Data Recovery Blog

There are two different types of disk storage available to the Windows Vista, XP and 2000 environment:  Basic Disk Storage Dynamic Disk Storage The number of partitions (on basic disks ) and volumes (on dynamic disks ) that each can contain are the primary differences.  Single drive systems with one drive letter C: are typical basic disks.  A server that needs to be divided up into several parts may benefit from a dynamic disk configuration.  Some versions of Windows will convert a basic disk into a dynamic type.

DiscWizard can be used not only to format ATA and SATA drives, but external Seagate drives connected to the computer through USB , Firewire , or eSATA as well.  Though the setup procedure is almost the same as that used with internal drives, you want to be aware of a few of things: Unlike previous versions of DiscWizard , in addition to being able to use DiscWizard for Windows to set up an external hard drive, you can now also use the bootable version of DiscWizard for the same purpose. The external drive(s) can be identified by its interface type, which is listed in the "Interface" column of the Add New Disc Wizard. DiscWizard can only be used in Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.  For Windows 98 and Me, you will need to use FDISK and FORMAT instead

Sometimes it’s necessary to use the SeaTools for DOS software to get the drive back to its native capacity.  For example, if the drive is showing up as a smaller capacity in the BIOS (i.e. 137GB or 32GB) and it’s a computer that should support a drive that large, then this would be a time to set the drive size. Once booted from the SeaTools for DOS disk the computer should be at screen with a license agreement.

CMOS is an abbreviation for Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor. CMOS uses a complimentary arrangement of both NMOS and PMOS, negative and positive Metal Oxide transistor circuits.

SCSI – Small Computer System Interface An intelligent peripheral interface characterized by its use of high level communication between devices. Communications are defined as being between an "Initiator" and a "Target"

I just installed a new hard drive, but now get intermittent lock ups on boot, error messages that I cannot read from the hard drive, or errors that show problems with the hard drive or file system. What should I explore first

The following limitations exist using the FAT32 file system with Windows operating systems: Clusters cannot be 64 kilobytes (KB) or larger. If clusters were 64 KB or larger, some programs (such as Setup programs) might calculate disk space incorrectly. A volume must contain at least 65,527 clusters to use the FAT32 file system

"Cannot copy filename . There is not enough free disk space ." or "You have either run out of space, or the backup (.bkf) is too large for this disk. Note: If this is a disk formatted with FAT32, the maximum possible file size for the backup file is limited to 4GB." This error occurs due to a file system limitation within Microsoft

Problem: At times, Windows 2000, XP, and Vista misreport the amount of Free Disk Space on a hard drive – whether it is an internal drive or external drive . Cause: There are several causes for this: The cluster size of the NTFS volume is too large for the average-sized files that are being stored. File attributes or NTFS permissions prevent files or folders from being either displayed or accessed when you use either Microsoft Windows Explorer or a Windows command prompt.

Serial ATA cables are available in many lengths up to 1 meter.