4 Tools To Predict and Prevent Hard Drive Failure. If there is one piece of equipment in your computer that you would predict to fail first, what would it be?
Some might pick the power supply, some might pick the motherboard and even some might pick the video card. Most however, are going to choose the hard drive. So, what can you do to prevent hard drive failure? The standard IDE/SATA hard drive today is still the most mechanical piece of equipment sitting in your present day PC. And this will continue to be the case until solid state drives become much cheaper and much more compatible for present day hardware. To help predict and protect yourself from these the inevitable circumstances of a hard drive failure, I have come up with four third party diagnostic tools, and a list of the all the major hard drive manufacturer tools. CrystalDiskInfo CrystalDiskInfo is a S.M.A.R.T. based utility that supports not only internal drives, but both USB and IEEE1394′s as well.
How To Repair Damaged CD's Or DVD's & Recover Data. CD and DVD are fragile media.
A few scratches here and there and they can easily become coasters on your table. I have had plenty of them myself. Let’s just look at some of the ways to repair damaged CD’s and DVD’s and recover data from those spoilt CD/DVD’s. Anatomy of scratches Scratches that are perpendicular (going from the center outwards) are generally less harmful or damaging than the scratches that go along the spiral. Attempt to Recover Data from Damaged CD / DVD First and foremost try some software apps to make your life easier and attempt to recover data from the disc. Just insert the damaged CD, DVD, HD DVD (if you still use them) or Blue-Ray disc and the software will show you the list of files and folders found on the disc.
CD Recovery Toolbox has been covered in detail on MakeUseOf earlier. Another software solution you can try is Roadkil’s Unstoppable Copier. If you use Linux you can try ddrescue for recovery needs. Attempt to repair the damaged CDs Some Tips If nothing helps. 99 Ways to Make Your Computer Blazingly Fast - Help Desk Geek. Over the last several years working in IT for various companies as a Systems Administrator, Network Administrator, and Help Desk professional, I’ve written and learned about many ways to increase the performance of not only my PC, but also of the many PCs on my networks ranging from Windows 98 to Windows Vista.
In this article, I hope to compile a complete list of all the different methods and tricks that I’ve used to get the last bit of juice out of a slow PC. Whether you are using an old PC or the latest and greatest in hardware, you can still use some of these to make your PC run faster. Note that since I write two blogs, Help Desk Geek and Online Tech Tips, I have previously written about many performance tips already which I will link back to throughout. If I have not written about it, I’ve throw in a link to a relevant article from some of my other favorite sites. This list is in no particular order, just written in the order that I could think of them.
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View the HTML version. Note: Not all programs, applications and browsers will recognize all of the Special ALT Characters. Return to Main Page of Ted’s HTML Tutorial §To obtain an ALT Character: Make certain that the Num Lock key has been pressed to activate the numeric key section of the keyboard. *There are some gaps in the numerical sequence of ALT Character codes because either those items do not exist, or else they are duplicates of characters listed elsewhere. Some word processing programs and browsers will not recognize all Alt characters. Go to Special HTML Characters Go to Special <Font Face="Symbol"> Characters Return to Text Modification Symbols & Tags Return to Ted’s HOMEPAGE Copyright © 1998–2016 by Ted M.