I have been using my HP Laptop for quiet some time and when I purchased it windows 7 was the optimal operating system. It seems everyone wants to use apps now so along comes windows 8. How is it?
I absolutely love windows 8 but before installing it I did a lot of reading. There was a problem even after reading the books available about the program. I did not want to lose all my data so I elected to do an install that was suppose to allow me to keep my data. It did not. I had pages and pages of MS Word and Excel data installed on that laptop.
Fortunately I had started using a program called Sugar Sync several months ago. I really didn't know just how good this program was until some friends came to visit us for a dinner visit one evening and we were discussing computers. Whey I told him about losing all my word files he said, "they are probably saved in Sugar Sync." We discussed this some more and he explained that all I had to do was login to my Sugar Sync account and re sync to my computer. About twenty minutes later every last file I thought sure was totally gone to a cyber grave were re-installed on my new/old computer.
I totally recommend windows 8 and additionally the Sugar Sync program.
Have a wonderful experience with your computer.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Sunday, June 17, 2012
INSTALLING A NEW ROUTER
INSTALLING A NEW ROUTER
Have you ever had a problem installing a new router? Well, I must admit this past week I made a very common mistake and worked for two days before I finally called the Internet Service Provider (ISP) for help. The router I bought was advertised as "simple installation." That should have alerted me but it didn't, I ventured headlong into the project and removed the old one that was causing problems (about 5 years old) and followed the instructions carefully and when I finished hooking it up, it would not connect. For IP address I selected Automatic thinking it would automatically make the proper selections. Wrong.
I am sure you know the things that can happen when you make an "assumption." Well there was one question that I made an assumption about and of course I assumed wrong. There was one point where I had to make a decision about my connection being either a "dynamic" or "static". I did not think any place used static any more but our system did. Two days later when I finally called the IP he sat down at my desk changed it from dynamic to static, then entered each of the addresses and wall la instant interned. The simple things can sometimes just get in the way and we make ridiculous decisions and feel about two inches high after the fact.
The point of this is, don't overlook the small things and don't be afraid to ask questions when you are not sure about something.
Have you ever had a problem installing a new router? Well, I must admit this past week I made a very common mistake and worked for two days before I finally called the Internet Service Provider (ISP) for help. The router I bought was advertised as "simple installation." That should have alerted me but it didn't, I ventured headlong into the project and removed the old one that was causing problems (about 5 years old) and followed the instructions carefully and when I finished hooking it up, it would not connect. For IP address I selected Automatic thinking it would automatically make the proper selections. Wrong.
I am sure you know the things that can happen when you make an "assumption." Well there was one question that I made an assumption about and of course I assumed wrong. There was one point where I had to make a decision about my connection being either a "dynamic" or "static". I did not think any place used static any more but our system did. Two days later when I finally called the IP he sat down at my desk changed it from dynamic to static, then entered each of the addresses and wall la instant interned. The simple things can sometimes just get in the way and we make ridiculous decisions and feel about two inches high after the fact.
The point of this is, don't overlook the small things and don't be afraid to ask questions when you are not sure about something.
Monday, May 3, 2010
How Big is a Gigabyte
I have previously mentioned how glad I was when I got a new computer and it had a 25 MB hard drive and now there seems to be no end to the amount of data of data storage. For some time the limit was 137 GB, which is a rather large amount of data and if you are talking to a mathematician he will describe it as 10 to the ninth (9) power or 10 ⁹ and written in numerical form would be 1,000,000,000. So 1 GB would be 1,000,000,000.
If you have an older computer with a 28 bit communication address system on the hard drive this system in effect limited the size of your hard drive to 137 GB. A hard drive is divided into sectors and a sector is an address containing, or is capable of containing 512 bytes of information. The 28 bits is a binary number and when converted to decimal numeration it limits the size of the sector to 268,435,455 sectors on a hard drive and multiplying 268,435,455 x 512 (512 bytes of information) gives 137 GB with this being the maximum size of a usable hard drive on an older computer.
A newer standard of ATA/ATAPI – 6 changes the addressable size address to 48 bits thus giving us a system of petabytes now instead of gigabytes.
When thinking about a gigabyte in these terms it really doesn’t seem so large. The hard drive of just a few years ago with a maximum size of 137 GB in my computer today would be full and information left over with no place to stay. But just think about the newer standard using 48 bits for the address the new standard changes our way of thinking from megabytes, to gigabytes to petabytes and computer science tells us the new limit is 144 petabytes and should sustain us for the next 50 years. I guess by then they will have to come up with a new numbering system.
In case you were wondering a petabytes is the same as a quadrillion and it has 15 zero’s. A gigabyte is known as a billion and has only 9 zero’s. When thinking about numbers of this size, it reminds me of our national debt of a trillion dollars having 12 zero’s and climbing.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH
What Happens When the Hard Drive Crashes?
You may never experience an actual hard drive crash but if you do you will undoubtedly know what has happened. Of all the computers I have owned I have never had a “real” hard drive crash. I have had my computer crash but not from a hard drive failure. I have recently worked on at least two different laptops than had hard drive failures and the only way for a repair was hard drive replacement.
Let us take a look at what actually happens when a hard drive crashes. In a recent article I referred to the distance between the platter and the read/write head and it is a matter of NM’s (Nanometers) above the platter. When you think about this thickness, a sheet of paper can be thicker than the distance between the platter and the read/write head. This is the reason for being careful of how we treat the computer and not be rough when moving it etc. another item of harm is dust and grit. The hard drive is somewhat sealed but things can happen and dirt can sometimes get into the hard drive itself. Recently I got a laptop to work on and when I plugged it in and turned it on you could hear the hard drive grinding against things it was not supposed to be touching. I knew without looking the hard drive was history; however, I still took it apart to investigate further.
Sometimes part of the data can be recovered but often it is not, whatever was being written at the time and all of the past memories on the drive may be lost forever. But what actually happened? The platter is certainly not indestructible and scratches can occur and dropping the computer may in fact cause extreme damage to the drive. Because the platter is spinning so fast when it comes in contact with something it should not, bad things are going to happen and it may be lost forever. This is a good reason for backup plans but like any good business plan, the backup plan must be before it is needed. An extra hard drive could be the solution and if it is setup as a RAID1 it will be a redundant copy of everything on the drive. If you have a RAID0 extra drive installed the data is alternated between drives so only part of your material would be lost or you could have a good external hard drive where data is backed up on a routine basis to secure at least a part of your data. I have my external set to backup every Saturday morning
You may never experience an actual hard drive crash but if you do you will undoubtedly know what has happened. Of all the computers I have owned I have never had a “real” hard drive crash. I have had my computer crash but not from a hard drive failure. I have recently worked on at least two different laptops than had hard drive failures and the only way for a repair was hard drive replacement.
Let us take a look at what actually happens when a hard drive crashes. In a recent article I referred to the distance between the platter and the read/write head and it is a matter of NM’s (Nanometers) above the platter. When you think about this thickness, a sheet of paper can be thicker than the distance between the platter and the read/write head. This is the reason for being careful of how we treat the computer and not be rough when moving it etc. another item of harm is dust and grit. The hard drive is somewhat sealed but things can happen and dirt can sometimes get into the hard drive itself. Recently I got a laptop to work on and when I plugged it in and turned it on you could hear the hard drive grinding against things it was not supposed to be touching. I knew without looking the hard drive was history; however, I still took it apart to investigate further.
Sometimes part of the data can be recovered but often it is not, whatever was being written at the time and all of the past memories on the drive may be lost forever. But what actually happened? The platter is certainly not indestructible and scratches can occur and dropping the computer may in fact cause extreme damage to the drive. Because the platter is spinning so fast when it comes in contact with something it should not, bad things are going to happen and it may be lost forever. This is a good reason for backup plans but like any good business plan, the backup plan must be before it is needed. An extra hard drive could be the solution and if it is setup as a RAID1 it will be a redundant copy of everything on the drive. If you have a RAID0 extra drive installed the data is alternated between drives so only part of your material would be lost or you could have a good external hard drive where data is backed up on a routine basis to secure at least a part of your data. I have my external set to backup every Saturday morning
Monday, April 19, 2010
Tracks, Heads, and Sectors
Broader Description of Tracks, Heads, and Sectors
In the previous writing I discussed a little about the Hard Drive Capacity but did not go into much depth. This could leave some confusion about the amount of data stored because of not knowing how each of these parts work. When looking at the “Head” this is the part of the Hard Drive that actually reads and writes data either to or from the platters on the hard drive. If you Google these parts you can find pictures and as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, that certainly applies. The picture will show the head as being more like an arm and this arm extends over the platters which are spinning. Some platters spin at a rate of 10,000 revolutions per minute (RPM) and this arm is a paper thin distance above the platters. This is measured in nanometres and if you looked to try to see between the head and the platters the naked eye probably could not detect a space in this small separation. Hard Drives normally have multiple platters and the platters are two sided with data on both sides. The heads or arms that read and write data are on both sides of the platter and work simultaneously transferring or reading data. Not all platter are two sided however as is the case with floppy disk drives.
As in earlier writings I have mentioned tracks but did not explain in depth. Tracks are sometimes referred to as cylinders but mean the same thing. These are the tracks going around the platter in ever decreasing circles if looking from the outside edge toward the inside where the small hole is in the center. You can see the results of writing to the platter if you will take the CD disk out and look at the shinny side. You will see a difference in the tracks and notice it writes from the inside toward the outside of the platter.
The sectors on the disk are addresses on the tracks and on the older disk there were 17 sectors and all were the same size and contained equal amounts of data or 512 bytes of data regardless of the radius of the track. Looking at the track you understand from the inside near the hole in the center toward the outside edge the radius the size changes but the sector which contains the data remains the same regardless of where it is on the track, and it contains 512 bytes of data. A bit is one single piece of data and a byte is equal to eight bits. If reading this in literature or from Compact Disk information if it is bytes it would be written as MB (Notice the capitol B) for megabytes or Mb (Notice lower case b) for megabits.
In the previous writing I discussed a little about the Hard Drive Capacity but did not go into much depth. This could leave some confusion about the amount of data stored because of not knowing how each of these parts work. When looking at the “Head” this is the part of the Hard Drive that actually reads and writes data either to or from the platters on the hard drive. If you Google these parts you can find pictures and as the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, that certainly applies. The picture will show the head as being more like an arm and this arm extends over the platters which are spinning. Some platters spin at a rate of 10,000 revolutions per minute (RPM) and this arm is a paper thin distance above the platters. This is measured in nanometres and if you looked to try to see between the head and the platters the naked eye probably could not detect a space in this small separation. Hard Drives normally have multiple platters and the platters are two sided with data on both sides. The heads or arms that read and write data are on both sides of the platter and work simultaneously transferring or reading data. Not all platter are two sided however as is the case with floppy disk drives.
As in earlier writings I have mentioned tracks but did not explain in depth. Tracks are sometimes referred to as cylinders but mean the same thing. These are the tracks going around the platter in ever decreasing circles if looking from the outside edge toward the inside where the small hole is in the center. You can see the results of writing to the platter if you will take the CD disk out and look at the shinny side. You will see a difference in the tracks and notice it writes from the inside toward the outside of the platter.
The sectors on the disk are addresses on the tracks and on the older disk there were 17 sectors and all were the same size and contained equal amounts of data or 512 bytes of data regardless of the radius of the track. Looking at the track you understand from the inside near the hole in the center toward the outside edge the radius the size changes but the sector which contains the data remains the same regardless of where it is on the track, and it contains 512 bytes of data. A bit is one single piece of data and a byte is equal to eight bits. If reading this in literature or from Compact Disk information if it is bytes it would be written as MB (Notice the capitol B) for megabytes or Mb (Notice lower case b) for megabits.
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