and to make mirror images of a computer's hard drive in case of hard drive failure. If your USB hard drive is clogged with files, or freezes when you attempt to transfer files, you can erase it using a simple process known as "Formatting."
If you are having trouble with your MacBook during the boot up process you may need to boot the computer from an outside device. It is possible to boot a Macbook from a USB flash drive as long as the flash drive has the Mac OS X operating system installed. Although you may never find the need to boot your Mac from the flash drive, it may be a good idea to have the operating system installed on the device, just in case something happens in the future.
