If you have G through Q you have a whole different set of requirements. Are those physical or logical drives?
Or slots in an external card reader or something?
My work study job as an undergrad was a computer consultant person… really, I was a glorified, why can’t I get into my email monkey.
Since I got a new laptop earlier this month, I’ll chime in on the awesomeness of external hard drives. Hubby and I each have one and they’re great because that way when I’m working on files on the two computers (or three…) I can make sure they all have the most up to date version.
Also - multiple places all over! Especially with things like pictures, hubby had a flash drive that got stolen several years ago so now there’s a year of our relationship from which we have no pictures… because the thief has them, or wiped them, or whatever.
As I haven’t kept up since graduating years ago… I’m looking forward to see what else people have to say 
How about use of open source software vs. proprietary? Anyone have opinions on that? I’m using Open Office for the first time with new computer, so it’s a fun experiment.
Actually, this can be problematic. In theory, using separate partition, (or separate physical drives) for different purposes works out great. In reality, no matter how hard you try to enforce it, files go everywhere. This happens because:
- Novice users have hard time keeping files organized in specific directories.
- Some poorly written apps store their preferences as a flat file in their execution directory, instead of using registry.
- There are no OS global default save locations… every time an app brings up ‘save’ dialog, the default location is whatever the app thinks is appropriate. Eventually, you get lazy and just start hitting ‘enter’.
- Natual novice tendency to want to everything on desktop.
Eventually, it’s better off just letting people do what they do. Just frequent backup, that’s the only thing I insist on.
I thought that was best practice # 1. Ok I will let you PC people have your “fun”. I have to use one of the computers from the dark side at work. I think PC just keep the tech help with jobs so I guess it is good for the economy. 
(I promise to stop posting here until I go back to work and need PC help.)
Turning off UAC is not the best of ideas, but then again Vista is not the best idea either. When you are done playing might want to remember to flip that back on.
I agree with everything you have said. There is one secret weapon:
- Relocate your “My Documents” folder. It is practically as easy as right clicking on the folder, selecting “Move” and moving the base folder to you information drive. Most programs default to saving somewhere in your “My Documents”…this should help 95% of the issue. The rest is training one’s self to save in a consistent spot.
Yes, that helps. But I’ve found that most novice user’s natural instinct is to make folders on desktop, and start organizing his/her files there. That sounds reasonable to me, I’m not gonna fault them for doing that.
When you move ‘My Documents’ folder, the problem is that the user-specific ‘Desktop’ folder doesn’t move. ‘Desktop’ is at the same level as ‘My Doucments’, not inside of it. Really, we should have an easy way to move an entire user directory tree inside ‘Documents and Settings’.
There are ways of doing this, although I wouldn’t recommend it to beginners: here
BTW, a week ago 7/25 was Sysadmin Day! Did you all wish your sysadmin and IT people “happy sysadmin day”? You really should, we work really hard in “support” role, so that you all can have the glory, while you stick us in the basement with old equipment that no one wants. (“PC Load Letter” FTW!)
So, say “thank you” for fixing your computer and be nice to us. Remember, we are people too. Also, don’t forget, when you go home at night, we read your emails.
This thread came along at the perfect time. I just picked up an unwanted PC from a friend with the hope of tinkering with it. I’m not a computer geek, but I’d like to be when I grow up, so I’ll be stopping by here for advice and info shortly.
Just a quick mention: When you buy an external hard drive, think first what you want to do with it, because there are those that just need a USB connection (the 2.5 inchers) and those that need an external power source as well (the 3.5 inchers) and those aren’t as portable - unless you’re like me and don’t need portable, because everything you want to take around with yourself nicely fits onto a 4GB USB stick.
Insert shameless plug here:
On the subject of hard drives I think we should recommend Spinrite. It is a amazing program for maintaining and recovering bad sectors on a hard drives. The hard drive is probably the most likely component to have problems arise due to the fact that it has moving parts. It is like giving your HD a tune up. Now, it is not a free program and is (at $89) a bit of an investment. But if you have had it save your butt you know that some data is worth more than that to save. There is also some data that could be considered priceless.
GR, we have the needs external power source external hard drives and they’re still mobile - you just have to be very careful about how you move them.
But that’s definitely a good point, now that I have the big one I don’t use my old mem stick nearly at all. But I still have pictures on every single mechanism I can think of. I might even print them out and put them in photo albums sometime soon! :eek:
My mantra: Backup Early, Backup Often.
Oh my god, that’s so last century 
Edit: by the way, there are some awesome websites that let you compile your own photo book with awesome graphics and then you buy that as a customized photo album with various options, like leather-bound or hardcover and so on. I did it once with photos from a birthday party and the end result looked awesome, there’s so much stuff you can with the background alone, like having one big picture fill the entire page or double-page as background and then have smaller pictures like you would have in an album. Beats the hell out of regular photo albums where the background is just white on every page.
So it’s finally getting time for me to wipe a computer a friend of mine gave me, and I need guidance to make sure I don’t frak it up. Basically, this friend bought a laptop and gave me his desktop; it had a virus of some sort that he was never able to get off, so I decided I’d just wipe and reload the thing with a fresh copy of Windows XP. I’ve been burning CDs of all his music first ('cause I mean, free music, right?), and then I’m gonna do the deed, probably this weekend or early next week.
Pointers? Suggestions? Warnings? If you need to know specs about the machine, say so, and I’ll find them out.
Thanks everyone.
“Format C:” should do the job. You might want to think about wiping the boot sector, too, if that’s possible. Also, if there was a nasty virus, DO NOT PUT THOSE CDs that you made back into that PC, the music files might be contaminated.
Rats. I was afraid someone would say that. If they’re just playable audio CDs, not data CDs with the files on them, does that make a difference?
Audio Cds have “files” on them as well, wave files, not mp3, but they’ve been made from mp3s, am I right?
You are correct, audio cds would not have the virus.
However, between you and I this is not the most efficient approach. Here is what I recommend you do if you want all those music files:
- Burn them to a cd, dvd, portable hard drive, whatever (not as audio…that is inefficient and will take forever, move as data)
- Ensure your virus protection is up to date on your home computer
- Take the media you have stored them on and attach to your computer
- Run a scan on the media using the deepest most comprehensive scan your application has.
- Voila. You are done.
I am not aware of viruses that imbed themselves into mp3s…only ones that seek out and delete mp3s. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just that I have never heard of them.
In order for a virus to execute you need to open the file…this is why my approach above works. Scanning a virus does not cause it to execute, nor does simply plugging a device into a computer (the only exception is when “autoplay” is enabled.
If this approach still leaves you worried, there is one other approach you can take:
- Install new operating system without deleting any files on the computer
- Install virus software
- Run complete scan
- Voila
The only reason this approach wouldn’t work is if the virus was in the master boot record.
Hope this helps!
What! Wow. The files are IN the computer? That is so wild!! How do we get 'em out of there?
The only advice I could think of to give to people is not to reformat their HP notebook - the recovery disc(s) you can burn from the recovery partition is shoddy at best and it doesn’t come with a recovery manager at all. So if something wrong happens during your reformat, you are truly up the creek (unless you start using Linux like me and realize how much BS one has to put up with on a Microsoft machine).
Basically, HP notebooks are craaaaaap.