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Why it's a good idea to own a USB-to-SATA adapter The USB-to-IDE/SATA adapter the most indispensable tool in my PC repair kit. Just this weekend, it once again proved itself worthy of that title. In a nutshell, the adapter allows you to connect an internal hard drive to your PC-externally. What would an internal drive be doing outside your desktop or laptop? Funny you should ask. About a week ago, my media-center PC starting displaying this message during boot-up: "Hard drive failure imminent." And you know what? It was. In short order, the machine wouldn't boot at all. Long story short, I had to replace the drive, reinstall Windows, etc. But I wondered if I could salvage any/all of my recorded TV shows. To find out, I connected the old, non-booting drive (now "naked" outside the system) to a USB port via my adapter. Huzzah! The machine was able to read the drive and copy over the recordings. Except for the hassles (and expense) of actually replacing the drive, no harm done. There's another reason to keep one of these adapters on hand, and that's if you're planning to upgrade to a solid-state drive (SSD). Unless you buy a kit that comes with an adapter, you'll need one so you can image (i.e. clone) your existing drive to the new SSD. Then you'll remove the old drive, install the new one, and presto, you're back in business. (Much faster business: SSDs rock.) Unless you have a pretty old desktop or laptop, you can skip buying a USB-to-IDE/SATA adapter and just go for USB-to-SATA. At the same time, I recommend one that supports USB 3.0. You may not need it now, but it's a good bet your next PC will have USB 3.0 ports -- and that'll make for much faster copying between drives. Trust me: When the time comes that you need to upgrade or replace a hard drive, you'll be glad to have a USB-to-SATA adapter on hand. By-The Xpert Crew @ http://techvedic.com

In case your hard drive is damaged or corrupted then it is better to have functional copy of the drive where you can store your stuff immediately. Cloning a drive is a good option for handling such situations. Have a look on this tutorial.

Installing a solid-state drive is one of the best upgrades you can make to your computer, but migrating your Windows installation to a small drive can be tricky, because your data won't necessarily all fit on the drive. Here's how to install an SSD without reinstalling Windows from scratch.

External hard-disk or USB drive attached to a system running on OSX is vulnerable, as it could be accessed through other user-profiles easily. Apart from that, if the network file sharing feature is enabled, the external storage device could be accessed by anyone having the authority to get logged into the network. Thus, no matter you encrypted the drive or particular files or not, any unauthorized user can access your data, steal records and make changes into that. What to do? Techvedic, being a leader in tech support, offers you practical and effective solution.

Want to get rid of your old computer? But, remember to erase all your personal information from its hard drive before discarding it. In this tutorial, follow the steps to wipe out the hard drive of your computer for cleaning its data.

"Adding a solid-state drive (SSD) to your computer is simply the best upgrade at your disposal, capable of speeding up your computer in ways you hadn't thought possible. The even better news: A good SSD is now cheaper than ever. But as with any new technology, there's plenty to learn. Here's everything you should know about your SSD, whether you're interested in upgrading or just like to know the ins and outs of your hardware."

FXI is preparing to launch the Cotton Candy, a tiny computer that looks like a USB thumb drive. The device, which can run either Ubuntu or Android 4.0, has a dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPU, 1GB of RAM, and a Mali 400MP GPU that allows it to decode high-definition video.

For storing big projects, you need tons of storage space. If you are studying fields like filmmaking, animation or photography then you need to go for external storage. In this tutorial, we are giving you some tips for buying appropriate external hard drive.

For changing the drive letters, you need to follow certain steps. Let's go through this tutorial.

For Windows 7 and 8 users, this tutorial is suitable to add an external drive for large music collections.

Now, it's time to offload your iTunes library to an external drive or a separate internal drive. This tutorial contains step-by-step instructions to move iTunes library.

1.5TB mobile drive

In springtime, people's fancies may turn to love, but their to-do list turns to cleaning. Make this the year that you finally recycle all the ancient MP3 players, toner cartridges, ethernet cables, and bulky monitors out of the closets, garages, and spare rooms where they've been lurking. Your home will feel more modern, and you'll be doing your part to boost the 27 percent electronics recycling rate. Just in time for another spring constant, Earth Day. Before you get rid of any of your electronics The first step on your recycling journey: Make sure that none of your personal data will be leaving the house along with your soon-to-be-discarded electronics. If you're using Apple's iTunes to manage your digital music and video, be sure you deauthorize any device you're recycling. "But that computer is dead" is no excuse: Apple expects you to simply deauthorize all your devices via the iTunes app, then reauthorize the ones that are still alive If you're recycling a smartphone, do a complete reset of your phone to wipe out its data and restore it to its factory settings. Before you do this, however, make sure that you've got your data backed up someplace else If you're recycling a computer or a hard drive, don't just assume that deleting files will wipe the data off your system, because it won't. All it does is reformat the space on the drive, and the data can be snagged using tools designed for disaster recovery. Now, on to recycling Broadly speaking, you have three recycling options: You can drop off your unwanted stuff in person somewhere; you can ship it away; or you can donate it to a willing organization. Drop it off in person. The advantage to dropping off your gear is that you don't need to really plan ahead and print out prepaid labels (as you would if you were shipping things away); you just toss your stuff in the car and go Another option that's cropping up across the U.S. is the electronics recyc

With the help of LiveAndroid you don't have to wait to try it out. LiveAndroid has been around for a while now. Originally launched in May, LiveCD allows you to run the Android OS on x86 platforms without actually installing the software. Up until now this was only useful to those with netbooks that actually have an optical drive. However, the folks at LiveAndroid last week announced a LiveUSB version, especially handy for those of you with netbooks or notebooks that don't have a disc drive.

You can easily transfer files between Macs through USB drive or a conventional file-sharing services via network connections. Also, these days' synchronization services like BitTorrent Sync, Dropbox, and Google Drive are highly used. Nowadays, you can use Mac Screen Sharing services to transfer files.

What can you do with a few gigabytes and a USB port? Quite a lot, with the right software. Learn how to encrypt your work, run whole systems, rescue Windows, and customize your thumb drive with these USB-geared tricks.

UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. It runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. You can either let UNetbootin download one of the many distributions supported out-of-the-box for you, or supply your own Linux .iso file if you've already downloaded one or your preferred distribution isn't on the list. Requirements Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7, or Linux, or Mac OS X 10.5+. Note that resulting USB drives are bootable only on PCs (not on Macs). Internet access for downloading a distro to install, or a pre-downloaded ISO file

Is your computer infected with a virus that is preventing you from downloading security updates from the Internet or from running any antivirus program on that machine? Or are your looking for an antivirus software that can be carried on a USB drive to quickly scan any disconnected computer(s) for viruses or malware?