Questions tagged [hard-drive]

A hard disk drive (or HDD) is a non-volatile, random access device for storing digital data.

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1007 votes
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What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for?

In Windows you have a C-drive. Everything labeled beyond that is with the following letter. So your second drive is D, your DVD is E and if you put in a USB stick it becomes F and the following ...
264 votes
10 answers
43k views

Why is Google so much faster than a hard-drive search?

When I search a file on my HD in Windows 7 or Windows XP it takes some minutes to finish the process. If I fill in a search term in Google, the answer is on my screen in milliseconds How is it ...
Arne's user avatar
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225 votes
9 answers
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Is there still a reason to choose a 10,000 RPM hard drive over an SSD?

For anyone who's serious about storage performance, SSDs are always the fastest solution. However, WD still makes their 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor hard drives, and a few enthusiasts even use enterprise-...
bwDraco's user avatar
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212 votes
4 answers
33k views

What is the purpose of the holes marked "Do Not Cover" on hard drives?

On many hard drives, there's a text warning to "not cover this hole", sometimes adding that doing so will void the warranty. What is the purpose of this hole and why would covering it cause damage or ...
oKtosiTe's user avatar
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181 votes
18 answers
438k views

What utility can move my Windows boot partition over to another hard drive? [closed]

Can anyone recommend a cheap/free utility that can do this without very much effort? My preference is that it would be really easy. Boot into Windows Pick drive to move Pick target drive It copies ...
164 votes
16 answers
550k views

How to check the health of a hard drive

My SATA drive started clicking and I was unable to access the data. This is the hard drive in question: HITACHI Deskstar T7K250 HDT722525DLA380 (0A31636) 250GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"...
tony_sid's user avatar
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164 votes
16 answers
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How can I read my hard drive’s SMART status in Windows 7?

How can I read the S.M.A.R.T. state of my HDDs while using Windows 7, either automatically or manually?
Adrian Grigore's user avatar
161 votes
3 answers
259k views

Windows Disk I/O 100% at boot for 20 Minutes

I have a fast computer (quad-core i7, 3.5 Ghz, 24 GB of RAM, Windows 8.1) and I installed a new hard drive less than a year ago that was supposed to be as fast as you could buy for an HHD and not an ...
Jason's user avatar
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140 votes
4 answers
76k views

Why do damaged hard drives freeze the entire system?

Why does a hard drive which is known to have bad blocks (verified in HDTune and HDDScan), freezes down my entire system? It is not the OS drive; it is attached to another SATA port, and I'm trying to ...
JustAMartin's user avatar
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135 votes
10 answers
227k views

Use physical harddisk in Virtual Box

Using Virtual Box, how can I install an OS to a secondary, physical disk, and boot it in both (at separate times) Virtual Box, and as a typical secondary OS install?
Petah's user avatar
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135 votes
6 answers
260k views

Why is CBS.log file size 20 GB

Two days ago I had a full C: drive, after which I deleted 8 GB of data. The next day the hard drive was full again, so I continued with deleting another 5 GB, and once again the next day the disk was ...
skmasq's user avatar
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130 votes
9 answers
123k views

How much space to leave free on HDD or SSD?

In the informal (i.e. journalistic) technology press, and in online technology blogs and discussion forums, one commonly encounters anecdotal advice to leave some amount of space free on hard disk ...
user avatar
122 votes
13 answers
255k views

How can I shrink a Windows 10 partition?

I use a big single partition on a 1TB platter drive with Windows 10. I would like to shrink the partition down so that I can mirror the drive to a smaller but faster 256GB SSD. I bought the drive ...
kdbanman's user avatar
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111 votes
5 answers
455k views

How can I move the page file to another physical disk location?

I would like to know exact instructions for moving the page file from 1 disk location to another disk in Windows 7. I.e. from an SSD to a non-SSD drive. I've spent about two hours searching - Google,...
JL.'s user avatar
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104 votes
1 answer
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What does it mean when my new HDD reports errors at a time that shouldn't exist?

I just installed several new HDDs in a machine and I happened to notice one of them had two errors reported, so I ran smartctl -x on it and got this: smartctl 6.5 2016-01-24 r4214 [x86_64-linux-4.4.0-...
Atario's user avatar
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91 votes
9 answers
49k views

How can I wipe a broken hard disk drive before sending it back to the manufacturer for maintenance?

The hard drive of my laptop died, the manufacturer wants me to send it so that they can investigate, but I'm concerned that the drive might contain sensitive information. When I say the drive is ...
Brann's user avatar
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91 votes
7 answers
29k views

How is the capacity of a harddisk faked?

I was reading about magical Chinese drives. How would this be done? The post talks about a 'looped mode' and comments suggest having a different controller to lie to the OS. I went and bought one of ...
Rohan Monga's user avatar
90 votes
3 answers
75k views

scp copy has error "ambiguous target"

I try to copy files from a linux (ubuntu) machine to an external hard drive mounted on a mac but got an error message : scp: ambiguous target What I did is, I'm on a mac, ssh to the linux machine ...
bob's user avatar
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85 votes
7 answers
19k views

Is CRT degaussing really dangerous for nearby laptops?

I have an old CRT connected to laptop as a secondary display. As you know, when CRT turns on it degausses itself; remember that sound when you turn it on, or force degaussing through menu. CRTs ...
Nursultan Talapbekov's user avatar
84 votes
9 answers
104k views

Does vertical position affect the lifespan or integrity of a hard drive?

I've noticed on many small PC cases that the hard drives are installed vertically. In midi cases, towers and others of a larger housing, they are in the horizontal position. What impact on a hard ...
yoosiba's user avatar
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82 votes
9 answers
191k views

How much time until an unused hard drive loses its data?

Do you guys know how much time needs to pass until the data stored on a hard drive starts to degrade? To keep the data intact for long periods of time, I heard you need to periodically rewrite it on ...
Alex's user avatar
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81 votes
4 answers
10k views

Why does performance of a regular hard drive decrease over the duration of a benchmark while SSD doesn't?

I use HD Tune to measure performance of the hard drive. The tests typically take 2-3 minutes and the transfer rate of a regular hard drive decreases dramatically as the test comes to a close. ...
AngryHacker's user avatar
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78 votes
7 answers
71k views

How does NTFS compression affect performance?

I've heard that NTFS compression can reduce performance due to extra CPU usage, but I've read reports that it may actually increase performance because of reduced disk reads. How exactly does NTFS ...
bwDraco's user avatar
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77 votes
3 answers
227k views

What is the purpose of this 4-pin interface on SATA HDDs and why doesn't it exist on SSDs?

I have 4 HDDs here with me, from 3 different manufacturers, and all of them have the following 4-pin extra interface beside the SATA connector: HDD with 4-pin interface Looking on the internet, I can ...
Diogo's user avatar
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75 votes
3 answers
10k views

Why are smaller capacity SSDs slower?

I was reading this Tom's Hardware article on testing SSDs and came across the following claim: With SSDs, performance varies by capacity point. Smaller drives tend to be slower than larger ones, ...
PGmath's user avatar
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75 votes
2 answers
68k views

Why does Linux list NVMe drives as /dev/nvme0 instead of /dev/sda?

Recently I installed an NVMe drive in my Linux computer and I noticed that it's listed as /dev/nvme0 and its partition is /dev/nvme0p1. I'm aware that it's a different interface than SATA drives, but ...
user avatar
74 votes
14 answers
38k views

Is there a reason to keep Windows' primary partition / drive C: small?

In my jobs almost two decades ago, IT experts would keep the size of Windows' main partition (C drive) extremely small compared to the other partitions. They would argued this runs PC at optimum speed ...
TheTechGuy's user avatar
  • 2,034
72 votes
6 answers
194k views

Good block size for disk-cloning with diskdump (dd)

I use dd in its simplest form to clone a hard drive: dd if=INPUT of=OUTPUT However, I read in the manpage that dd knows a blocksize parameter. Is there an optimal value for the blocksize parameter ...
Phi's user avatar
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67 votes
11 answers
153k views

Free way to clone HDD to SSD? [closed]

Is there a free way to clone a full Windows 7 installation from HDD to SSD? (The free part is important, I know I can pay for Acronis True Image.) SSDs are usually much smaller than HDDs which ...
Borek Bernard's user avatar
67 votes
6 answers
126k views

Why does the partition start on sector 2048 instead of 63?

I had two drives partitioned the same and running two RAID partitions on each. One died and I replaced it under warranty for the same model. While trying to partition it, the first partition can ...
gcb's user avatar
  • 4,871
67 votes
10 answers
166k views

How can I use my small SSD as a cache for a larger hard disk?

I would like to use a (small) SSD disk as a cache for a large hard disk. I realize there are hardware-based products that do this: HighPoint RocketHybrid HBA, Intel SmartResponse and others. There is ...
haimg's user avatar
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67 votes
9 answers
353k views

Extremely high disk activity without any real usage

In a nutshell, the problem looks like this picture: In short, gigantic latency, very slow read speed (I assume that is caused by the same thing). After a very very painful few minutes, everything ...
soandos's user avatar
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66 votes
2 answers
149k views

What does "LFF SATA" mean?

I've heard of SATA, but "LFF SATA" as listed on HP's specs page (archive) is a new one for me. What does the "LFF" bit mean?
Billy ONeal's user avatar
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63 votes
13 answers
12k views

Is there a way to make my hard drive inaccessible to everyone but me?

Let me give you some backup story first: A computer technician challenged me to give him my laptop and ask him for any piece of information that I wanted to "hide" in my hard drive. He claimed that he ...
F1234k's user avatar
  • 779
63 votes
6 answers
222k views

Is it beneficial to enable Rapid Mode on a Samsung solid state drive?

I recently bought a Samsung 840 EVO 500 gb solid state drive for my laptop. There's a feature (disabled by default) called RAPID (Real Time Acceleration Processing of I/O Data) Mode. From what I can ...
Bryan Denny's user avatar
  • 1,253
63 votes
5 answers
24k views

**How** harmful is a hard disk spin cycle?

It is conventional wisdom¹ that each time you spin a hard disk down and back up, you shave some time off its life expectancy. The topic has been discussed before: Is turning off hard disks harmful? ...
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil''s user avatar
62 votes
3 answers
122k views

How do I determine whether a drive is an HDD or SSD in Windows 8?

I've recently received an assembled PC. I don't know if the disk is an SSD or old HDD (whether SATA or other technologies). I can't find a way to tell if the disk is SSD or not, apart from the size ...
Saeed Neamati's user avatar
62 votes
10 answers
256k views

Windows 8.1 Update 1 Disk Usage 100%

Background Information / Computer Specs I have a 14-inch Samsung Series 5 Ultra. Core i5 CPU, 750GB HDD, 8GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000. I've had the computer for about 1.5 years with no major ...
Freshmorning's user avatar
61 votes
7 answers
98k views

Is turning off hard disks harmful?

I set Windows 7 to turn off hard disks after 20 minutes of nonuse, which it does a really good job at - it seems to turn off individual hard disks that have been idle for 20 minutes exactly. When I ...
bobobobo's user avatar
  • 5,362
60 votes
7 answers
395k views

How to mount an LVM volume?

I'm trying to mount an LVM2 volume in Linux, but all the instructions I see online say to mount the Volume Group, such as: mkdir -p /mnt/VolGroup00/LogVol00 but I don't know how to figure out the ...
99miles's user avatar
  • 767
57 votes
4 answers
73k views

How do I find out what processes are accessing the hard disk in a GNU/Linux-based system?

I'm looking for the equivalent to top for disk access, so I can tell which process(es) are currently reading and/or writing to disk. I'm currently using Ubuntu, but I imagine there's a standard tool ...
Olivier Dagenais's user avatar
56 votes
15 answers
22k views

Why are they putting "processors" on hard drives?

What does it mean when hard drives have a processor on the hard drive? How does it work, and what benefit does it have? I don't understand - the CPU on the computer is the processor and the hard ...
Celeritas's user avatar
  • 8,229
55 votes
4 answers
15k views

What is the actual speed of SATA 3?

Google says it is running at 6Gb/s. The throughput is at 600MB/s. 600MB/s equals 4.8Gb/s. Does this mean that the bandwidth is 6Gb/s but the actual throughput is 4.8Gb/s ?
Space Ghost's user avatar
  • 1,103
55 votes
7 answers
7k views

Commuting with a laptop that is powered on

How safe is it to leave my laptop running a build or other time-consuming task when I am traveling? I mostly travel on a two-wheeler, with my laptop in a backpack, strapped vertically to my back (left ...
Agnel Kurian's user avatar
  • 2,225
54 votes
5 answers
123k views

What are the differences between primary and logical partition?

What are the major differences? Which is more preferable? Are there any OS specific advantages for one over the other?
Bernhard Heijstek's user avatar
53 votes
7 answers
20k views

Is an HDD overwritten with zeroes faster?

I had a PC with two OSs installed, which hard drive I erased using Disks from UbuntuUSB. I chose quick erase. As I understand, it deleted partition table, but all files' ones and zeroes are still on ...
Danyl Filatov's user avatar
52 votes
6 answers
392k views

How to detect if a USB port is 3.0 or 2.0?

I have a Toshiba Canvio 3.0 external HDD. It has USB 3.0. It flashes blue if you connect it to a USB 3.0 port. If it is a 2.0 port, the light becomes white. Yesterday, I plugged it in and the light ...
padawan's user avatar
  • 609
51 votes
9 answers
167k views

How to force a remap of sectors reported in S.M.A.R.T C5 (Current Pending Sector Count)?

The S.M.A.R.T C5 value of my Samsung HM640JJ Hard Drive (in an HP Pavilion dv6 laptop) is "yellow status = caution" C5 was 10 yesterday, and it's 21 today. C4 (Reallocation Event Count) = 0 and 05 (...
edteke's user avatar
  • 653
50 votes
6 answers
70k views

How Do I Find The Hardware Block Read Size for My Hard Drive?

I'm trying to figure out the optimal size for a large copy from my hard drive using dd. I'm trying to figure out what the best blocksize to use it, which I would assume is the hardware block size for ...
Flame's user avatar
  • 745
50 votes
4 answers
244k views

Reset file and folder permissions of external hard drive data to default in Windows 7

I have an external hard drive, changed some security settings of files, and now I am not able to access them in my other system. I am an admin in this system. Is there any tool that can reset all of ...
Noman's user avatar
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