Newsletter Archives

Hard drives – still pretty S.M.A.R.T.

Posted on December 27, 2021 at 02:44 CST by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

HARDWARE

By Ben Myers

In my last article, Breaking and entering with Linux: What you see (AskWoody 2021-09-27), I said that there were issues with the S.M.A.R.T. system built into the firmware of both old-time spinning hard drives and solid-state drives (SSDs).

S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology, hereinafter referred to simply as “SMART”) provides real-time recordkeeping about the health of your hard drive. It is all about system reliability, of which drives are a major element and a significant point of failure.

Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.50.0 (2021-12-27).

Hardware Hard-disk health, Hardware, HDD diagnostics, Newsletters, SMART
“Please insert boot media … ” Uh-oh!

Posted on September 6, 2020 at 21:10 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

LANGALIST

By Fred Langa

It’s never good when your PC can’t find its startup files — or even its own hard drive!

But there’s almost always a way to get the PC back up and running. And some of the repairs take only minutes.

Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.35.0 (2020-09-07).

AskWoody Plus Newsletter, LangaList AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Boot failure, Bootable media, HDD diagnostics, Windows Startup Repair

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Hard drives – still pretty S.M.A.R.T.

“Please insert boot media … ” Uh-oh!

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Hard drives – still pretty S.M.A.R.T.

“Please insert boot media … ” Uh-oh!

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