What do you do when your hard drive starts making a klunk noise ? Usually when this happens your computer will not boot up. This is because the hard drive is having a problem called head banging. This is happening because the armature inside the drive is hitting the spindle inside the drive. Whatever you do don`t try and open the drive. A hard drive should only be opened in a clean room by a professional. Once dust gets inside the drive on the disks or platters it is useless.
Here is a link to some very interesting reading on hard drives. Check it out at http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/op/over.htm it has a lot of useful information. hard drives all vary in size depending on whether they are in a desktop computer or a laptop computer. Here are some examples of hard drives below.
The first thing to do is shut the computer off and remove the hard drive from the computer. Take the hard drive and place it in a static bag.
Next wrap a dry towel around it and put it in your refrigerator freezer. Leave it in there for several hours. Take it out of the freezer and connect it up to the computer as fast as possible. Act a quickly as you can to get the data off it. You may only have a few minutes. Before you take it out of the freezer have your computer set up with a new hard drive and your operating system reinstalled first. I would note that this does not always work. If there is data that you definitely have to such as for a business, then I would suggest sending it out to a professional data recovery business. They have clean rooms and literally take the disks out of the drive to get the data off. Do Not try it yourself, because you will contaminate it and lose everything.
With the newer types of hard drive called solid state drives you do not have this problem. They are all solid state electronics and have no moving parts. The only draw back is they are very expensive especially if you need a larger drive. I would check out this link for information on this type of hard drive http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive at wikipedia.
Also with solid state hard drives I do not suggest to try and install them in an older computer. If the computer has sata ports and not the older ide connections then you are probably ok. The solid sate drive may increase the start up time and running of programs. The drawback is that they are generally not very large in space to store programs. A 120gb ssd runs around $100 at newegg http://www.newegg.com/Internal-SSDs/SubCategory/ID-636. A 512gb ssd solid state drive runs around $470.00 dollars. Maybe they will come down in price in the future.
As a final note the most important thing anyone can do is back up your data. You can back it up to an external hard drive or to the cloud with carbonite. If you go with carbonite just make sure of the plan you choose. I did talk about this subjet in one of my previous posts so check it out.
Thank You for reading and stay safe.
Saturday, November 16, 2013
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Back Up Back Up Back Up
The one thing I can not stress enough to all my friends is to make sure you always back up your data. My general recommendation is to use an external hard drive to back your system and data to. I would say that it`s best to use at least a 1tb external hard drive. This is because there are so many updates coming through that smaller drives fill up too fast. Some examples of back up drives can be seen below.
The external hard drive enclosure is seen just above. With this type you can purchase a hard drive of your choice and mount it inside the enclosure. This is a nice option, because if the drive goes bad you can replace the drive or if the enclosure goes bad you can replace that as well.
Another way of backing up your data is to the cloud. here is a good link with helpful information http://www.pcworld.com/article/223354/choosing_cloud_backup_for_pcs.html . There is also carbonite which is an online back up service that is available to pc users as well as mac users. It can back up all your data. There are different packages available. Some packages do not make a mirror back up of your hard drive. Other types of back ups are using a program such as Nortons Ghost to make an exact image of your hard drive as well as the data to an external hard drive. The back up program in windows 7 does work very well.
I would advise never to back up to your hard drive in the computer to the main drive. I have seen people back up to the recovery partition and fill it up. You could however install a second hard drive in the computer case and back up to that. With programs such as Nortons Ghost you do have to make sure it is set for incremental backing up. This way it will do so many back ups and then remove the older ones. This way it does not keep piling up the back ups and then fill the drive. I remember one situation where the person did not realize it and the drive was filled and had not backed up since two months when it was full, therefore he lost two months of data.
Some simple ways of backing up data are to a flash drive. Generally you will be performing the copy and paste routine. The problem with this is a flash drive is not very large and will run out of space. It is good for small amounts of data.
So just remember it is better to back up your system and data, because you never know what will happen. It can be anything from a defective hard drive to a bad virus such as the crypto locker virus.
Thank You for reading. Any comments or information are always welcomed.
The external hard drive enclosure is seen just above. With this type you can purchase a hard drive of your choice and mount it inside the enclosure. This is a nice option, because if the drive goes bad you can replace the drive or if the enclosure goes bad you can replace that as well.
Another way of backing up your data is to the cloud. here is a good link with helpful information http://www.pcworld.com/article/223354/choosing_cloud_backup_for_pcs.html . There is also carbonite which is an online back up service that is available to pc users as well as mac users. It can back up all your data. There are different packages available. Some packages do not make a mirror back up of your hard drive. Other types of back ups are using a program such as Nortons Ghost to make an exact image of your hard drive as well as the data to an external hard drive. The back up program in windows 7 does work very well.
I would advise never to back up to your hard drive in the computer to the main drive. I have seen people back up to the recovery partition and fill it up. You could however install a second hard drive in the computer case and back up to that. With programs such as Nortons Ghost you do have to make sure it is set for incremental backing up. This way it will do so many back ups and then remove the older ones. This way it does not keep piling up the back ups and then fill the drive. I remember one situation where the person did not realize it and the drive was filled and had not backed up since two months when it was full, therefore he lost two months of data.
Some simple ways of backing up data are to a flash drive. Generally you will be performing the copy and paste routine. The problem with this is a flash drive is not very large and will run out of space. It is good for small amounts of data.
So just remember it is better to back up your system and data, because you never know what will happen. It can be anything from a defective hard drive to a bad virus such as the crypto locker virus.
Thank You for reading. Any comments or information are always welcomed.
Help My Computer Is Running Slow
This is one of the most common things I almost hear on a daily basis. So what do you do first ? Well the first thing I do is open the computer and see how much dust has built up inside. Sometimes computers are like wonderful vacuum cleaners. I have seen some where the dust is so bad it actually looks like a home made filter for a furnace. I have seen the heat sink for the microprocessor packed with dust so no heat will dissipate. Usually if really bad the computer will overheat causing the computer to shut off.
The next step is to get that dust and dirt out of there. I do not recommend using any kind of a brush inside the case because it will not be static safe. You could easily damage the motherboard with esd damage. That is electrostatic discharge damage resulting a bad motherboard as well as other components. What I would suggest is to use an air compressor to blow the dust and dirt out of the case and fans. When you blow out a fan I would use something to keep the fan from spinning. If it spins too fast you can damage it by too much current and also damage the bearings in the fan.
At this point I also check the motherboard for any bulging or expanded capacitors.
There are occasions when the capacitor is expanded at the bottom. The capacitor expands because heat has built up in the capacitor, which results in the visible damage. There have been bad batches of capacitors through manufacturing. An experienced individual can replace the capacitors. Just make sure you have the correct voltage rating and capacitance. I also measure the height and diameter of the capacitor to try and keep it as close to what the manufacturer used. The other reason it may have expanded is from the power in a house for example shutting off and coming back on. The usual surge protector will not protect the equipment from this. They are for protecting from a lightning strike by absorbing to power coming down the line to the system. The best protection is to use a battery back up system that has a built in surge protector. This way if the power goes out then the battery kicks in and you don`t have that sudden on and off surge. Power supplies in systems can cause the damage as well or just a defective motherboard.
The most common cause of slowness may be from a virus, malware, spyware or adware that has gotten into the system. I would recommend using programs such as free malwarebytes, spybot, combofix, super anti-spyware and whatever antivirus program is installed on your computer. I would run all scans in the safe mode. With windows 8 you can set the software to always go to a safe boot with networking. Just remember to reset it when done. This link is good as well as others http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/ss/windows-8-safe-mode.htm . Windows xp, vista and windows 7 can be placed in the safe mode by pressing the F8 key on the keyboard during the post test when the system is first powering on, then choose safemode with networking.
Another item I would check is the hard drive. Usually the manufacture will have a diagnostic partition that may be entered by pressing a certain key at start up. See the manufacturers instructions, because they all vary depending on if it`s a Dell, Asus, Acer, HP etc..... You can also run the test on the hard drive within the system or what I prefer is to use a boot disk such as Hirens, Ultimate Boot Disk or Win & PE. These can be downloaded from the internet and are iso files which will be needed to be burned to a cd disk. Western digital and seagate also have programs that can be downloaded and run as well.
Another item that can cause problems is the amount of system ram memory. In older systems 2gb is usually the most windows xp would use. In Vista, Windows 7 and 8, I would recommend 8gb or more. You can download a free program called Memtest 86+ off the internet and install it on a cd to boot from to test the memory.
Always make sure windows updates are installed and working properly. If problems are not solved I would save all data, Reformat the hard drive and reinstall all software, drivers and components. If you are not comfortable with this, then I would seek out a professional.
Thank You for reading. Any comments or questions are always welcomed. Stay Safe
The next step is to get that dust and dirt out of there. I do not recommend using any kind of a brush inside the case because it will not be static safe. You could easily damage the motherboard with esd damage. That is electrostatic discharge damage resulting a bad motherboard as well as other components. What I would suggest is to use an air compressor to blow the dust and dirt out of the case and fans. When you blow out a fan I would use something to keep the fan from spinning. If it spins too fast you can damage it by too much current and also damage the bearings in the fan.
At this point I also check the motherboard for any bulging or expanded capacitors.
There are occasions when the capacitor is expanded at the bottom. The capacitor expands because heat has built up in the capacitor, which results in the visible damage. There have been bad batches of capacitors through manufacturing. An experienced individual can replace the capacitors. Just make sure you have the correct voltage rating and capacitance. I also measure the height and diameter of the capacitor to try and keep it as close to what the manufacturer used. The other reason it may have expanded is from the power in a house for example shutting off and coming back on. The usual surge protector will not protect the equipment from this. They are for protecting from a lightning strike by absorbing to power coming down the line to the system. The best protection is to use a battery back up system that has a built in surge protector. This way if the power goes out then the battery kicks in and you don`t have that sudden on and off surge. Power supplies in systems can cause the damage as well or just a defective motherboard.
The most common cause of slowness may be from a virus, malware, spyware or adware that has gotten into the system. I would recommend using programs such as free malwarebytes, spybot, combofix, super anti-spyware and whatever antivirus program is installed on your computer. I would run all scans in the safe mode. With windows 8 you can set the software to always go to a safe boot with networking. Just remember to reset it when done. This link is good as well as others http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/ss/windows-8-safe-mode.htm . Windows xp, vista and windows 7 can be placed in the safe mode by pressing the F8 key on the keyboard during the post test when the system is first powering on, then choose safemode with networking.
Another item I would check is the hard drive. Usually the manufacture will have a diagnostic partition that may be entered by pressing a certain key at start up. See the manufacturers instructions, because they all vary depending on if it`s a Dell, Asus, Acer, HP etc..... You can also run the test on the hard drive within the system or what I prefer is to use a boot disk such as Hirens, Ultimate Boot Disk or Win & PE. These can be downloaded from the internet and are iso files which will be needed to be burned to a cd disk. Western digital and seagate also have programs that can be downloaded and run as well.
Another item that can cause problems is the amount of system ram memory. In older systems 2gb is usually the most windows xp would use. In Vista, Windows 7 and 8, I would recommend 8gb or more. You can download a free program called Memtest 86+ off the internet and install it on a cd to boot from to test the memory.
Always make sure windows updates are installed and working properly. If problems are not solved I would save all data, Reformat the hard drive and reinstall all software, drivers and components. If you are not comfortable with this, then I would seek out a professional.
Thank You for reading. Any comments or questions are always welcomed. Stay Safe
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