Geek and Gadgets

Harddrive Smart Tips

Well, as more technology gets bigger and bolder, there are a few primary basics that we must adhere to. This one is from experience.

I have a WD 1 TB external harddrive, that uses FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB 2.0 and is really great! However, a few days ago, the fans sounded loud and lo-and-be-hold, it died. Now, with 1 TB drives, this may be an issue if it is really composed of 2 x 500 GB drives. The data is essentially split onto both drives, not neatly, some files on one, and some files on another either. In fact, some of the same file may be on both, therefore, you need to put it into an enclosure that can fir 2 x 500 GB drives and hope for the best.

That is where I am now. It has al of my iTunes music on it and some other important stuff, not work files of course or software. Just stuff I realy want. It is the only drive I did not have a copy of yet, of course.

So, I will buy an enclosure for them, start it up, and hopefully it was not the drives themselves but the chip that moderates the external hardrive. Fan still works, and it is clean inside.

Anyone else out there fallen into the same very large external harddrive syndrome?

Stay tuned. I will post the result when I have a moment to see what I can do. Thoughts, suggestions, would love to hear them.

The lesson: if using a very large external drive that is really composed of 2 or more harddrives, make sure you have a RAID copy of them or a complete clone on anoter set of drives exactly like the main one.

You can never be too careful with your backup methods.

Lesson learned.

Extend your battery life.

Laptop productivity on the cold, cruel and often electrical outletless road often depends entirely on how much juice you’ve got left. The screen draws the most power from your battery. When you don’t have access to an outlet, dim your screen to the lowest setting to make your battery last as long as possible.

Also, disable unnecessary CPU-cycle-eating processes – like auto Bluetooth device and wifi network detection – to save juice and make your battery last longer.

Locking your computer screen

If you want to stay logged in to your computer while you are away from it, but need to prevent others from using it, you can lock the screen. When you return to the computer, type your login name and password to continue working.

Open System Preferences, and then click Security.
Select “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver.”
A person with an administrator account can use their name and password to unlock the screen.

Locking the screen does not prevent other users from turning off the computer and restarting it, then logging in to their own account. If you think this could happen, be sure to save your work before you leave your computer.

If your computer has multiple users and you want more than one user to stay logged in at a time, select “Enable fast user switching” in the Accounts preferences. To lock your screen quickly with fast user switching enabled, choose Login Window from the menu with your username. You applications will remain open and undisturbed but your computer will be locked.