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Hard Disk Drives
In a personal computer, a hard disk drive controls the positioning, reading, and writing of the hard disk, where data is stored.
4,496 Questions
What technology provides for up to four devices on a system including hard drive?
IDE (also known as PATA and ATA) provides for up to four devices, including the hard drive. The serial ATA standard allows for more than four drives installed in a system.
How unlock an external hard drive?
I had this issue with my hard drive locking up all of a sudden and without warning and found no useful information anywhere on the net at all. Fortunatly, most of the time you can usually back up the data on the hard drive and I suggest you do so. Secondly, if you cannot rename the drive or fix the settings on the HDD following any other answers that you find, shut down your computer and remove the HDD and give it a couple of good whacks against the wall/floor. Don't destroy it or try to break the case but when I had this error ... it is the only thing that worked and keep in mind that a HDD is just a fancy record player and sometimes, they do get stuck. Keep the backup that you made and do an error checking pass or two on the drive after you get it working again.
Sometimes the answer isn't a tech problem, it's just a mechanical one but seriously, Back everything up - there would be a reason why it went funny in the first place.
How many gigs of hard disk does hp nc6400 max out at?
HP/Compaq nc6400 has 2 DDR2 (speed up to PC2-5300 (667MHz)) slots and can have maximum total RAM of 4GB.
Memory module upgrades are farely easy and straight forward. Just get a compatible memory and add/upgrade in the memory slot which is mostly accessible from bottom of the laptop by removing one or two screws.
Here is a tutorial for memory replacement/upgrade from HP for this series of laptops.
http://bizsupport.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c00713949/c00713949.pdf
- Neeraj Sharma
How many hard drives are in a computer?
Usually one in a typical home PC. Power users may have more. Servers can have arrays of hundreds of disks
How much are External Hard Drives?
External hard drive prices vary depending on the size on the hard drive you want to purchase. The more storage space on the drive, the higher the price will be. They can be anywhere from $30 to $200.
a floppy disk slot is what you put the floppy disk in on a CPU
How much storage do you need on your external hard drive?
External hard disk drives are available in a range of sizes, the biggest of which is 1.5TB. One has to make sure however that the USB port on the computer or laptop is able to support the hard disk drive.
What can you do to free disk space on your C drive?
Buy another hard drive, or delete some of the content on your current one. You could also consider a disk defragement to free up some space, cleaning temporary files aswell.
If you get a new hard drive make sure it uses the same connector type and you can either add it as a separate drive or you can move everything on the current one to a bigger on and end up with one big drive with free space and all the previous data on it.
Why would an individual want to partition a hard drive?
Partitions to a drive can only be created when you are doing a full drive format. I will use my own reasons for this as examples. I am always making hardware changes to my computer, things like motherboards, RAM graphics cards, everything. Each time the Operating System has certain drivers installed for a specific piece of hardware. when that hardware changes it needs to be uninstalled and new drivers must be installed. In my experience, this only causes problems. I am an online gamer so I keep all my installed games onto a separate partitioned drive and everytime i change my hardware, i simply do a quick format on the OS partition, and reinstall the operating system completely. meanwhile all my games, communication software, etc are fully intact.
In other words...for back ups, partitioning space is ideal.
What units are hard drive measured in?
Bytes. A 300 gigabyte hard drive has 300 billion bytes of data it can store.
Kilobyte(KB) = 1000 bytes
megabyte(MB) = 1 million bytes or 1000 kilobytes
gigabyte(GB) = 1 billion bytes or 1000 megabytes
terabyte(TB) = 1 trillion bytes or 1000 gigabytes
petabyte(PB) = 1 quadrillion bytes or 1000 terabytes
Average hard drives hold around 80 gigabytes to 1.5 terabytes
Which has the least amount of storage space a floppy disk or zip disk?
Floppy disks have only 1.44 MB of storage space. ZIP disks have upwards of 100MB of storage space and are much more resistant to magnetic damage at the same time. However, due to cost-effectiveness, neither are especially well-regarded for consumer use anymore. CDs and DVDs are inexpensive and for the same price will hold on average an order of magnitude more data.
The only advantage of a floppy disk, is its ability to boot. As far as storage, floppy disks are obsolete. Not even a Word document with enough attachments can fit on one. Most computers can boot directly off the CD ROM. Newer PC's can boot off a USB Key. But when all else fails, the floppy is always there to save the day when you've crashed your system, and need to boot to reformat/reinstall windows.
What will happen when you change basic to dynamic disk?
The main thing that happens when you have a dynamic disk is the ability to create an unlimited amount of OS and partitions. Additionally, you can create and delete Spanned, Striping, Mirroring, and RAID 5 by using a dynamic disk. Pretty useful if you're an organizational person, or video editor (using RAID) or a backup person (also RAID!)
What utility allows users to copy selected files or an entire hard disk to another storage medium?
Backup.
Differences between serial and parallel interfaces?
The difference is that serial transmissions only use 2 wires for transmitting and receiving data, and only 1 for sending or receiving, and can only send one bit at a time. Parallel cables use several wires for data transmission and is much faster than serial thus 8 or more wires are carrying data *parallel* to each other to it's destination. serial data
data (8 bits)
transmit -----------010101010-----------------> single line to transmit on
receive <--------------------------- single line to receive on Parallel data (80 bits)
transmit multiple lines simultaneously
---- 010101001----------->
-----------010101010----------->
-----------010101010----------->
-----------010101001----------->
-----------010101010----------->
-----------010101010----------->
-----------010101001----------->
-----------010101010----------->
-----------010101010----------->
-----------010101001----------->
What is the largest capacity hard disk drive that is commercially available?
The largest capacity hard disk drive that is commercially available is four terabytes. It can be purchased at many websites online, as the internet is filled with a variety of options, giving the buyer numerous choices.
How are data files saved on floppy disks?
Put a floppy disk in the drive. With Windows, go to file save as, then go to the drop down box. At the top of that box, go the 3 1/2 floppy and save it.
it is done by a reading light that passes over dints in the disk which is allocated inside the platic cover which forms the binery cod 1 and 0 forming data blocks form the code, e.g
110110010111011101101
thanks boris
The answer above is refering in principle to how CD's work - NOT floppies. Floppy disks store binary data as a series of magnetic dots on the surface of the disk and are written to / read from by a voice coil (electro-magnet).
When building a computer which two components are installed in a 3.5 inch drive bays?
many card readers are that size, some fan comtrollers, and especially a 3.5 floppy drive- but do you use one?. You can also put hard drives there. Are you looking for a case? A good cheap case for beginners is an Antec 300. More beefy cases are Antec 900, CM HAF 932, CM Sniper, Antec 1200, Azza Solano.... But these are reasonable priced cases. Lian Li and others make real nice expensive cases that you may like as well, but I never really looked at them.
How do you access information stored on your hard drive?
HOW TO GET DATA OFF YOUR HARD DRIVE When your computer will not boot up or run at all, and you have no back up of your data, there are ways to retrieve your data. COMPUTER WON'T BOOT There are programs that can boot your computer from the floppy drive or the CD drive. If your computer hardware is all good, but windows won't boot the computer, you can probably boot the computer up from the floppy or CD drive.
I have used a programm called "Spotmau Recovery Disk". It is a program that I downloaded from the internet. The computer I was working on would not boot up at all because of a registry error. I didn't want to us the manufacturers recovery disks, because they erase all the data on the hard drive.
The Spotmau program allowed me to run the computer from the CD drive and use a Data Recovery program to copy files from the hard drive to a flash drive. The flash drive plugs into the USB port. A flash drive can be bought at office supply stores and department stores.
Then I transfered the files from the flash drive to the hard drive of another computer.
I couldn't get the registry problem fixed, so I had to run the recovery disks to get the hard drive back to the point where it was when the computer was bought. Then I had to re-install all the software, and copy the files back.
This is all very time consuming, so be prepared for spending a lot of time working on the computer. COMPUTER WILL NOT DO ANYTHING If the computer will not do anything, you will have to remove the hard drive and put it into another computer. It won't even try to boot or you determine there is a hardware problem. DATA WAS DELETED OR OVERWRITTEN There are also programs that will recover deleted files.
What interface is primarily used for internal hard drives in modern PC systems?
There are many different interfaces used.
For internal hard drives, older drives use/used PATA (Parallel ATA, originally just called ATA, and commonly referred to as IDE). Newer drives generally use SATA (Serial ATA).
For external drives, connections include USB (1.0, 2.0, and 3.0), eSata, and Firewire (IEEE 1394).
Windows 2000 XP can support up to partitions on a hard drive?
You don't have to format or partition your hard drive as installations will do it for you during setup.
You can install windows 2000 and windows XP and have them both working on one partition without interfering with each other.
First you have to install win 2000, than install win XP "on top" of win 2000.
During installation of win XP ignore all cautions and warnings like "installing multiple operating systems on single partition is not recommended" and other warnings, just keep going, you will see "To continue setup using this partition press C". press C, next screen default is "Leave the current file system intact (no changes)" so agree to that.
After yellow download bar ends computer reboots, at this time during boot DO NOT press any key to boot from CD.
disregard warnings by ms "not supported" in following texts as it means "will work but don't ask us questions"
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306559
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/217210
http://www.microsoft.com/library/errorpages/smarterror.aspx/404?aspxerrorpath=/windows/multiboot.aspx
Beauty of having these two systems on one partition is that in case of problem with virus or if one system stops booting you can boot to the other system to access and save all your data. Smart people were doing it for years and not telling. Try it, you will like it. You can change booting order later, ask Google or MS, they know everything about computers and averything about you thanks to Bill Gates who sold our privacy on silver platter.
You must not install earlier system on top of later system on the same partition because you will get scramble eggs on your hard drive and you will have to start over.
How long does it take to perform a disk wipe?
This would depend on the size of the hard disk as well as the degree of thoroughness required. The time taken is directly proportionate to the size of the disk. For example, a seven-pass erase (which overwrites the data on the disk seven times) on a 500GB hard disk drive can take about 18 hours.
How can you retrieve data from a damaged external hard drive?
Take it down to your local computer store and this should cost £20-50.
