Monday, April 23, 2012
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
How Can I Fix My Chronic Lateness? via lifehacker.com
Dear Lifehacker,
I'm one of those chronically tardy people. Wherever I'm going, even if I'm just meeting my friends, I'm always 10 of 15 minutes late—and it's starting to irritate people. Got any suggestions for how I can avoid all these distractions and be more punctual?Sincerely,
Late LarryPhoto by Jeff Lueders.
Dear Larry,
I certainly understand your friends' annoyance (we all have that one friend who's always late), but it's good that you're determined to fix it. In fact, there are a lot of little tricks you can pull on yourself to get out the door quicker. Here are a few of our favorites.
Figure Out Why You're Late
There are any number of reasons you could be late everywhere. Perhaps you consistently underestimate traffic, or maybe you just get distracted too easily and end up rushing out the door 10 minutes later than intended. Determining the reason for your chronic lateness can help you find your own solutions. For example, if you keep underestimating traffic, Google Maps has a nifty traffic function that will let you know where the roads are congested (and even help you find an alternate, less congested route). If you're late because you get lost all the time, you can just leave a little bit earlier—not to mention learn your way around town a little better. If you just get distracted, though, you'll need to dig a bit deeper to make yourself more punctual.Keep Yourself On Track with Reminders and Alarms
The simplest thing you can do to keep yourself from getting distracted is use your calendar, smartphone, or other device to remind you when it's time to leave. Even a simple alarm on your smartphone can keep you from "losing track of time" and get you out the door. If you're an iOS user, previously mentioned GoTime is a really great way to keep track of when you need to leave. It'll automatically grab your calendar events for the day, calculate how long it'll take you to drive to your next event from your current location, and set off an alarm when it's time to leave. Of course, you can do this with any alarm program as long as you look up driving directions to where you're going ahead of time.If you take a little more prying, you can automatically shut down your computer with something like previously mentioned Smart Shutdown or iWannaSleep. Just tell it what time you need to leave, and it'll shut down your computer at that time, so you have no choice but to drag yourself away from Facebook and go get ready.
Always Plan to Be Early
It may seem like an obvious solution, but if you're constantly 15 minutes late wherever you go, just force yourself to leave 15 minutes earlier. This works nicely with the above tip about alarms—if you pay less attention to the time and more attention to when your alarm goes off, set it 15 minutes early and you'll be on time even if you take 10 minutes just to get your shoes on. And, on the off chance you actually are early, there are all sorts of things you can do to kill time. You probably have a few errands you need to run anyway, whether it's getting gas, going to the bank, or stopping off at CVS for toothpaste. Alternatively, you can just check out a nearby shopping center. Head to the nearest Best Buy and play with tablets, or check out the bookstore next door. You can also bring something to read or install a game on your phone to keep you occupied while you wait. Photo by Lauren Hammond.Enlist Your Friends to Help
Lastly, if none of these tips are really working, you can get your friends to help motivate you. They already probably heckle you for being late all the time, but if you ask them to be a little more evil and go radio silent, it might inspire you to move a little faster. Alternatively, you can set up a system where every time you're late, you pay for one of your friends' dinners, or something to that effect. After one or two more trips, you'll probably never be late again.
Sincerely,
LifehackerP.S. Of course, these are just a few of our favorite tips, but if you've got your own solutions, be sure to share them with us in the comments.
You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Dear Lifehacker,
Friday, November 11, 2011
Use Ground Coffee in the Fridge as a Natural Freshener and Odor Reducer vie lifehacker.com
If you like the smell of coffee, but have some that you don't want to drink or some used grounds, pat them dry and then put them in a bag or a small bowl in the back of your fridge. The smell of the coffee will do wonders to freshen—or at least cover up—any other unwanted smells inside.
Instructables user mikeasaurus, formerly of pizza cones fame, has 11 unusual uses for coffee, but this one is particularly interesting. He uses a nylon sachet to store a bundle of ground coffee in the back of the fridge, but we figure a small bowl will work as well if you don't have a porous bag to keep the ground coffee in. The coffee will dry out slowly in the cold and moist fridge, and as it does, your fridge will smell a bit like coffee until it's completely dry.
It doesn't actually absorb odors like activated charcoal or something else more potent would, but it does give you fridge a delightful coffee smell that will wake you up every time you open the door.
Do you have any other unusual uses for ground coffee that's no good to drink, or coffee grinds you're through with? Some of Mike's other uses include composting and palate cleansing, but what are yours? Let's hear them in the comments below.
11 Unusual Uses for Coffee | Instructables
You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at alan@lifehacker.com, or better yet, follow him on Twitter or Google+.
If you like the smell of coffee, but have some that you don't want to drink or some used grounds, pat them dry and then put them in a bag or a small bowl in the back of your fridge. The smell of the coffee will do wonders to freshen—or at least cover up—any other unwanted smells inside. Friday, November 4, 2011
Write Down What You Want to Remember NOW—Before You Leave the Room via lifehacker.com by Melanie Pinola
Ever have a brilliant idea and then walk into another room only to find your idea vanished (poof!)? A new study suggests it's not just you: Walking through a doorway makes it harder to remember thoughts from the previous room.
In two studies, researchers found that participants' memory performance was poorer after they walked through a doorway than if they stayed put in a room. The researchers theorize that the doorway serves as an event boundary where new memory episodes are created, thus hampering recall of prior memories.
Another interpretation, BPS Research Digest says, is that the increased forgetting wasn't about the "boundary effect of a doorway" but that the context had changed. In other words, participants had better memory about objects in the room where they created those objects.
Yesterday I had a brilliant idea—I think. I can't remember because between having the idea on my first floor then walking up the stairs to my office, the idea vanished. I blame the stairs.
So next time you want to remember something, don't leave the room before you write it down.
Photo remixed from an original by Dominic Alves.
How Walking Through a Doorway Increases Forgetting | Research Digest
You can follow or contact Melanie Pinola, the author of this post, on Twitter or Google+.
Ever have a brilliant idea and then walk into another room only to find your idea vanished (poof!)? A new study suggests it's not just you: Walking through a doorway makes it harder to remember thoughts from the previous room. Monday, August 15, 2011
Top 10 Ways to Survive Your Crappy Job
Your job sucks and for whatever reason you can't leave. At the same time, if you don't leave you're pretty sure you're going to lose your mind. What can you do about it? Here are our top 10 strategies.
10. Get Some Perspective
Today is one day out of your entire life. Unless you're going to die soon, it's probably not going to be that big of a deal. If it's one of your days off, you may find yourself doing nothing because you want to figure out the best way to spend such limited time. If it's one of your work days, there will be other days where other things happen. Whatever the moment is, it's a blip in your life. Chances are you won't remember it in a week. That's not to say you shouldn't pay attention to what you truly care about, but you shouldn't dwell on it either. You have food, a place to live, and something to do most days. You probably have fun once in a while. Maybe you even have people who care about you. Focus on the good stuff, and remember the rest is going to be a distant memory very quickly. Spending your time moaning to yourself (and others) about how awful your job is won't solve the problem. Just don't do it, and focus on the positive.
9. Bring Yourself to Work
Presumably you're already doing this in the physical sense, but if you have a creative side or other interests it can make your job more fun if you find ways to integrate them. One of my primary duties at a job a long time ago involved addressing catalogs for an advertising school. I made this more fun by illustrating the envelopes based on the person's name. Eventually some people called because they liked it and I was given some design work. At another job we had to learn a new product the company acquired that made online slideshows by actually using it to make one. I wrote a song about a womanizing spatula named Denny who finally met the woman (or, well, "female" inanimate object) of his dreams, took some photos of household objects, and put together a stop motion music video. Also, the entire thing was in Google-translated Spanish. Whenever my job got me down, either because it was boring or I just needed something to break the monotony, I'd try to bring something I enjoyed to the work. Obviously this takes more time, but all the little strange things I did at those jobs are my favorite memories. While not every job will let you bring your (potentially strange) personality to the table, I highly recommend doing it if you can find a way. Nothing brightened up the day more.
8. Watch Out for False Starts
Bad days generally occur when a number of little frustrations happen in succession. On their own they might not be a big deal and you'd go on forgetting about them, but together they make you think the universe is plotting against you. These are false starts, and they're often the root of bad days. When things appear to be going worse than usual, take a step back and look at what happened. You are not so important that an entire day has been set aside specifically for your personal misery. Dissect each moment, realize your being ridiculous, and make fun of yourself when you can. If you look at a situation realistically, you can sometimes stop a potential bad day before it starts.
7. Be Healthy
A balanced mind and body makes a big difference when it comes to everything that you do—even the things you don't like. The idea isn't to just become a person who hates their job with fancy muscles, but to allow your physical and mental needs to take precedence over pretty much everything else. For starters, decide when you have to go to bed each night (it can be a range) and follow it. Find exercise you can and will do 3-4 times per week and do it. Don't worry about how minimal it is. Start making some cheap and healthy food. Set aside some time each day to just relax and do nothing. Schedule it all if you need to, but make sure you don't let your job get int the way of your well-being. If you already don't like it, neglecting your health is going to make it much, much worse.
6. Block Out Negative Conversation
Complaining about your job can be fun because it seems cathartic, but venting your frustration will only make your anger worse. If that negativity spreads to your coworkers, you can exacerbate the problem by creating a hive mentality, or at least making everyone more miserable as a result. While you don't want to bottle up your feelings until you go postal one day, you don't have to approach everything negatively. Instead of complaining, consider solutions. Try to find ways to improve things. If you can't change the way things work in the office, consider ways to help you cope with those problems. Being more proactive and less negative may not fix everything, but it can improve your situation.
5. Take a Pay Cut
Seriously. Take a pay cut and get some extra job flexibility in return. Apparently many of you wouldn't mind that option at all, and your company probably would love to pay you less. If you want to cut back on your hours, work from home on occasion, or get some other benefit that's important to you, ask for a pay cut in exchange. You might just get it, and that benefit may make you a lot happier than money.
4. Get Along With Your Co-Workers
When you hate your job, it's easy to not want to get involved with your co-workers. Doing so means getting attached, and you don't want to feel attached to any kind of employment that's destroying your livelihood. That said, if you have friends at work you have people to make you less miserable. Also, according to one study, you might actually live longer. Even if you don't think you'll get along with certain people in the office, give it a shot. If it doesn't work out, you can always just go back to being a loner.
3. Find Balance
Finding balance is easier said than done, but small, strategic changes can make a big difference. Sometimes it's not so much that the work you do is soul suckingly awful, but that it's consuming your life. Rather than find a new job and end up in the same situation all over again, stick with the one you've got and and pay attention to the small things. Take note of the little moments that make you happy and those that drive you up the wall. Try to remove the details you hate and replace it with more of the details you like. Big, grand decisions can be pleasing for a short amount of time, but if you never fix the little problems and neglect to embrace the little moments of happiness, history will be doomed to repeat itself.
2. Learn to Deal With Your Crazy Boss
If work sucks, chances are your boss has something to do with it. But you can learn to cope. One way to deal with your boss' insanity is to create some distance. For example, see if you can have your assignments filtered though someone else. You may also want to keep a crazy log and get as much as you can in writing so should things ever get so bad that you need to go to human resources you will be prepared. Just be sure not to engage your boss in a crazy contest, because they're probably better at it than you are. For more details, read this.
1. Just Quit
If you're truly at the end of your rope and there's no way you'll survive much longer, you need to create a quitting plan. Yes, you think you have to stay to pay your rent, and yes, you think you'll never find another job in this market. Save up enough money to make it at least one month and then you need to quit. You can take a few days to relax and recoup but then you have the rest of that month to find another place to work. There's no better motivator than potential homelessness. Plus, you'll have all those work hours to dedicate to your search. At eight hours a day, that comes out to about 180 hours for the month (give or take a few). That's a lot of time. If you're diligent and use that time wisely, you should be able to find something else.
Got any other strategies for surviving a crappy job? Share 'em in the comments!
Title photo by Angela Waye (Shutterstock)
You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. Twitter's the best way to contact him, too.
Your job sucks and for whatever reason you can't leave. At the same time, if you don't leave you're pretty sure you're going to lose your mind. What can you do about it? Here are our top 10 strategies. 
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Carry Drinks in a Muffin Tin for One-Trip Refills [Entertaining]
Carry Drinks in a Muffin Tin for One-Trip Refills
Next time you want to take all the drinks out to your guests in one sweep, repurpose a muffin tray as a sturdy drink carrier and bring out all the drinks—or refills—in a single trip.
Parenting tips and tricks blog Parent Hacks shares a trick for carrying drinks, courtesy of a reader named Tracey:
I recently had an outdoor party for my child and her friends. I used a muffin/cupcake tin to put all the cups of water in, so that they wouldn't spill when I carried them outside. It was nice because everyone got their water at once, rather than me bringing outside only what my hands could carry.
At first we were concerned the trick would only work for small children's glasses, but we grabbed a muffin tray from the kitchen and it accepted rows of adult sized plastic cups and slender drinking glasses just fine—the chunkier glasses with a square base were, obviously, out of the question.
Muffing Tin as Drink Serving Tray [Parent Hacks]Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.
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Thursday, September 30, 2010
Crack the Ends and Blow to Easily Peel Hard-Boiled Eggs [Video]
Crack the Ends and Blow to Easily Peel Hard-Boiled Eggs
Hard-boiled eggs are a great, protein-packed snack, but getting them out of their shells can be messy and cumbersome. Not so much if you use the method Tim Ferriss demonstrates in this video.
There are three aspects to the easier egg peel. One is to add baking soda to the water you're boiling the eggs with, which, incidentally, should leave two inches of water over the tops of the eggs. Then, as usual, you quickly cool down the eggs after about 12 minutes of slow boiling, using ice and cold water. Finally, you take the steps Ferriss demonstrates in the video: tap and remove a little shell on each end, then blow through one end to extract the egg through the shell.
No remnants, no cracked egg whites, and you could move through a batch of hard-boiled eggs at a faster clip. (Note: We'd previously posted a similar method, but noticed that video had been taken down, so we found a new source with a good explanation).
How to "Peel" Hard-Boiled Eggs Without Peeling [The Blog of Tim Ferriss]Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.
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Hard-boiled eggs are a great, protein-packed snack, but getting them out of their shells can be messy and cumbersome. Not so much if you use the method Tim Ferriss demonstrates in this video.
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Wednesday, September 15, 2010
How to Keep Your Workflow in Sync Across Computers [Productivity]
How to Keep Your Workflow in Sync Across Computers
Between home and work desktop PCs, laptops, netbooks, tablets, and smartphones, you have several digital workspaces in your life. Here's how to keep them all effortlessly organized, so you can spend less time fiddling and more time getting things done.
Most of us deal with multiple computers nowadays; we work from home, from the office, and even at the local coffee shop. You may have any combination of a desktop computer at home, a desktop at work, a laptop at home, a laptop at work, a netbook for couch surfing, and other number of machines you have to deal with regularly.
Unfortunately, you can end up spending a lot of time trying to keep your digital workspaces synchronized—apps, layouts, organization methods, or whatever other computer customizations help save you time—defeating the purpose of setting them all up in the first place. Here are some of the best ways to keep your workspaces as closely synced as possible, so when you move from one to the other you can pick up right where you left off.
Note: If some of this feels familiar it's probably because we've covered most of these methods separately before; this goal of this guide is to bring them together in one place to help you set up a synced system.
The Tools to Keep it All Together
First, you need a way to sync your data across machines. For most of these examples, I'm going to use the popular file-syncing utility Dropbox, mostly because it's simple, free, and it's what I use. If you have, say, an Amazon S3 or Windows Live SkyDrive account already, you could use something like previously mentioned Gladinet to mount that storage as a virtual drive and go from there. With this space set aside, you can store important documents, files, and portable applications (if you're a Windows only user), so even if you find yourself working from a computer that isn't one of your usual machines, you'll still have your pre-organized digital workspace wherever you go.
Also, while it may seem archaic, you can always make do with a regular old flash drive—they're cross-platform, inexpensive, don't require syncing, and your computer will immediately have access to your data every time you plug them in (although Windows users may need to assign it a permanent drive letter or mount it to an assigned folder). With that out of the way, let's get started syncing.
Keep Bookmarks, Open Tabs, and Passwords Synced with Browser Extensions
While browsers like Firefox and Chrome have started incorporating their own synchronization tools, I always find myself coming back to third-party tools like Xmarks (for bookmark sync) and Lastpass (for password sync). The biggest advantage to using these third-party tools is that they work with pretty much any browser on the market—so even if you prefer to use Firefox on one computer and Chrome on another, or you decide to switch browser loyalties down the road, you can still keep everything synced. Furthermore, tools like Xmarks and Lastpass always seem to be ahead of the game when it comes to syncing—for example, Xmarks can sync open tabs between computers—a feature unavailable in most browsers—and Lastpass has the ability to automatically log you in to every site you visit—which you wouldn't get if you just synced your passwords with Chrome or Firefox's built-in tools.
While Xmarks' bookmark syncing and Lastpass' password syncing are pretty self-explanatory, one of the best features for managing multiple workspaces is Xmarks' ability to sync open tabs. Thus, if I'm working in my home office and need to get out of the house for awhile, I can just quit my browser, move to a coffee shop, open up my laptop and hit the "Open Remote Tabs" button in Xmarks' menu to pick up right where I left off—even if I'm in a different browser than I was before.
Sync Your Application Preferences Between Machines
If you happen to use different browsers on your different computers, there's no easy way to sync your extensions and preferences, since they're just plain not compatible with other browsers. That said, it's really easy to sync your extensions, preferences, and pretty much everything else (and this method will often work with more than just your browser). Chrome already syncs bookmarks, form data, preferences, extensions, and more, but with a bit of work, you can also sync your application preferences for apps like Firefox, Thunderbird, and Pidgin.
We've featured multiple ways to do this in the past, but the best method for syncing application data across computers is to sync your app's actual profile folder (the second method mentioned in the video above). You can, for example, sync Firefox bookmarks, profiles, and extensions using Dropbox as previously described. This method will not only sync your extensions, but your history, bookmarks, saved passwords, and pretty much everything else related to your browser preferences. If you use Firefox on all your machines, this method mostly negates the need for things like Xmarks and Lastpass, though I like to keep them around in case I end up on another computer. They shouldn't interfere with the synced profile folder.
The same basic method will work for a number of different applications. While most of the work we do nowadays is in a browser, many people still use email clients such as Thunderbird or IM clients like Pidgin, and manually keeping everything in sync can be a pain. Thunderbird and Pidgin have profile folders that can cross platforms just like Firefox, so you can use Dropbox to sync their profiles across all your computers as well.
Keep Your Music Library Available Wherever You Go
For some, music helps boost your productivity, and lots of you have told us that you prefer to listen to music while you work. The online music streaming route is always a quick and easy choice, but if you have more obscure music or you find it easier to browse your own library, you've got ways of doing that, too.
Above we detailed how to sync application data for your favorite programs, but it's a little bit harder to sync your entire music library wherever you go. If you have enough space in your Dropbox account or your preferred storage service, it's pretty easy (with a few caveats) to just sync your iTunes library with Dropbox (we'll go into more details on syncing iTunes with Dropbox in another post). If you don't have that kind of space, though, there's another way to go about it.
Since my Dropbox account only covers a few gigs, I just bring my music with me on a portable device. If you're an iPod and iTunes user, you can always just plug your iPod into your computer and listen to it from there by expanding the iPod's entry in the sidebar and clicking on "Music". While it isn't perfect, I've found that this more than covers my music needs when I'm not at my main workstation.
If that's not your cup of tea, you can store a subset of your library on a flash drive, or on your smartphone's SD card (though you'll need a bluetooth headset for when people call you you don't want to disconnect it from your computer in the middle of your work). Most music apps (even the excruciatingly slow-on-change iTunes) have a "watch folder" feature, from which the app will auto-update your library. It may work differently in different applications (iTunes, for example, automatically moves any music you add to its watch folder); I've found Songbird's works exactly how I want it to. I just set the watch folder to wherever I'm storing my music, and then whenever any songs are added or removed from that folder, Songbird will automatically update the library. It's a little "dirtier" than just syncing your entire library, but it gets the job done and allows me to take a piece of my library with me wherever I go and browse it from the comfort of a simple interface.
Do the Best You Can with What You Have
If you're in the more difficult position of working on a system that doesn't allow you to install applications, sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do the best you can. You can make portable versions of many applications and run those, if your workplace allows it. This doesn't necessarily allow for all the above methods, but Xmarks and Lastpass will still work with little intervention.
While we focused a lot on the applications, preferences, and layout of your workspaces, remember that your technology is not the end all be all of your productivity (sometimes pen and paper is the simplest way to take everything with you). Your productivity depends a lot on the way you manage your workflow: things like staying focused and dealing with information overload and multitasking are potentially huge bottlenecks, too. These tools and tricks will certainly save you time day-to-day, but they won't do a thing if you lose good work habits as soon as you pick up and move.
Send an email to Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com.
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Monday, September 6, 2010
Starting From Scratch: A Step-by-Step Guide to Reinstalling Your OS [Optimization]
Starting From Scratch: A Step-by-Step Guide to Reinstalling Your OS
If your computer's running slowly and you've tried everything else, it might be time for a fresh install of your operating system. Here are some tips, tricks, and best practices to get through the process quickly and easily.
There are a lot of scenarios that can bring you to the realization that it's time to start over. Perhaps you've had your machine for a few years, you pop in the same hard drive or SSD each time you upgrade, or you just install way too much stuff and it would be far more time-consuming to do a thorough cleaning. Whatever your case may be, wiping your drive and performing a fresh install of your OS is sometimes the best course of action, but it can cause other problems—like data loss—if you're not careful. There are a few ways to approach the process but we're going to look at approaches that'll save you time—while still being thorough, of course.
Step One: Clone Your Hard Drive
If you backup online, keep everything important in Dropbox, use software like Apple's Time Machine, or do anything anything that takes the work out of backing up your files, you still aren't ready to just wipe everything off your computer's hard drive. While you might have a complete backup in multiple places, you're not going to want to spend time searching for files after you re-install your OS.
Creating a clone of your current drive is probably the best thing you can do to prepare for this for a full wipe and reinstallation. First of all, if anything goes awry and you want to revert to your old system, you have an exact copy of your drive before you wiped it. You can always restore it back to the way it was. What's more likely useful is that when you need to start restoring select files on your computer's hard drive, they'll all be in one place. The location of files on your backup drive will be virtually identical to the location on your computer's hard drive, so figuring out where to copy files will be a lot easier. Cloning a hard drive is also a set-it-and-forget-it kind of process, so you can just initiate the clone and come back in a few hours. Pending any unforeseen issues, it should be complete when you come back. All you need to make the clone happen is an external hard drive of equal or greater capacity than the hard drive you want to clone, cloning software, and a few hours you can devote to anything but using your computer. Let's break it down by operating system.
Windows
There are a number of options for cloning Windows drives, but we'll take a look at a couple of good ones. Easeus Disk Copy (our review) is one of the fastest ways to clone your disk and works via boot CD. It actually works on Mac OS X and Linux as well.
If you want to clone your Windows drive without a boot CD, however, DriveImage XML (our review and how to) can do it on the fly. It has options to save to a disk image (as opposed to simply cloning) to another drive, but since you need to save the data to a separate drive anyway, you're probably better off doing an actual clone than a disk image. On the other hand, if you don't mind that you can't boot from the clone and want to use an existing external hard drive with enough extra space to host it, saving to an image is an option as well. Personally, I prefer to have a separate drive so I can continue to update the clone periodically as a means of backup, but you should follow the method that works best for your needs.
Mac OS X
My favorite drive cloning software for OS X is, by far, Carbon Copy Cloner. First of all, it's free, but after using a number of others, both free and paid, I've found there's really nothing better for this task. It also makes for great, simple backup software and can create bootable drives, so if you're on a Mac it's really the way to go.
Using the software is pretty simple. You just select a source drive (your internal hard drive) and a target drive (your backup drive) and press the clone button. If you need to stop it at any point, you can. If you reinitiate the cloning process later, Carbon Copy Cloner will just rescan everything on the target drive and pickup where it left off. There's a bit more Carbon Copy Cloner can do, but for our purposes a simple clone works well enough. Just make sure you check all your settings before starting the drive cloning process so you don't accidentally send data in the wrong direction and erase files you want to keep. Yes, yes, this seems like a pretty dumb mistake, but we're all careless sometimes and it can happen. Always remember to double check!
Linux
Clonezilla is a great option for Linux and it comes in two different flavors. Clonezilla Live is what you're going to want to use. It lets you use a CD, DVD or USB flash drive to boot the application and, from there, you can clone your drive.
Clonezilla Live gives you the option of cloning your internal drive to another connected drive, but you also have the option of backing up to a network drive as well. Alternatively you can always just use the dd command in the command line like this:
dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdbIn this case we're copying content from /dev/sda to /dev/sdb. It's worth noting that to do this you should 1) be very careful so you don't accidentally write over the wrong disk, and 2) that you need to be running as root in order to execute the dd command.
Since this can take awhile, if you're looking for something to do in the meantime and you happen to have another computer you can start downloading all the software you're going to need to re-install. If you're running Windows, Ninite is a wonderful shortcut for several freeware applications. You'd also do well to look over the Lifehacker Packs (our favorite free software) for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Apart from those great freebies, you probably have more complex applications—like Adobe Photoshop—to install as well. Downloading these all ahead of time and loading them up on a flash or external hard drive can make the re-installation process a lot faster when the time comes.
Step Two: Zero Out Your Data
Once you have a good, cloned backup (and maybe a few other backups, online or otherwise, if you're as paranoid as I am), you can erase the data on your computer's internal drive. The idea that you're actually erasing the data is a bit of a misnomer, however. When you perform a quick format, the drive is just being told that all sectors are writeable. That means next time the drive needs to perform a write, it will overwrite files that you indicated were fungible. It's only at that point the data is replaced, and sometimes data is only partially replaced. This means you have file fragments floating around, and while it's not going to cause a huge performance hit on your drive, it is nonetheless relevant. More importantly, zero-filling your hard drive will identify bad sectors in the drive and prevent them from being used. If you really want to give your machine a fresh start, it's best to zero out all the data on the drive. (All the data on your drive is stored as 1s and 0s. Zeroing your drive is sort of like hitting the reset button on your hard drive.)
Zeroing out your data does the same thing as a quick format, but afterwards it writes zeroes to every block on the hard drive. For added security you would perform this function multiple times, but since our aim is less about securely deleting your data and more about identifying bad disk sectors and forestalling disk fragmentation, we're not going to go all out. I've got a 256GB SSD and this process took about 30-35 minutes. On a traditional hard drive it will probably take a bit longer. Either way, it's another set-it-and-forget-it process, so you can let your computer do it's thing and go off and do yours.
So how do you write zeros to a disk when formatting? It varies by operating system, so let's take a look at each.
Windows
While there are a few third party options, grabbing the software from your drive manufacturer is generally free. Hitachi, Seagate/Maxtor, and Western Digital all provide software that can zero-fill their hard disks. For a comprehensive overview of your windows options, check out Gizmodo's guide tocompletely erasing your drives.Mac OS X
In Mac OS X, the magic happens in Disk Utility. Chances are you'll be doing this after booting up from your OS X install DVD, but it'll look the same either way. First you want to select your internal hard drive and choose the erase tab.
Once you get there, you'll see a button towards the button called Security Options. Click that and you'll get the following popup:
Chances are that Don't Erase Data is already selected. Keeping this option selected means your disk will be formatted and data will be marked as overwriteable, but the data will still be intact and is easily recoverable via disk recovery software (basically, what we talked about earlier). What you want to select is any of the other options. Zero Out Data is the fastest, but if you're interested in waiting a long time in the name of better security, the 7-pass and 35-pass erase operations will serve you better. Either way, once you've made your decision click OK to accept your selection and then Erase once you're back in the main window.
Linux
The easiest way to zero-fill a hard drive in Linux is by using dd in the command line. Similar to cloning a drive, a command like this will fill a drive with zeros:dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hdaIn this example, /dev/hda will be filled with zeroes. Make sure you specify the path to the drive you want to zero-fill and don't just copy and paste this statement. Although you'll have to be running as root to execute a command like this, it doesn't take much to accidentally zero-fill the wrong drive. Be very, very sure you have everything correct before doing this.
Step Three: Install Your Operating System (Again)
While re-installing your system is a pretty straightforward process, it's a good time to consider what you do and do not want to put on your machine. In the case of Mac OS X, you'll generally end up with extra print drivers and language translations. Although OS X 10.6 did away with that problem for the most part, it also removed software like Rosetta and QuickTime 7, which may be things you'll need and want to install.
With Windows, what you'll likely want to pay attention to most is anything that's been installed that isn't actually Windows. If you're using a system install disc that came with your desktop or laptop, you should be wary of any third-party crapware that's coming along with the operating system. If you can't stop it from being installed, make uninstalling it the very next step once the installation is complete. This process is surprisingly painless with a tool like PC Decrapifier (our review).
When it comes to Linux, this is less of an issue. Since you can pick your distribution and what you do and do not want, chances are you're not going to accidentally install packages you don't need.
Step Four: Restore Your Personal Data
This step is the most time-consuming and the most personal. How you go about it will vary based on your needs, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind.
First, you don't want to just dump all your old data back on to your internal hard drive. That'll defeat the purpose of the fresh install. The idea here is to get rid of all the crap you don't need, so you really want to go through your files—by hand—and pick only what you want. This mainly pertains to files used by your operating system (such as settings files and application data) since your personal documents (music, video, photos, text files) aren't really tied to anything and only really take up disk space. Restoring these files doesn't have to take a lot of time, though, because you can just select what you want from the backup and copy them to the same relative location on your internal drive.
A warning to Mac OS X users: Although it may be tempting to use Migration Assistant to take care of all of this for you, resist the urge. Migration Assistant is great for an upgrade, but it will pretty much restore your system to the way it was and anything you'll gain from starting from scratch will be lost.
Once you have your system files in place, installing applications is up next. Depending on your OS and the application in question, you may be able to just copy a few things back over. In many cases, however, you'll need to reinstall from scratch. While your backup may not be too helpful with re-installing your applications, you can use it as a list of applications you need to install. Better for Windows users, however, is if you're using Ninite or our Lifehacker Pack for Windows to automatically install some of your favorite free software. And whether you're a Windows, OS X, or Linux user, hopefully you've also filled up a flash or external hard drive with every other application you need to install (as described at the end of step one). This way you can just run through each installer and get the job done quickly.
When it comes to your other, personal, files, you don't really need to worry too much about what you do and do not copy back to your internal drive. They're not tied to the system and they're not going to have much of an effect on performance. Still, this is a great opportunity to do some spring cleaning. Copy back only what you think you need. The best part about having a hard drive clone is that you can potentially take it with you and just copy over files you forget if you find you need them. Keeping the clone handy for the next few days is key since you're likely to forget something. Once a few days have passed and you find you're not copying anything over, it's probably safe to leave the clone at home. At this point you should be in great shape, running a clean new install of your operating system with far fewer files around to bog down performance.
Got any great tips for performing fresh OS installs? Let's hear 'em in the comments!
Send an email to Adam Dachis, the author of this post, at adachis@lifehacker.com.
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