How to Upgrade the Hard Drive in Your iMac

Whitson Gordon — iMacs are really great for a lot of reasons, but one of their biggest downsides is that, by design, they're not easily upgradable. Tech blog Tested shows us how to get inside your iMac and replace the hard drive.

While we'd recommend buying a Mac Pro or building a Hackintosh if you want an upgradable computer, there are many reasons you may opt to buy an iMac (or you may be stuck with one you've already got). If you need to upgrade your drive—whether you're replacing a broken drive, installing a bigger drive, or switching to an SSD, you're in for a bit of work. You'll not only need a few different types of Phillips and Torx screwdrivers, but you'll need some serious guts—this isn't a mod for the faint of heart. Hit the link to check out the video and see how its done.

How to Take Apart an iMac (and Replace its Hard Drive) [Tested]

via lifehacker.com

Posted via email from ://allthings-bare

Failing hard drive sounds - Datacent.com - Datacent

 

Hard drive sounds

These are some typical sounds we hear in our data recovery lab. If your hard drive makes noises like these and you are still able to access your files - backup immediately. If your drive can no longer be seen in your system please fill out our simple evaluation form to get a fast quote on our data recovery services.
To listen to the sound simply click on the play button. Click on the drive manufacturer next to the sound button to learn more about common problems these drives experience.

Western Digital

Western Digital desktop drive with bad heads clunking.

Western Digital 500GB desktop drive with bad heads slowly clicks a few times and spins down.

Western Digital 250GB desktop drive with head crash clicks a few times, then spins down.

Western Digital 250GB desktop drive with stuck spindle can't spin up, chatters.

Western Digital laptop drive with bad heads making clicking sound.

Western Digital 200GB desktop drive with bad preamplifier chip (located on the headstack) clicks a few times, spins down.

Western Digital desktop drive with unstable heads clicks a few times and stops spinning.

Western Digital laptop hard drive with stuck spindle trying to spin up with siren.

Western Digital 500GB desktop hard drive with bad bearings can't gain full rotational speed.

Seagate

Seagate desktop drive with failing heads making thrashing, then clicking sound.

Seagate desktop drive with bad heads slowly clicks and beeps on spin up.

Seagate laptop drive with bad heads making clicking/knocking sound.

Seagate desktop drive with seized spindle trying to spin up.

Seagate Momentus laptop drive with bad heads making nasty drilling noise.

Maxtor

Maxtor desktop drive with bad heads making clicking/knocking/beeping noise.

Maxtor drive with bad heads making steady clicking/knocking sound.

Maxtor desktop drive with stuck spindle playing futuristic cell phone melody.

Maxtor drive with stuck spindle and musical siren again.

Samsung

Samsung 80GB desktop hard drive with bad heads making fast clicking sound.

Samsung desktop hard drive with bad heads clicks, then spins down.

Samsung 40GB desktop hard drive with bad head knocks a few times.

Samsung desktop drive with degraded media making scratching sound when hitting bad sectors.

Hitachi/IBM

Hitachi laptop drive with bad heads clicks once on spin up, then beeps.

IBM desktop drive with degraded media making scratching sound when hitting area with bad sectors.

Hitachi/IBM laptop drive with bad heads making clicking sound.

IBM 40GB desktop hard drive with degraded media/heads rattles and squeals on spin up.

Hitachi 60GB laptop drive with stuck spindle can't spin up, makes humming/buzzing noise.

Toshiba

Toshiba laptop hard drive with stuck spindle trying to spin up(heard if taken close to your ear).

Toshiba laptop drive with failing bearings making grinding sound.

Toshiba laptop drive with bad bearings making loud grinding sound.

Toshiba laptop drive with bad bearings making nasty drilling/screaming sound.

Toshiba laptop drive with bad heads making clicking/sweeping sound on boot up.

Fujitsu

Fujitsu laptop drive with bad heads making clicking/knocking noise.

Fujitsu laptop hard drive with bad heads making sweeping sound.

Fujitsu 40gb desktop drive with bad media making scratching noise.

Quantum

Quantum desktop drive with bad heads making clunking sound.

... more to come....
here. -->

::

::

::

::

::

::

::

::

::

::

::

via datacent.com

Posted via email from ://allthings-bare

Nintendo Will Release a Special Mario Anniversary Red Wii

Nintendo announced today a special Super Mario Bros. anniversary edition of the Wii console.

The Wii Super Mario 25th Anniversary Edition includes a red console and controller. The system will be preloaded with a special version of the original Super Mario Bros. Where the iconic "?" coin boxes are being replaced with graphics showing "25."

This special Wii console will be released on November 11 in Japan, priced ¥20,000. The system includes the following:

• Wii System
• Wiimote Plus (Red)
• Wiimote Jacket (Red)
• Nunchuck (Red)
• AC Adapter
• Wii Stand
• Wii Sensor Bar
• Two Batteries
• Wii AV Cable
• Wii Stand Support Plate
• Wii Sensor Stand
• Wii Cleaning Cloth

The included controller is a Wiimote Plus.

Source: Andriasang

Wii, Mario 25th Anniversary

If you liked this story please support gamrFeed and send it out to others. Thanks!

-->

Further Reading

Nintendo E3 2010 Press Conference Liveblog

Highlights from Iwata's Q&A Session at the Nintendo Conference

Review: Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands

Mario's 25th Anniversary Box Set Coming To Europe

via feedproxy.google.com

Posted via email from ://allthings-bare

Seagate Releases 1.5 Terabyte Portable Drive

NNeed 1.5 terabytes at USB 3.0 speeds? Need to stick it all into your pocket? Seagate, Ponch to your John, has your back. The 1.5 TB GoFlex Drive is the biggest monster in all of monsterland and features Seagate’s unique GoFlex technology that allows you to swap out the chips and the rear port to add new capabilities.

The 1.5 TB model costs $249 and is available right about now.

SEAGATE INTRODUCES INDUSTRY’S FIRST

1.5TB PORTABLE EXTERNAL DRIVE

New FreeAgent® GoFlex™ Ultra-Portable External Drive Packs a Punch with Pre-loaded Paramount Pictures Films, Unprecedented Amount of Storage and Blazingly Fast USB 3.0 Connection

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. — September 21, 2010 — Designed to address the explosive worldwide demand for digital storage, Seagate (NASDAQ: STX) today launched the world’s first 1.5 terabyte (TB) 2.5-inch portable external drive. Available immediately, the new 1.5TB FreeAgent® GoFlex™ ultra-portable drive delivers an all-in-one, technically advanced solution to help jump-start, build, store and enjoy libraries of digital content in one’s preferred medium—whether on a Mac or PC, or a television, at home or on the go. With 1.5TB of capacity people can now store and carry up to 60 HD movies, 750 video games, thousands of photos or tens of thousands hours of digital music.

“Today’s announcement is a ‘triple-crown’ of consumer technology—packaging record breaking capacity, blazingly fast USB 3.0 connectivity and the bonus of major motion picture entertainment—making the 1.5TB GoFlex™ ultra-portable drive an unprecedented and innovative solution,” said Darcy Clarkson, vice president of Global Retail Sales and Marketing for Seagate. “Bringing this solution to market on the heels of our 3TB GoFlex™ Desk drive and the Momentus® XT solid state hybrid drive is proof of Seagate’s continuing technology leadership and tradition of setting storage industry milestones.”

Shipping now in the United States and rolling out globally later this year, all 1.5TB GoFlex ultra-portable drives[1] will ship with a USB 3.0 interface cable, accelerating the transfer speed of a drive up to 10x when connected to a USB 3.0 port, when compared to a USB 2.0 port. For example, a drive using a USB 3.0 connection can transfer a 25GB HD movie in under five minutes versus the 14 minutes it would take using a traditional USB 2.0 drive[2]. In

addition, all GoFlex ultra portable drives will now also ship with the new superspeed USB 3.0 cable, which will still continue to work with existing USB 2.0 ports.

“Consumers continue to push the growth of digital music, photos, and video content, and increasingly want access to this content from a variety of CE devices, including a PC,” says John Rydning, IDC’s research director for hard disk drives. “Higher capacity disk drives in combination with higher bandwidth interfaces like USB 3.0 will help to make a greater number of large multimedia files more accessible from multiple devices in the home.”

A key addition to the GoFlex™ family, the new 1.5TB GoFlex ultra-portable drive delivers ultimate flexibility in how people collect, protect, share and enjoy their digital libraries, all in a convenient compact package. In addition to coming bundled with USB 3.0 connectivity, the drive can be used with an array of add-on cables and accessories such as the GoFlex™ Net media sharing device and the GoFlex™ TV HD media player, that provide the flexibility to enjoy your content on a TV, a network, using a mobile device, or via the Internet.

Continuing the special offer with Paramount Digital Entertainment, a division of Paramount Pictures Corporation (PPC), specially-marked packages of the new 1.5TB and the 1TB GoFlex ultra-portable drives will contain Paramount Pictures’ popular film, Star Trek (2009), which can be activated free of charge. Each drive will also contain an assortment of 20 Paramount Pictures movies that can be easily and securely unlocked by purchasing a license key online. The films will be licensed for multiple devices to allow for portability and enjoyment on a Windows® OS desktop computer, laptop computer, or widescreen television, by connecting the drive to one of the two available USB ports on a GoFlex TV HD media player[3]. Paramount content will also be added to additional capacities of the GoFlex Pro ultra-portable drive in October.

All 1.5TB GoFlex ultra-portable drives are compatible with both the Windows® operating system and Mac® OS X computers. Each drive includes an NTFS driver for Mac, which allows the hard drive to store and access files from both Windows and Mac OS X computers without reformatting. The NTFS driver is simply installed once on the Mac® OS X computer, allowing it to read and write files on a Windows formatted[4] drive.

The 1.5TB GoFlex ultra-portable drive with USB 3.0 adapter is available in black and can be purchased on Seagate.com and through select retailers for $249.99.

via crunchgear.com

Posted via email from ://allthings-bare

Samsung outs the 1TB Spinpoint MT2 2.5-inch hard drive

It’s lovely that we share the world with 2.5-inch 1TB hard drives. I mean, the only thing that could be better is if said hard drives were thin enough to fit into most notebooks. Then it will be perfect but the gulf oil well apocalypse will probably get here first. Oh well, we’ll have to deal with drives like the 1TB Spinpoint MT2 and its 12.5mm height that’s 3mm higher than most notebook drives.

Besides the 1TB capacity, the drive itself isn’t anything all that special with a 5400 RPM rating and 8MB of buffer memory. It’s likely destined for external drive or nettop duty seeing as its a tad too fat to fit inside notebooks. No word on retail pricing, but that’s probably because OEMs and the like are the target demographic.

via crunchgear.com

Posted via email from ://allthings-bare

Seagate makes good on its promise, outs the 3TB FreeAgent GoFlex Desk external hard drive

Ladies and gents, this is a 3TB hard drive. Let that sink in. Three effin terabytes. That’s a whole lot of data on one hard drive. Seagate previously stated that the drive would be out by year’s end, but here it is and it’s barely summer.

The FreeAgent GoFlex family is Seagate’s first product line to sport the gigantic hard drive. USB 3.0, USB 2.0 and Firewire 800 via Seagate’s GoFlex adapters are tasked with the job of transferring the data to and fro the connected computer. The USB 2.0 flavor is available right now with the MSRP $249.

The real story, however, isn’t that Seagate managed to stuff 3TB into one 3.5-inch hard drive. It’s that Seagate is actually bringing it to market amid so many potential problems.

You see, a lot of computers can’t use the full 3TB at once. It has to do with the LBA (logical block addressing) standard that was wrote back in the days of DOS. The original standard limited drives to 2.1TB, which seemed like a whole lot back in the roaring ’80s.

32-bit OS like Windows and OS X 10.5 and below will only see partitions 2.1TB or smaller. The full 3TB can be used, but only in chunks that’s supported by LBA. Then there are issues with MBR’s, RAID systems and hard drive controllers, too. But Seagate has pushed forward and outed the drive anyway.

Of course many of the issues associated with these large drives are null seeing as this implementation is as an external drive. By putting the 3TB drive in an external enclosure, Seagate is sort of saying it’s not meant for primary disk usage or RAID arrays. That’s not going to stop people from cracking the case and slapping the massive drive into their primary rigs, though. It will however give Seagate customer service an easy out until all the driver issues are worked out. Smart.

SEAGATE BREAKS CAPACITY CEILING WITH WORLD’S
FIRST 3 TERABYTE EXTERNAL DESKTOP DRIVE

New FreeAgent™ GoFlex™ Desk Packs Unprecedented Amount of Storage for both Mac and PC

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif. — June 29, 2010 — Putting more terabytes in the hands of consumers worldwide, Seagate (NASDAQ: STX), the leader in hard drives and storage solutions, today announced the world’s first 3 Terabyte (TB) external desktop drive. Available immediately, the 3TB FreeAgent™ GoFlex™ Desk external hard drive helps to meet the explosive worldwide demand for digital content storage in both the home and the office. With 3TB of capacity people can store up to 120 HD movies, 1,500 video games, thousands of photos or countless hours of digital music.

A key addition to the company’s recently introduced GoFlex family of hard drives, the 3TB GoFlex Desk couples immense capacity with the flexibility to adapt the drive’s USB 2.0 interface to a USB 3.0 or FireWire 800 connection to meet varying performance and transfer speed needs. Consumers can easily create, store and access content from either a Windows® or Mac OS X computer on the GoFlex Desk, thanks to an included NTFS driver for Mac.

“Consumer capacity demands are quickly out-pacing the needs of business as people continue to collect high-definition videos, photos and music,” said Dave Mosley, Seagate executive vice president of Sales, Marketing and Product Line Management. “Seagate has a tradition of designing products that break into new storage frontiers to meet customer requirements and the 3TB GoFlex™ Desk is no exception–delivering the highest-capacity storage solution available today.”

A recent report by Parks Associates indicates the average consumer household will see its digital media storage needs grow to nearly 900GB by year-end 2014, driven in large part by video downloads, managed copies of Blu-ray
discs, and increasing use of DVR recording capabilities[1]. The GoFlex Desk drive delivers unconstrained[2], high-capacity storage and automatic, continuous backup with software file encryption to keep all data safe and secure[3]. The standard USB 2.0 interface can be upgraded to USB 3.0 or FireWire® 800 by coupling the drive with the appropriate GoFlex upgrade adapter to increase file transfer performance by up to 10x for easier copying or sharing of files.

“As the definition quality of digital cameras increases, playback devices such as digital photo frames and MP3 players proliferate and the use of the Internet for downloading music and video continues to grow, more files accumulate in the home,” said Kurt Scherf. “Consumers who are active in digital media creation and consumption will witness their digital media storage needs grow nine-fold by 2014, driving the demand for higher capacity, easy-to-use storage solutions.”

GoFlex Desk is also compatible with both Windows and Mac computers. Each drive includes an NTFS driver for Mac, which allows the drive to store and access files from both Windows and Mac OS X computers without reformatting. The NTFS driver is simply installed once on a Mac computer, allowing it to read and write files on a Windows formatted[4] drive. Its sleek black, 3.5-inch design sits either vertically or horizontally to accommodate any desktop environment.

The 3TB GoFlex Desk drive with USB 2.0 adapter can be purchased on Seagate.com and through select retailers for $249.99.

via crunchgear.com

Posted via email from ://allthings-bare

WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player plays just about everything

WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player plays just about everything: "


Not to be outdone, Western Digital just released the Live Plus HD Media Player with Netflix streaming. The $149 box will stream just about anything to any TV and includes a direct storage access system, allowing you to stream video right off of a hard drive.

The device outputs 1080p video over HDMI 1.3. It also streams over Wi-Fi.

Product Page

New WD TV(R) Live Plus HD Media Player Delivers Thousands of TV Episodes and Movies for Netflix(R) Members to Watch Instantly

WD TV(R) Live Plus HD Media Player Enables Consumers to Stream Their Favorite Shows and Personal Content Directly To Their Big Screen TV

LAKE FOREST, Calif., June 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world’s leader in external storage solutions, today introduced the WD TV® Live Plus HD media player, which makes it easy for Netflix® members to instantly watch thousands of TV episodes and movies on the biggest screen in their home — their HD television set. The new Netflix interface enables members to browse and add movies to their instant Queue on the Netflix Website right from their TV.

In addition to Netflix, the WD TV Live Plus HD media player also enables users to stream personalized Internet content from YouTube™, Flickr®, Pandora®, Live365™, as well as the MediaFly network which includes daily podcasts from CNN, NBC, MTV, ESPN® and other online content providers(1). Unlike most other Netflix-capable devices, the WD TV Live Plus HD media player also lets consumers enjoy a broad variety of the digital media they already own, creating a unified entertainment experience.

The onscreen menu brings together all of the users’ available media in an elegant and simple-to-navigate interface, while the network capability enables users to stream movies from PC or Mac® computers, USB storage devices such as My Passport® portable hard drives, My Book® desktop drives, or network-attached storage such as WD’s My Book® World Edition™ and WD ShareSpace™ to their HDTVs. Compatible with Windows® 7, the WD TV Live Plus HD media player enables the Windows 7 Play To feature so users can initiate and control the streaming of video, music or photos to the media player and home entertainment systems from any Windows 7-based PC on their network.

The WD TV Live Plus HD media player fulfills consumers’ growing demand for large libraries of digital videos, photos and music. According to research firm Parks Associates, the average broadband household will see its digital media storage needs grow to nearly 900 GB by year-end 2014. And users are increasingly looking for easy ways to enjoy the content on the big screen. Parks’ findings reveal that the sales of connected consumer electronics devices, such as connected TVs and digital media adapters, is expected to more than double from 57 million units in 2009 to 115 million units in 2013 (Home Networks for Consumer Electronics 2009).

Similar to the popular generations of WD TV HD media players that preceded it, the WD TV Live Plus HD media player connects directly to a users’ HDTV and plays almost any file stored on a connected USB drive such as My Passport portable hard drives. The WD TV Live Plus HD media player features powerful media processing, which enables playback in Full-HD 1080p resolution. WD TV Live Plus HD media player also plays movies, music and photos stored on other popular USB devices such as digital camcorders and digital cameras.

“Netflix has become a ‘must have’ for consumer electronics devices,” said Netflix vice president of business development Bill Holmes. “We’re proud to align with WD to include Netflix on WD’s groundbreaking WD TV Live Plus HD media player.”

“While Netflix can be found on an increasing number of products such as Internet TVs, Blu-ray Players, video game consoles, and other stand-alone devices, the WD TV Live Plus HD media player is unique as it allows digital media buffs to access and play all of their own personal HD media stored anywhere on their network or USB drives. At the same time they can easily stream Netflix, Pandora, YouTube and other Internet favorites to their HDTV,” said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD’s branded products group.

WD TV Live Plus HD Media Player

Features of the WD TV Live Plus HD media player include:

Full-HD 1080p video playback and navigation with the included remote control and crisp, animated navigation menus;

Access to thousands of TV episodes and movies to watch instantly for any Netflix member with an unlimited subscription;

Wireless ready to support wireless network connection to your home network with an optional USB wireless adapter, which is sold separately;

Supports a wide variety of the most popular file formats with no need to spend time transcoding;

Play videos, music and photos from the Internet on your big screen TV and discover new music with Pandora Internet radio or listen to thousands of radio stations via Live365 Internet radio, daily podcasts from the MediaFly network including CNN, NBC, MTV, ESPN and other online content providers;

Ethernet port for wired or WiFi connection(2) to access files anywhere on the network to play movies, music, and photos from any PC or drive on a home network;

Turns a USB drive(3) into an HD media player and plays content from most popular USB drives, digital cameras, camcorders, and portable media players that can be recognized as mass storage devices;

Unlimited media collection, just add more USB drives for more space;

Two USB ports that allow seamless media playback from multiple USB drives displayed in a single list and sorted by media type;

Windows 7-compatible Play To feature enables users to stream Windows 7 computer files to the TV through WD TV Plus HD media player;

Transfer files by copying, moving or deleting files stored on a USB drive, a network drive, camcorder, or a camera to the attached USB drive using the on-screen menus;

Works with digital cameras, digital video cameras and any other digital imaging device that supports Picture Transfer Protocol;

Advanced navigation options including thumbnail and list views, media library and search;

Photo viewing to create custom slide shows, zoom and pan and search;

Movie viewing with fast-forward, rewind, pause, zoom and pan, view subtitles, and search;

Music playback with fast-forward, rewind, pause, shuffle, repeat and search;

HDMI® 1.3 port, composite video and component video output(4) for the highest quality HDTV or home theater;

SPDIF digital output that sends digital signals to your AV receiver for the best surround sound experience; and,

Ultra-compact design to fit easily into a home entertainment center.

Pricing and Availability

The WD TV Live Plus HD media player is available now at select retailers and online at shopwd.com. Covered by a 1-year limited warranty, the MSRP for WD TV Live Plus HD media player is $149.99 USD.

"

Wipe, Delete, and Securely Destroy Your Hard Drive’s Data the Easy Way

Wipe, Delete, and Securely Destroy Your Hard Drive’s Data the Easy Way: "
Giving a computer to somebody else? Maybe you’re putting it out on Craigslist to sell to a stranger—either way, you’ll want to make sure that your drive is completely wiped, scrubbed, and clean of any personal data. Here’s the easy way to do it.

If you only have access to an Ubuntu Live CD or thumb drive, you can actually use that instead if you prefer, and we’ve got you covered with a full guide to securely wiping your PC’s hard drive. Otherwise, keep reading.

Wipe the Drive with DBAN

Darik’s Boot and Nuke CD is the easiest way to permanently and totally destroy every bit of personal information on that drive—nobody is going to recover a thing once this is done.

The first thing you’ll need to do is download a copy of the ISO image, and then burn it to a blank CD with something really useful like Imgburn. Just choose Burn image to Disc at the start screen, select the little file icon, grab the downloaded ISO, and then go. If you need a little more help, we’ve got you covered with a beginner’s guide to burning an ISO image.



Once you’re done, stick the disc into the drive, start the PC up, and then once you boot to the DBAN prompt you’ll see a menu. You can pretty much ignore everything on here, and just type…

autonuke

And there you are, your disk is now being securely wiped.



Once it’s all done, you can remove the CD, and then either pack the PC up to sell, or re-install Windows on there if you feel like it.

More Advanced Method

If you’re really paranoid, want to run a different type of wipe, or just like fiddling with the options, you can choose F3 or hit Enter at the prompt to head to the advanced selection screen. Here you can choose exactly which drive to wipe, or hit the M key to change the method.



You’ll be able to choose between a bunch of different wipe options. The Quick Erase is all you really need though.



So there you are, easy PC wiping in one package. What about you? Do you make sure to wipe your old PCs before giving them away? Personally I’ve always just yanked out the hard drives before I got rid of an old PC, but that’s just me.

Download DBAN from dban.org

Similar Articles	Productive Geek Tips
Use an Ubuntu Live CD to Securely Wipe Your PC’s Hard Drive How to Dispose of Old Computers Responsibly How To Delete a VHD in Windows 7 Speed up External USB Hard Drives in Windows Vista Speed Up SATA Hard Drives in Windows Vista	TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window
Latest Software Reviews	Tinyhacker Random Tips
DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010	Microsoft’s “How Do I ?” Videos Home Networks – How do they look like & the problems they cause Check Your IMAP Mail Offline In Thunderbird Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff

"