Ask Leo!: Disks and Mass Storage

How should I erase my hard drive before I give it away?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:00:00 -08:00

I would like to clear off/erase all of the programs on my hard drive and clean it up before I donate my computer to a worthy cause. What's the best/simplest way to do this?

]]> To begin with, good on you not only for your donation, but for thinking to do this. All too frequently we hear of computers being donated by banks, hospitals, or other institutions and then turning up with all sorts of private information that should have been erased first.

The best way? Well ... how paranoid are you?

A drive with all my data is showing as unformatted - what do I do?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 10:21:49 -08:00

I recently replaced my system hard drive and have taken my old internal hard drive out and installed it into a external enclosure. When I plug it in, it shows up on my computer, but without a file system label, only a letter designation (G). Disk management says it is unformatted. It was NTFS as an internal drive. I'm concerned that if I format it, I will lose all of my data now stored on the drive. What steps do I take to format this external drive without losing my files? Or am I missing a step in accessing the information on the drive?

]]> First, don't format the drive.

Formatting will erase whatever's on there or, at a minimum, make it more difficult to recover your data.

I do have some suggestions of next steps to take instead.

What's the difference between SATA, PATA and IDE?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:32:49 -08:00

This “SATA” stuff is new to me. What does it mean? It's something about hard disk drives, I know, but I don't understand what. I went to get a new hard drive for my machine and the one that I wanted was SATA. But when I told the salesperson what computer I had, he said I didn't want it and instead, I needed something called PATA or IDE? I'm very confused.

]]> Well, one part of this is easy: IDE and PATA are two names for the same thing.

The rest - well, the easy part is that SATA and PATA are two different ways of connecting a hard drive to your computer. Your computer will have one or the other and what you purchase must, in general, match.

When we go further, however, things start to get a little complex.

How do I recover my data after a computer crash?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 12:42:50 -08:00

My computer recently crashed. How do I recover my data? I mean my pictures, folders and the other items on my C: drive. I did a recovery, but I was unable to recover any files.

]]> This is a frighteningly common question that I get in various forms.

Computers crash, hard disks die, malware invades, and data is lost.

I'll look at some of the most common approaches to try after a crash to try to get your data back.

What are these "no media", "removable" drives on my system?

leo@pugetsoundsoftware (Leo A. Notenboom) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 12:53:49 -08:00

I purchased your ebook “Maintaining Windows XP”. I was working in the “The Opportunities” section on page 82. When I opened up my Disk Management, I found that I have several disks two through six, also labeled “Removable E through G”, with “no media” associated with them. I'm wondering what to do with them. I have my main disk C as well as one disk associated with my external hard drive labeled "My Book (M:)" and another disk associated with the program “WD SmartWare (L:)”. The layout on all of three is Partition and the Type is Basic. The SmartWare is a program that came with my external drive.

]]> I have drives like those on my machine: drive letters set aside and listed as "no media".

But in my case at least, they're there for a reason and the answer on what to do with them is simple:

Nothing.