Thank you Harriet

Dear Harriet,

A netbook is really nothing more than a small laptop computer that doesn’t have an optical (CD or DVD) drive.

As with any other laptop computer, the storage space can usually be upgraded, but it might not be cheap or easy.

The first thing you need to do, is find out what kind of hard drive your netbook has. Some netbooks have a special solid state drive (it is kind of like a USB data stick and has no moving parts). These solid state drives are not as standard as a regular hard drive with moving parts, and it will be harder to find replacement parts.

If your netbook has a standard SATA 2.5 inch hard drive, you should be able to purchase one with more storage space and replace the existing drive. You would need to make an image of your existing drive, and copy it to the new drive.

If all this sounds complicated to you, your best option is to take the netbook to a local computer shop and have them give you an estimate.

Elizabeth

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Bruce

Dear Bruce,

There are actually a couple of devices that will work for your needs.

The first is a Hard Drive Enclosure.

This is a device like you have described, which you put your hard drive into, and then hook up to a USB port to access the drive.

Hard drives come in different sizes, and with different connection methods, so one enclosure might not fit all your old hard drives.

A better option for you might be a USB to SATA/IDE adapter. I use one made by StarTech all the time to get data off of hard drives for my customers. With this adapter, the physical size of the drive doesn’t matter because you are not fitting it into a case. The adapter works with both IDE and SATA connections, which means that you will be able to connect it to older IDE hard drives, as well as newer SATA drives.

Both of these devices are sold on Amazon.

Elizabeth

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Thanks, Charlotte.

Dear Charlotte,

Thank you for your question. I have a lot of people ask me how to defrag their computer, but not many think to ask what defragging will do for their computer.

I’m going to start with a description of what defragging your computer does.

The data on your computer is stored in small sections of your hard drive called, sectors. One file might use only one sector, while larger files will use many sectors.

When you first start using your computer, all the information on it is stored pretty much in order. When you take a picture with your camera, for example, and then transfer the picture on your computer, it might use sectors 150 through 160.

As time goes on and you continue to use your computer, you will continue to add files and delete files. Let’s say I transferred a dozen pictures from my camera on the computer, then decided that two of them were not worth keeping so I deleted them. The space where those deleted pictures were stored is now available, so the next time I save something on my computer it will use those empty sectors first, and if more room is needed, it will use the next available sectors.

Over time, your files are no longer stored together, instead, one file might start in sector 150, then jump to 680, and finish up in 920. When you have many files split up like this, they are fragmented. (broken up onto fragments). A fragmented computer tends to run a little slower, since your hard drive has to go to several locations just to read one file.

When you defrag your computer, the files moved around so that they are back together. This makes your hard drive a little more efficient.

Do you need to defrag your computer? In the early versions of Windows (Windows 95 or 98) you had to manually run the defrag program every few months, and it would speed up your computer. In more recent versions of Windows (I think it started with Vista) defragging is built into the operating system. Windows will automatically tidy those files up when the computer is idle.

If you have an older version of Windows and you want to know how to defrag your computer, just follow these directions:

1. Double click on the “MY Computer” icon on your desktop to open it.
2. Right-click on your hard drive, and click “Properties”.
3. Click on the “Tools” tab, and click “Defragment Now”.
4. Click on “Defragment”.

Or, check out this cool video tutorial that I found:

Elizabeth

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HOW DO I RUN THIS?  THANK YOU, Dpaul

Dear Dpaul,

I can give you directions for running scandisk, but before I do, I want to warn you. On an older computer (or any computer for that matter) that is prompting you to run a disk scan, it is an indication that there are problems with your hard drive.

Since the hard drive is where all your information (documents, pictures, music, etc…) is stored, you need to make sure you have your information backed up! Even before you scan your hard drive, you should back up. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing all information on the drive.

Now, for directions on running the scan in Windows XP:

1. Double click on “My Computer” on the desktop.

2. Right click on your hard drive icon in the “My Computer” window.

3. Click “Properties” in the context menu that appears.

4. Click on “Tools”.

5. Under “Error Checking” click “Check Now” then click “Start”.

Your computer will probably need to restart and run the check before it goes back into windows. It will prompt you for this with a small dialog box. Just click “Yes” and then restart your computer.

I hope the scan finds and is able to fix any problems you are having with your disk.

Elizabeth

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Thank you as always for the help, Phil in Boston

Dear Phil,

It is possible to install a new, larger hard drive in your computer, and create a mirror image of the old drive on the new one, then run the computer from the new, imaged drive.

I have done this before, and it has worked well, however, I have a couple of concerns about your computer. First is the fact that your old computer has completely filled a 2TB hard drive. That is a lot of space and unless you are storing tens of thousands of photos, or hours and hours of video, I would suspect that some kind of problem is causing your drive to fill up. There are viruses that create tons of junk files that fill up a hard drive, or perhaps the drive is old and developing bad sectors and the remaining good sectors are running out of free space.

Next is the fact that your computer is 5 years old. The average computer gets replaced every 5 years, so in computer years, yours is nearing the end of its life. If you install a new, larger hard drive, you still have 5 year old hardware in the rest of the computer, and while it could run for another 5 years, any one of those 5 year old parts could go in the coming weeks or months.

In addition to purchasing a new hard drive, you would also have to either purchase drive imaging software, or hire a computer shop to transfer your files from the old drive to the new one. Since you want to be able to boot the computer from this new, larger drive, you need to do more than just copy the files, you need to make and image. Both Nero and Roxio have programs that will help you with this

Nero:

Roxio:

No matter what you decide to do, it is wise to backup your files. You never know when a computer hard drive will crash, and when it does, your files that you can’t afford to lose will be gone. You might be able to get them back with a data recovery service, but that will cost you thousands of dollars. Be sure to back up your files now, before disaster strikes!

My ideal solution for your situation would be to purchase a larger hard drive, install Windows XP on it (a clean install, not a copy of windows on your old drive) and then copy your files over to the new drive. This will speed up your computer, and correct any problems caused by software rot. This will give you the longest possible life for your older computer.

Elizabeth

Please and thank you Heather

Dear Heather,

Rescuing files like pictures from hard drives is something that I do on a regular basis here in my computer shop. Even though I do it all the time, it is not always easy, and it requires some computer expertise and equipment that most users don’t have.

I use the following tools for this.

1. A linux boot CD that allows me to boot the computer and view the files on the hard drive. It does not look like Windows, you won’t be able to see your desktop or run your programs, but you can view and copy files. I use Puppy Linux from: http://puppylinux.org which is free to download. You do need to know how to create the bootable CD from an .iso file.

2. An external hard drive. You need a place to put your files when you are taking them off the hard drive. I find that an external hard drive with a USB interface is perfect for this. I usually burn the files onto DVDs later, but for just getting the files off, this is the perfect tool. The hard drive that I currently use is an Iomega drive similar to this one:

3. The last tool that I use is a USB to SATA or IDE adapter. This is only used if the computer will no longer boot, even from a CD. In that case, I need to take the hard drive out of the computer and use this adapter to attach it to a working computer. My favorite adapter is this one from StarTech:

Since you say that the computer is asking you to insert a disk when you turn it on, there is a good chance that you can just boot the computer using a Linux disk and use that operating system to copy your files to an external hard drive.

If this task is more than you want to take on, find a local comptuer shop like mine, and ask them to do it for you.

Elizabeth

Smilingly, Christine

Dear Christine,

Unless you are transferring files from a Mac to PC or the other way around, I don’t think it has anything to do with how the drive is formatted.

I can really only think of a couple of possible reasons you can’t read some of the files correctly.

First is that you don’t have the same program on the new computer that you used to create the files on your old computer. For example, if you used Word Perfect to create documents on the old computer, and now have Microsoft Word on the new computer.

The other possibility is that some of the files on the external hard drive have become corrupted. An external hard drive is a magnetic media and over time can become corrupted. It could also have been moved while it was writing files, been dropped, or exposed to a strong magnetic force.

If you are storing files for long term storage, an optical media (like DVD disks) will last longer.

It sounds like your files are still safely on the first computer, so I would hook your external drive up to the new computer and format it there. Then hook it up to the first computer and copy your files again. As long as you have the right programs installed, this should fix your problem.

Elizabeth.

Mary Jane

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Dear Mary Jane,

If your local computer repair shop was not able to get your files off your hard drive, I doubt that I would be able to retrieve your data.

Once your hard drive has died (and they all do eventually) your only real hope of getting your documents off the drive is to send it in to a company that specializes in data recovery. One company that I am familiar with is Ontrack Data Recovery. Their website is: www.krollontrack.com/data-recovery You can start out by calling Ontrack’s support line at 800-872-2599 and tell them what has happened with your drive. They will advise you on what to do next, and how much it will cost. You should expect to spend hundreds of dollars.

From now on, make sure you have your important files backed up. If, like me, you are not good at remembering to back up your files on a regular basis, get one of the online backup services like Carbonite or Mozy and let their software do the work for you. I currently use Carbonite to back up the files on my server, and Mozy to back up the files on my desktop.

Elizabeth

Thanks, Elaine

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Dear Elaine,

The best way to make sure your information is no longer on the hard drive, is to run a file eraser program, that not only erases individual files, but also everything on the entire hard drive.

My favorite tool is Darik’s Boot And Nuke at http://www.dban.org

There are a few cautions that you need to heed before you use this program though.

First, you need to have a bit of technical knowledge in order to use the program. You need to download the iso file (which is a CD image file) and burn it to a CD.

Second, you need to boot the computer in question from the CD and run it from there. The Dban CD will erase the entire contents of the hard drive on the computer that you run it on. There will be NOTHING left on the drive. No Windows XP and no recovery partition. The people you donate it to will need to know how to install Windows, or use the recovery disk that came with the computer.

Third, once you have created this CD, remember that it is dangerous. All you have to do is boot to the CD and it will be ready to erase all the files on your hard drive. Use it very carefully!

Lastly, if you want your files securely erased, but don’t feel like taking on the task yourself, bring it to your local computer professional, and have them do it for you. This is a service that I offer to my customers.

Elizabeth

Very truly yours, Tillie

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Dear Tillie,

In both Vista and Windows 7, the tool that used to be called Scan Disk is now called “Error Checking”.

You can access error checking for a drive the following way.

1. Click on “Start” then click on “Computer”.

2. In the Computer window, right click on the drive you want to scan, and click “Properties” in the context menu that appears.

3. In the Drive Properties dialog box, click on the “Tools” tab at the top.

4. The first tool that you can run, is “Error Checking” click the button to get started.

Elizabeth