The Hard Disk Drive

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Blín D'ñero
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The Hard Disk Drive

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The history of computer data storage, in pictures (royal.pingdom.com)
HDD User Benchmark (hdd.userbenchmark.com)
Some reviews:
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB Review (WD10EALX) storagereview.com

Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB (WD1002FAEX) SATA 6GB/s Hard Drive Review thinkcomputers.org

Western Digital VelociRaptor 1TB Review storagereview.com

HDD roundup: eight 2 TB hard drives! - BeHardware behardware.com
The updated WD Black family comes in capacities of 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and 4TB and ships with a class-leading five-year warranty.
  • 1TB - one single 1TB platter (WD1003FZEX)
  • 2TB - three x 800GB platters (WD2003FZEX)
  • 3TB - four x 800GB platters (WD3003FZEX)
  • 4TB - five x 800GB platters (WD4003FZEX)
WD Black 4TB Desktop Hard Drive Review (WD4003FZEX) (storagereview.com)
Main PC: Asus TUF Gaming 570-Pro (wi-fi) * AMD Ryzen 7 5800X * Noctua NH-D15 * Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB * Asus TUF Radeon 6800XT * Creative AE-9PE * 2 x Samsung 980 Pro * 7 x WD Gold HDD * Corsair HX 1000 * 1 x Asus DRW-24D5MT * Dell U3010 * Windows 10 x64 *

Office PC: Asus ROG Strix X570-E * AMD Ryzen 7 3800X * Noctua NH-D15 * Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB * MSI Radeon 5700XT * Creative Soundblaster ZxR * 2 x Corsair Force MP600 * 7 x WD Gold HDD * Corsair AX 1200W * 1 x Asus DRW-24D5MT * Dell P4317Q * Windows 10 x64 *

Old workhorse PC: * Intel i7 4790K * Noctua NH-D15S * Asus Maximus VII Hero * Corsair Force MP510 480GB M.2 SSD * 32 GB Corsair Dominator Platinum CMD32GX3M4A2133C9 * Sapphire Radeon R9 290 * 3 x Dell U2410 @ Eyefinity 5760 x 1200 * Corsair HX 1000i * 7 x WD Black / Gold HDDs * Creative Soundblaster ZxR * Asus DRW F1ST * Corsair K95 RGB * Corsair M65 PRO RGB * Steelseries 9HD * Coolermaster STC T01 * Edifier S530 * Sennheiser HD598 * Windows 10 x64 *
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Blín D'ñero
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Re: The Hard Disk Drive

Post by Blín D'ñero »

Care for the harddiskdrive

Acronis True Image WD Edition Software (freeware) support.wdc.com
Acronis True Image WD Edition Software

Acronis True Image WD Edition Software helps you to completely clone your current system drive onto your new WD hard drive. Cloning makes an exact copy of your old system drive on your new WD hard drive, including the operating system, applications, data, preferences, and email settings. Everything will be present and operate exactly as it did on your old hard drive. Acronis True Image WD Edition now supports WD Advanced Format Drives and ensures that all partitions are optimally aligned.

ATIWD is based on the award winning Acronis True image Home 2013 backup, restore and disaster recovery program.

Key Features of Acronis True Image WD Edition Software:
•Drive Cloning - Copies the source drive to a new WD drive, leaving all data on the source drive.


•Drive Migration - Erase the source drive after the new WD drive has been imaged.


•Drive Deployment - Enables users to prepare a WD drive so that selected folders or partitions can be excluded from the destination image.


•Drive Image Backup - The long-term usage of the Drive Kit software will be to provide full drive image backups of a source drive at any time. Backup drive images will be stored as a file, which can be copied to any direct attached drive, network attached storage drive or optical media (CD/DVD).


•Drive Image Recovery - The Recovery Manager enables users to restore a drive image from a direct or network attached drive. The Recovery Manager can also either erase just a portion of the drive to be used for the restored drive image, or all of the previous OS.


•Create a Bootable Standalone Recovery Manager - With the Drive Kit software, users can create a bootable ISO image file, which contains the WD Drive Kit Standalone Recovery Manager software.


•Recover a Drive Image from the Bootable Recovery Manager Software - The bootable Standalone Recovery Manager enables users to recover a drive image from either a CD/DVD drive, a direct attached drive, or a network attached drive.


•Download the Data Lifeguard Tools software (Acronis True Image WD Edition and user manual and the WD diagnostic tool) and follow the instructions provided to complete the installation.



Acronis True Image WD Edition Software
File Size: 259 MB (approx.)
Version: 16.0.0.5958
Publish Date: 12/13/2013

Supported Operating Systems
•Windows XP
•Windows Vista
•Windows 7
•Windows 8/8.1

Supported Languages
•Version 16.0.0.5958 supports Chinese simplified, Chinese Traditional, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian and Spanish

Instructions
1. Click on the Download Now button in the upper right corner.
2.On the Language page, choose the language version of software you want to download.
3.Download the Acronis True Image WD Edition Software to your computer.
4.Make sure you close all programs, and click on the EXE file. The install wizard will carry you through the installation process.
5.You will need to reboot your computer once the installation is completed.
Or, what i use: Paragon Drive Copy Personal. paragon-software.com
In the quick menu, select the first: "migrate to new hdd", follow the menu, leave settings as are (do NOT select "raw"). Afterwards, shut down PC, take out old hdd, new one will automatically be the one that boots from now on.
Main PC: Asus TUF Gaming 570-Pro (wi-fi) * AMD Ryzen 7 5800X * Noctua NH-D15 * Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB * Asus TUF Radeon 6800XT * Creative AE-9PE * 2 x Samsung 980 Pro * 7 x WD Gold HDD * Corsair HX 1000 * 1 x Asus DRW-24D5MT * Dell U3010 * Windows 10 x64 *

Office PC: Asus ROG Strix X570-E * AMD Ryzen 7 3800X * Noctua NH-D15 * Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB * MSI Radeon 5700XT * Creative Soundblaster ZxR * 2 x Corsair Force MP600 * 7 x WD Gold HDD * Corsair AX 1200W * 1 x Asus DRW-24D5MT * Dell P4317Q * Windows 10 x64 *

Old workhorse PC: * Intel i7 4790K * Noctua NH-D15S * Asus Maximus VII Hero * Corsair Force MP510 480GB M.2 SSD * 32 GB Corsair Dominator Platinum CMD32GX3M4A2133C9 * Sapphire Radeon R9 290 * 3 x Dell U2410 @ Eyefinity 5760 x 1200 * Corsair HX 1000i * 7 x WD Black / Gold HDDs * Creative Soundblaster ZxR * Asus DRW F1ST * Corsair K95 RGB * Corsair M65 PRO RGB * Steelseries 9HD * Coolermaster STC T01 * Edifier S530 * Sennheiser HD598 * Windows 10 x64 *
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Blín D'ñero
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Re: The Hard Disk Drive

Post by Blín D'ñero »

Seperated per brand: Hard Drive Diagnostics Tools and Utilities tacktech.com
Download HDD Tune
Speed, Health, Errors scanning
Supported operating systems: Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7.

Hardware requirements: hard disk (internal or external), SDD, USB stick, memory card reader.
Note: due to hardware limitations some drives may not support all functions.

Licensing information: free for personal use

Download HDD Health (freeware)
It monitors hard disks and alerts you to impending failure.

The latest version of HDD Health software is released June, 15 2008. This release is compatible and tested on Microsoft Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista and Windows 7. Also you may successfully run our software on Windows 9x/Me/NT4 system.

HDD Health product is distributed on a FREEWARE basis.
Western Digital's Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows (388 KB) (Freeware)
The Windows version of the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics utility can perform drive identification, diagnostics, and repairs on a Western Digital FireWire, EIDE, Serial ATA, and USB drive. In addition, it can provide you with the drive's serial and model numbers.

To use the utility:

Download Windows Data Lifeguard Diagnostics. You may need to extract this using an extraction utiltiy such as WinZip.

Run the program, windlg.exe. If you're running this under Windows Vista, you will need to Right-click on the windlg.exe file and select Run As Administrator.

Read and accept the license agreement to continue.

On the main program screen, there are two windows. In the top window, you will see the drives in your system that are available for testing. The model number, serial number, and capacity of each drive will be displayed. In the bottom window, the partition information for the selected drive will be displayed.

Double-click the drive to be tested in the top window.

The DLGDIAG - Select an Option window appears.

You will see the following options:
QUICK TEST - performs SMART drive quick self-test to gather and verify the Data Lifeguard information contained on the drive.

EXTENDED TEST - performs a Full Media Scan to detect bad sectors. Test may take several hours to complete depending on the size of the drive.

WRITE ZEROS - writes zeros to the drive with options of Full Erase and Quick Erase. File system and data will be lost.

VIEW TEST RESULT - displays the latest test results.

Select the test you wish to perform and click the Start button.

When the test completes, you will be notified. Click the Close button.

A web page will display the test results for the drive.
Note: Windows Data Lifeguard Diagnostics will test internal hard drives contained within a WD My Book Premium II and WD My Book Pro Edition II storage system. The RAID Array on these units does not need to be broken in order to test the internal drives. The only feature that will not be available with the diagnostics is the SMART data. The diagnostics will not read SMART data from the drives.
Specifications for the Caviar Black SATA 3.0 Gb/s and 6.0 Gb/s drives @ western digital caviar customer's help
PassMark DiskCheckup (470 kB) (Free for personal use)
Main PC: Asus TUF Gaming 570-Pro (wi-fi) * AMD Ryzen 7 5800X * Noctua NH-D15 * Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB * Asus TUF Radeon 6800XT * Creative AE-9PE * 2 x Samsung 980 Pro * 7 x WD Gold HDD * Corsair HX 1000 * 1 x Asus DRW-24D5MT * Dell U3010 * Windows 10 x64 *

Office PC: Asus ROG Strix X570-E * AMD Ryzen 7 3800X * Noctua NH-D15 * Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB * MSI Radeon 5700XT * Creative Soundblaster ZxR * 2 x Corsair Force MP600 * 7 x WD Gold HDD * Corsair AX 1200W * 1 x Asus DRW-24D5MT * Dell P4317Q * Windows 10 x64 *

Old workhorse PC: * Intel i7 4790K * Noctua NH-D15S * Asus Maximus VII Hero * Corsair Force MP510 480GB M.2 SSD * 32 GB Corsair Dominator Platinum CMD32GX3M4A2133C9 * Sapphire Radeon R9 290 * 3 x Dell U2410 @ Eyefinity 5760 x 1200 * Corsair HX 1000i * 7 x WD Black / Gold HDDs * Creative Soundblaster ZxR * Asus DRW F1ST * Corsair K95 RGB * Corsair M65 PRO RGB * Steelseries 9HD * Coolermaster STC T01 * Edifier S530 * Sennheiser HD598 * Windows 10 x64 *
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Blín D'ñero
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Re: The Hard Disk Drive

Post by Blín D'ñero »

Removing the hidden 100 MB partition at the start of the HDD before reinstalling Windows 7, but during installation you can even avoid it being created. See second option.

1. Is it necessary to have Disk 0 Partition 1 system reserved? (answers.microsoft.com)
  1. First, there is no way to simply delete this hidden 100MB partition in Windows 7; you simply have to reformat. So the first step is to backup your data and boot to the Windows 7 Install CD. (To boot to CD, restart your computer and normally it will be either DEL, F12, or ESC key to select CD-ROM drive, and boot to it)
  2. Once you are up to the Windows 7 screen, you will need to select "Repair Your Computer" option.
  3. Next you will need to select "Command Prompt ".
  4. In Command Prompt we are going to reformat your hard drive in a certain way so the 2nd partition doesn't automatically get created when you install Windows 7. Here are the commands:

    Diskpart
    List Disk (You might have more than one hard drive)
    Select Disk 0 (By default your main boot drive will be disk 0, check it)
    Clean
    Create Partition Primary
    Select Partition 1
    Active
    Format FS=NTFS Quick
    Exit
  5. Then simply walk through installing Windows 7 as you would normally. This time the setup will not create the 100MB hidden reserved partition.
2. Avoiding the pesky Windows 7 System Reserved Partition :thup:
Main PC: Asus TUF Gaming 570-Pro (wi-fi) * AMD Ryzen 7 5800X * Noctua NH-D15 * Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB * Asus TUF Radeon 6800XT * Creative AE-9PE * 2 x Samsung 980 Pro * 7 x WD Gold HDD * Corsair HX 1000 * 1 x Asus DRW-24D5MT * Dell U3010 * Windows 10 x64 *

Office PC: Asus ROG Strix X570-E * AMD Ryzen 7 3800X * Noctua NH-D15 * Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB * MSI Radeon 5700XT * Creative Soundblaster ZxR * 2 x Corsair Force MP600 * 7 x WD Gold HDD * Corsair AX 1200W * 1 x Asus DRW-24D5MT * Dell P4317Q * Windows 10 x64 *

Old workhorse PC: * Intel i7 4790K * Noctua NH-D15S * Asus Maximus VII Hero * Corsair Force MP510 480GB M.2 SSD * 32 GB Corsair Dominator Platinum CMD32GX3M4A2133C9 * Sapphire Radeon R9 290 * 3 x Dell U2410 @ Eyefinity 5760 x 1200 * Corsair HX 1000i * 7 x WD Black / Gold HDDs * Creative Soundblaster ZxR * Asus DRW F1ST * Corsair K95 RGB * Corsair M65 PRO RGB * Steelseries 9HD * Coolermaster STC T01 * Edifier S530 * Sennheiser HD598 * Windows 10 x64 *
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