So, your hard drive space is running thin, and you’re thinking of buying a new hard drive?

Do you really need a new hard drive?

1. Try free tools such as
   CCleaner to clear out some of the temporary files that are cluttering your computer.
2. Find out what files and folders are hogging your space with free usage reporting tools such as:
   WinDirStat for Windows,
   Disk Inventory X for OS X, and
   KDirStat for Linux.
3. Use a utility to find duplicate files:
   [find duplicate files utilities]

You’ve decided you really need another hard drive… What do you buy, an internal or external?

Pros for internal hard drives:

1. They’re faster than external hard drives, and so more suitable for day-to-day work. (exception: firewire external drives are faster than usb, but require your computer to support the firewire interface.)
2. They last longer. Many external drives’ cases are built more for looks or space concerns than for proper cooling. Although temperature is not usually an issue, when they get high enough, failure rates will increase.
3. They’re quieter. Being inside the case buffers the sound of the drive platters spinning, and external drives should have a fan, which also makes a small amount of noise.
4. They’re less expensive.
5. Backup services such as
   Mozy and
   Carbonite include internal drives in their unlimited backup plans, but not external drives. (You are backing up your files, aren’t you…)
6. They’re less prone to theft, due to being attached inside the computer, and not on your desk or being transported in your car.

Pros for external hard drives:

1. They’re portable, and so can be used for backup or sharing between computers. Plus, if and when your computer dies, you can take your drive to another machine, and keep going. (Before moving it, always wait 1 minute for the drive platters to spin down after you unplug your drive from your computer!)
2. They’re easier to install. No opening the case, just plug it into your computer with the cable provided, and you’re good to go.
3. External drives are often the only option for laptops and small desktops, which don’t have spare slots for additional drives.

Before you go out and buy even more hard drive for increased capacity, ensure you have a backup plan implemented for the data you have, and can fit the new drive into the plan. Many people put data solely on the external “backup” drive, treating it as “safe”. THIS IS A BAD IDEA… Your data is actually LESS SAFE on an external drive, because they are less reliable, and more prone to theft.

Whatever you do, ensure you have a backup plan. Because your drive will fail, it’s only a matter of time.

It happens. Suddenly, when you boot your computer, you get a message
on your screen, saying “PXE-XXX: media test failure, check cable” and
‘Operating system not found’…

What happened?!?

There’s a few possible causes, and one likely one.

When a computer starts, first it does a few self-checks, then it looks
in various places for an OS (operating system) to boot, (Windows, OS
X, or Linux, depending on what you have on your computer).

The order in which the computer is set to look in these various places
depends on how the computer is configured. (The BIOS settings) A
typical order could be:

1. Look for an OS over the network (PXE)
2. Look for an OS on the CD-Rom drive (An OS install disk, etc..)
4. Look for an OS on the USB hard drives
3. Look for an OS on the hard drives inside the computer

When you get this error:

PXE-XXX: media test failure, check cable
PXE-XXX: Exiting PXE ROM
Operating system not found”

Your computer is telling you,
1. It tried to start the computer by looking on the network for an
operating system, but there was no network cable plugged in, so it
gave up.
2. It found no other alternatives (None of the other typical options
described in the above list were available).

So, the computer either:
1. cannot find the Operating System (Windows, Linux or OS X) on your
hard drive because key OS files have been corrupted or deleted, (This
could be caused by a virus, or hard drive malfunctioning) or…
2. your hard drive is broken, and cannot be found at all by your
computer. (This could be caused by a hard drive physically
malfunctioning)

What to do?

Go into the BIOS and see if your computer’s hard drive is listed. If
it isn’t, your hard drive is dead, and you need to replace it.

Hopefully you subscribed to a backup service like Carbonite
(http://sageserver.com/carbonite), or Mozy
(http://sageserver.com/mozy), or had a manual backup onto an external
hard drive of some sort.

If you don’t have a backup, then you’ll need to fork over big $$$ for
a data recovery service to recover the important files from your dead
hard drive.

If your hard drive is found in the BIOS, then things aren’t quite as
bad, but be careful, because if your hard drive is failing physically,
then it could die completely at any time, and with each use, you get
closer to total failure.

The most prudent thing to do would be to check the hard drive with a
bootable rescue cd such as SystemRescueCD (http://www.sysresccd.org/),
and look for read errors, or anything that tells you the drive is
failing. If the hard drive is failing, then use the same live cd to
pull of your files quickly, starting with the most important first, as
again, the hard drive can totally fail at any time.

The next thing to try is to boot with your OS install disk and try to
repair the OS so that it still boots. If you’re running windows,
google the fixboot and fixmbr commands found in the recovery console.

If you do get your computer booting again, get your files off as soon
as possible, do a complete anti-virus update and scan, and subscribe
to a good backup service.

Any competent computer service technician can do these steps for you,
and recover your data should it come to that.

Good luck!

Laptops have traditionally been much more expense than comparable desktops. So it is tempting to buy one second-hand…

Be careful! It is more risky to buy a used laptop than a used computer, due to the lack of options when replacing laptop components. With a desktop PC, if you get a used machine with a faulty part, you can get it replaced fairly inexpensively and be back up and running. With a laptop, many components are proprietary, and often it is cheaper to go out and purchase another one, then replace expensive parts such as the screen or motherboard.

Also, laptops are cheaper than ever before, with netbooks. So you can get laptops for less than $250 to travel with and surf the web. Who needs the bulky Microsoft Office when you have Google Docs everywhere you go via a web browser?

Anyway… You still want a used laptop… ok, here’s my advice..

Brand is important, because you want something tough, that can take the abuse of a previous owner, and still has life left in it when you get it. Think about it like buying a used car.

I myself would go for a refurbished laptop from tigerdirect, Dell, or Lenovo…

Dell’s outlet store…

Lenovo’s outlet store..

TigerDirect’s refurb laptops…

Stay away from craigslist with laptops.. I’ve had bad experiences with laptops with them, as you don’t know if what you’re getting is flaking out for some reason, and you won’t see that in the 5 minutes you’re looking at it with an anonymous source.

Other than those PCs, Apple makes a reliable, though more expensive laptop..