Your hard drive’s malfunctioning, and you’re pretty sure it’s an issue with the electronics. Can you simply swap out the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) with an identical model?No, for several reasons. First and foremost, finding a truly identical replacement...

You’re getting a new computer, or just replacing your hard disk drive (HDD) with a solid-state drive. What do you do with your old storage media?  This is one of the most common questions we receive — and it’s an...

Before performing logical data recovery procedures on a hard disk drive (HDD), engineers always create a complete clone or image of the drive.This is an essential step: Without a clone/image, data recovery processes — even when carried out properly...

Hard drives aren’t going anywhere anytime soon — at least, in enterprise applications. Data centers need inexpensive, reliable storage, and hard disk drives (HDD) provide that value.  But that doesn’t mean that speed isn’t important. While hard drives continue to...

A hard drive voice coil is a type of linear motor consisting of a coil of wire suspended within a strong magnetic field. When an electrical current passes through the coil, it interacts with the magnetic field, generating a force...

If you’ve found this page, you’re probably running CHKDSK, Microsoft’s built-in utility for hard disk drives — and you’re wondering why it’s taking forever to complete.  First, a quick reminder: CHKDSK isn’t a data recovery utility. It can scan your...

One of the most common computer failure scenarios is also one of the most difficult to diagnose: The computer turns on, but the screen is black (or otherwise not responsive).  The core issue is simple: The monitor isn’t receiving a...

Back in the 1990s, hard drive defragmentation was an essential part of weekly computer maintenance — and for some people, it was the best part. Windows 95 and 98 provides a graphical disk defragmenter with a grid that gradually changed...

Block erase (also referred to as “secure erase” and by other names, depending on the implementation) is an ATA command that tells the SSD’s controller to apply an erase voltage. The voltage is applied to all NAND cells of the...

You’ve accidentally made changes to an Excel spreadsheet, and you want to roll them back. Good news: It’s not an especially difficult task.  Newer versions of Microsoft’s Excel software include a Version History feature, which you can use to restore...