Lifehacker has a pretty good article on saving your Windows system to a thumb drive. Check it out on the next page and decide for yourself. Caution: This may be tricky so ask us if you need help.
Here is the link:
LIFEHACKER
NinjaTechHelp
Showing posts with label WIndows 7. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WIndows 7. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, October 5, 2009
Windows 7 mp3 Bug Warning | Ninja Tech Help
According to LifeHacker (Jan 09) there is a bug in Windows 7 that corrupts your mp3 files when importing them into Media Center. There is a patch fix, but just to reinforce a best practice make sure you backup your media and all documents before installing a new OS. Weekly if not daily backups of your docs and media is always a good idea as well. Stay tuned for future articles on backing up data on PC and Mac systems.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Windows 7 Hard Drive Striping and Mirror
One of the great new Windows 7 features is Hard Drive Striping and Mirroring. This feature was previously one reserved for Server products (at least in the XP family). So now that this option is available and what does it do? Read on for the explanation.
Mirroring and striping hard disk drives (HDD) is a form of RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Discs) array. RAID takes 2 or more HDD and creates various configurations. For example you can set up an array of three (3) or more discs and have Windows recognize them as one (1) large disc. Alternatively you can have 2 HDD that get mirrored to only show one (1) HDD but in reality you will have a backup drive. More detailed information is available on Wikipedia. So what is striping and mirroring? Keep reading.
Striping - Striping is where you take two (2) or more HDD and configure them as one large HDD. For purposes of this article think of it as taking a movie file and spreading it over two (2) hard drives for storage. Then when you want to watch that movie, you open the file and since it has been striped the load performance of the movie will be greatly increased because it is being accessed from two (2) seperate drives. This is a good thing because you can combine two (2) 1 Terabyte HDD together so Windows recognizes them as one (1) and in theory your drive performance will be greatly increased.
Mirroring - Mirroring is when you take two (2) HDDs and combine them together for redundancy. What is copied and stored on one (1) HDD is also copied and stored on the other. This creates an automatic backup of the drives. For example you have two (2) 1 Terabyte drives that have been mirrored together, instead of having a 2 terabyte drive now you still only have a 1 Terabyte volume BUT a backup is being created in the process. Then if a HDD ever fails or crashes, you still have all the files available on the second drive.
Sounds good right? So how do you go about implementing this? Well I am going to tell you. For this article I am using two (2) Western Digital 1 Terabyte Green SATA HDDs. This could also be applied if you already have one hard drive and are adding a new one to be the backup. Make sure to backup the existing data before formatting.
Begin by installing the HDDs like you would any other drive. Start and login to your Windows 7 box.
Once everything loads, right click on Computer and go to manage. This brings up the Computer Management Screen.
From the left column Choose Storage > Disk Management.
The bottom right box shows all the HDDs installed on your system. Find your new HDDs and right click the HDD box. You should now have a choice to setup mirroring.
The next box will ask you to choose the second drive, so choose your second new drive. Once you complete this your new HDD will be converted to Dynamic Disks and then formatted to appear as on drive.
NOTE: IF THERE IS ANYTHING STORED ON THE DRIVES IT WILL BE LOST. The new array needs to be formatted and all previous data will be deleted.
This should be fairly straight forward. As always ask any questions through email or comments and remember this is for informational purposes only, and I am not responsible for any damage or data loss as a result of this tutorial.
Mirroring and striping hard disk drives (HDD) is a form of RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Discs) array. RAID takes 2 or more HDD and creates various configurations. For example you can set up an array of three (3) or more discs and have Windows recognize them as one (1) large disc. Alternatively you can have 2 HDD that get mirrored to only show one (1) HDD but in reality you will have a backup drive. More detailed information is available on Wikipedia. So what is striping and mirroring? Keep reading.
Striping - Striping is where you take two (2) or more HDD and configure them as one large HDD. For purposes of this article think of it as taking a movie file and spreading it over two (2) hard drives for storage. Then when you want to watch that movie, you open the file and since it has been striped the load performance of the movie will be greatly increased because it is being accessed from two (2) seperate drives. This is a good thing because you can combine two (2) 1 Terabyte HDD together so Windows recognizes them as one (1) and in theory your drive performance will be greatly increased.
Mirroring - Mirroring is when you take two (2) HDDs and combine them together for redundancy. What is copied and stored on one (1) HDD is also copied and stored on the other. This creates an automatic backup of the drives. For example you have two (2) 1 Terabyte drives that have been mirrored together, instead of having a 2 terabyte drive now you still only have a 1 Terabyte volume BUT a backup is being created in the process. Then if a HDD ever fails or crashes, you still have all the files available on the second drive.
Sounds good right? So how do you go about implementing this? Well I am going to tell you. For this article I am using two (2) Western Digital 1 Terabyte Green SATA HDDs. This could also be applied if you already have one hard drive and are adding a new one to be the backup. Make sure to backup the existing data before formatting.
Begin by installing the HDDs like you would any other drive. Start and login to your Windows 7 box.
Once everything loads, right click on Computer and go to manage. This brings up the Computer Management Screen.
From the left column Choose Storage > Disk Management.
The bottom right box shows all the HDDs installed on your system. Find your new HDDs and right click the HDD box. You should now have a choice to setup mirroring.
The next box will ask you to choose the second drive, so choose your second new drive. Once you complete this your new HDD will be converted to Dynamic Disks and then formatted to appear as on drive.
NOTE: IF THERE IS ANYTHING STORED ON THE DRIVES IT WILL BE LOST. The new array needs to be formatted and all previous data will be deleted.
This should be fairly straight forward. As always ask any questions through email or comments and remember this is for informational purposes only, and I am not responsible for any damage or data loss as a result of this tutorial.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
WINtoFLASH USB Windows Installer
WINtoFLASH takes your Windows Install DVD and creates a bootable Flash Drive. Easily convert a flash drive into a bootable Windows DVD in a few easy steps
More after the break.
With optical drives becoming less common these days (especially in an office environment) trying to dig up your Windows CD can be a real pain. What if your CD is scratched? What if your CD/DVD drive is busted - what do you do then? Well download WINtoFLASH and a spare flash drive and create your bootable Windows flash drive. You can transfer Windows XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003 and 2008 to a flash drive and best of all it is freeware. This is for Windows only based systems.
[Links]
WINtoFLASH
More after the break.
With optical drives becoming less common these days (especially in an office environment) trying to dig up your Windows CD can be a real pain. What if your CD is scratched? What if your CD/DVD drive is busted - what do you do then? Well download WINtoFLASH and a spare flash drive and create your bootable Windows flash drive. You can transfer Windows XP, Vista, 7, Server 2003 and 2008 to a flash drive and best of all it is freeware. This is for Windows only based systems.
[Links]
WINtoFLASH
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
How to Upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7
I don't normally want to have external how-to posts on this blog but I feel upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7 is going to be a big deal if it is not already.
The folks over at LifeRocks 2.0 have done an excellent job putting this together so I figured it was worth while.
Click the link below to see this excellent writeup.
Upgrade Windows XP to WIndows 7
The folks over at LifeRocks 2.0 have done an excellent job putting this together so I figured it was worth while.
Click the link below to see this excellent writeup.
Upgrade Windows XP to WIndows 7
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