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Hands on: A look at Drive Genius 3

Hard drive/storage malfunction is one of the more common computer problems. When it happens, it can be one of the most frustrating experiences, not only because of data loss, but because the whole system can stop working if the boot drive is compromised.

Drives can suffer from a variety of issues such as mechanical breakdowns when firmware and controller boards stop working, as well as filesystem structure corruption if input/ouput problems cause an improper write event to the drive. The system is constantly writing and reading from the drive by moving files around, editing them, and tracking changes … Read more

Hitachi-LG hybrid drive does away with HDD

On Tuesday, Hitachi-LG Data Storage announced a hybrid optical drive that can obviate the need for a traditional hard disk drive in thin laptop designs.

Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) disclosed a second-generation Serial-ATA (SATA) 6.0-gigabit-per-second (Gbps)-based "hybrid drive" at Ceatec 2010, held this week in Makuhari Messe, Japan. The drive is meant to eliminate the need for a separate traditional (spinning) hard disk drive in laptops, allowing PC makers to bring out optical-drive-equipped systems with only one drive.

Boise, Idaho-based Micron Technology also announced today that it is supplying 25-nanometer NAND flash chips for the drive. … Read more

Weekly Troubleshooting Utilities Update

Our utilities update report is a list of updates for Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. Though a utility can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our focus in this column is to bring you those tools that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems.

This week there are all of three updates available, and these are for the maintenance utility OnyX, the cleanup utility Tidy Up, and a new data recovery utility called Disk Drill.

The latest version of OnyX has been in beta development … Read more

Two (or more) operating systems in one

A virtual machine can be a very handy tool to have, as it lets users run multiple operating systems on one computer. Do you have to run Windows for work but prefer Linux for pleasure? Not a problem! A virtual machine can give you the best of both worlds, and VMware Player is one very easy way to set it up.

The program is plain and intuitive, with a wizard design that walks you through each step of the virtual machine creation process. The opening menu lets you select whether you want to create a new virtual machine, open an … Read more

Apple updates iWork for iPad with support for MobileMe iDisk, more native Office formats

Apple has released a new update for iWork on iPad that adds support for saving documents to MobileMe iDisk as well as the option to export documents in more native Microsoft Office formats.

With Apple pushing to sell the iPad as more than just a consumption tool, these important updates to the flagship productivity suite on the touch-screen tablet indicate that Apple is serious about achieving its goal.

The 1.2 update for iWork gives Keynote and Numbers the capability to export to comparable native Microsoft Office formats for PowerPoint and Excel. Pages previously supported exporting to Word formatted documents.… Read more

How to limit user disk space with partitions and quotas in OS X

One drawback to having multiple users on OS X is there is no easy way to limit the amount of disk space used by that user. If a user has write access to a file system, then they can fill the drive until there is no space left for others. For the most part this just takes some chatting with the other members of a household or workplace, but to avoid confrontations you can set up the system in various ways to limit a user's disk space use.

Partitions

If you know exactly how many people will be using … Read more

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Just like your car, it's important to keep your computer tuned up to ensure that it runs at its best. Regularly removing old and unnecessary files is crucial, and RidNacs aims to help you with this task by analyzing your PC's disk space usage. Unfortunately, its lack of viable help and vague results left a lot to be desired.

We appreciate the program's clean user interface. It consists of a small window with commands at the top for choosing directories to analyze and a blank panel for displaying results. But upon closer inspection, we found its menu … Read more

Large user Library using up disk space

Sometimes people may find their hard-drive space being progressively used up, and there are many reasons why this could happen; however, though people will generally look in their documents, movies, music, and other standard home directory folders to find large files, they may not touch the Library folder.

What is the user Library?The Library folder is a location for applications and system processes to store settings and shared resources. For instance, you can put a Web plug-in in the "Internet Plug-Ins" folder and it will be used by any Web browser. There is no need to have … Read more

Synology releases DiskStation Manager 3.0 for NAS servers

About a month after releasing the beta version, Synology announced today the release of the third major revision of its robust Linux-based firmware for DiskSation NAS servers. The firmware is called DiskStation Manager 3.0 and will work on all of Synology's NAS servers made in 2007 or later.

The new version of the operating system boasts many new features, including the ability to multitask within its Web-based user interface. You can now open the user management function in one window and the surveillance system in another; these windows are kept within the Web interface and you can move … Read more