Long gone, but now back… sort of. :)
(Answer requested by Daniel Price.) If you have a more-or-less normal PC running more-or-less normal Windows, you can flip the screen orientation — up, down, sideways right, sideways left — just by tapping a few keys. It’s possible you accidentally hit one of these key combinations. (They key combinations are deliberately weird to make them…
Speaking very generally: RAM is very fast, temporary data storage used only while the device is powered on. The data in RAM goes away when you turn off the device. Hard drives are for storing data longer term; they retain data even when powered off. But hard drives — even solid state drives! — are…
Reader Met Chin asks “Can I mount my hard drive sideways/upside down?” Sure! Unless the owner’s material states otherwise, most desktop/rack-mount/non-portable drives work fine flat (right side up or down), or on end, or on one of their sides. Everything else being equal, as long as the drive’s platters are parallel to the floor, or…
Reader Janet Ybarra wrote: “I have a laptop which intermittently shuts down on its own, apparently from overheating. What would be the problem and what can I do?” For conventional, fan-cooled laptops: Visually check the fan blades for encrusted dust and debris; use a cotton swab and a blast of dry, compressed air from a can (examples) to…
Reader Ron Ashrovy wonders if frequent factory resets are dangerous. No: PCs, phones, TVs, or whatever, should not be damaged by frequent factory resets, beyond the measure of extra wear and tear that such resets cause. (A system undergoing reset typically works very hard for a while as it sets itself back up; but this isn’t…
A 5-year-old hard drive is probably near the end of its safe service life. I wouldn’t recommend reusing it for anything essential or irreplaceable. But using it as a secondary scratchpad drive, or as redundant or tertiary storage, you might be able to squeeze a bit more life out of the old drive. The rest…
The column reprinted below was originally published in the December 11, 2014, Windows Secrets newsletter. Today, it supplements a new LangaList column scheduled for the March 25, 2019, AskWoody Plus Newsletter. Click on over for a look! (I’m reprinting selected Windows Secrets columns here to help ensure readers can find and access information that I’m…
Formatting and backing up are two separate things. Formatting comes first: it sets the drive up to be able to record and deliver data. Formatting uses a little of the drive’s capacity for itself; what’s left is the amount of data you can actually put on that drive. For example, an 8GB flash drive will…
Reader Raleigh K. is wondering about the longevity of solid state hard drives (SSDs). Early SSDs did have some problems, not least because the operating systems of the day treated SSDs as if they were standard spinning-platter hard drives. SSDs are fundamentally different, so trouble cropped up: Mismanaged by the OSes, SSD performance would seriously…
If the actual laptop is broken — destroyed screen, liquid on the keyboard, or some such — there’s a good chance the drive itself is OK. If that’s the case, you can physically salvage the drive and use another PC to recover the drive’s data. First, unplug the laptop and remove the battery. Flip the…