Newsletter Archives

• The death of a hard drive

  Posted on September 11, 2023 at 02:42 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  ON SECURITY

  

  By Susan Bradley

  I got a call. “Susan? Can you help me with my laptop? It won’t boot up, and it’s making a weird noise.”

  “Sure,” I said to the friend on the other end of the phone call.

  But when my friend brought the laptop and I turned it on, I went from feeling certain I would tame the tech (after all, it’s me) to knowing it wasn’t looking good and that I might not be able to help after all.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.37.0, 2023-09-11).

  On Security Backups, Data recovery, Data Recovery Services, Drive Failures, HDDs, Newsletters, Patch Lady Posts, SSDs

• Terabyte update 2023

  Posted on June 26, 2023 at 02:45 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 20.26 • 2023-06-26

  Look for our BONUS issue on Monday, July 3, 2023!

  HARDWARE

  

  By Will Fastie

  There are several important trend lines this year.

  In last year’s installment of this series, I wrote about being surprised that there were no significant price changes.

  This year, there have been some changes, which may mean some tangible trends are emerging.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.26.0, 2023-06-26).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  Hardware HDDs, Newsletters, SSDs, storage, Storage Prices

• Large or small? Old or new? Borrowed and blue?

  Posted on April 3, 2023 at 02:42 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  Decade-long trends in computer hardware make for more expansive and perplexing choices.

  So you need to buy another computer, or two, or more? What do you buy — large or small, mainstream brand, traditional or custom, new or used?

  Running a cradle-to-grave computer business including the repair and resale of gently used computers, I originally expected to portray the various tradeoffs between buying new and buying used computers. Then I realized that the trends that have swept over the computer industry in the past decade can, and do, have great influence over what to buy. Trends first, new vs. used later.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (20.14.0, 2023-04-03).

  Hardware Desktops, Form factor, hardware, Laptops, Newsletters, SSDs

• Real-life SSD reliability must be managed

  Posted on October 3, 2022 at 02:44 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  Solid-state drives did not have a very good week here recently, but it was not their fault.

  Here are the facts about a trifecta of mainstream laptops I handled recently, and why these laptops came up short. If you pay attention to the details here, you can improve the life and reliability of your solid-state drives (SSDs).

  I will also weave in my opinions and points of view on various related subjects.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.40.0, 2022-10-03).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, hardware, Older PCs, SSDs, System Recovery

• Check the health of your systems

  Posted on September 5, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Susan Bradley • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.36 • 2022-09-05

  ON SECURITY

  

  By Susan Bradley

  It’s time to ensure your computer is sound, the operating system is healthy, and your system is backed up.

  Why? Because a feature release is right around the corner: 22H2 for both Windows 10 and Windows 11 is due shortly. It’s not that I recommend that you move to those versions, at least not right away. But if you do decide to move ahead, it’s critical to be sure to do so safely, with your ability to retreat secured.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.36.0, 2022-09-05).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, On Security antivirus, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Backup, browsers, drivers, Operating Systems, Patch Lady Posts, security, SSDs

• Terabyte update 2022

  Posted on June 20, 2022 at 02:45 CDT by Will Fastie • Comment in the Forums

  

  ISSUE 19.25 • 2022-06-20

  HARDWARE

  

  By Will Fastie

  This year, the trend line for storage prices is harder to discern.

  In last year’s installment of this series, I wrote, “There has never been a time when I have been so uncertain about what comes next.”

  I’m glad I made that “prediction,” because I would never have guessed no change in prices. That’s pretty much what we got.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.25.0, 2022-06-20).
  This story also appears in our public Newsletter.

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, hardware, HDDs, SSDs, Storage Prices

• Solid-state drives — from bespoke to commodity

  Posted on May 23, 2022 at 02:43 CDT by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  Solid-state drives (SSDs) have a surprisingly long history, leading up to the types commonly in use today.

  It takes some planning and analysis to make best use of them, but significant improvements in speed and reliability over electromechanical hard drives make SSD investments worthwhile.

  For this article, let’s stick with name brands such as Crucial, SK hynix, Kioxia, Samsung, SanDisk, and Western Digital — all with comparable performance levels. Note that SK hynix acquired Intel’s SSD business, SanDisk is now a subsidiary of Western Digital, and Kioxia is a spinoff of Toshiba.

  Read the full story in our Plus Newsletter (19.21.0, 2022-05-23).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware Adapters, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, hardware, Solid-state drives, SSDs

• Our world is not very S.M.A.R.T. about SSDs

  Posted on February 7, 2022 at 02:45 CST by Ben Myers • Comment in the Forums

  ISSUE 19.06 • 2022-02-07

  HARDWARE

  

  By Ben Myers

  With solid-state drives (SSDs), the SMART ante is raised because an SSD can fail catastrophically — CLUNK! — without warning and with no possibility of recovering data.

  In my recent article “Hard drives — still pretty S.M.A.R.T.” (AskWoody, 2021-12-27), I was hardly overwhelmed by the treatment of the S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) data kept on traditional spinning hard drives by Microsoft Windows and the rest of the industry. But at least, if your computer started to hiccup, you could almost always look at the SMART data to find a possible cause.

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 19.06.0 (2022-02-07).
  This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Newsletter 19.06.F (2022-02-07).

  AskWoody FREE Newsletter, AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, hardware, SMART, SSDs

• Buy the drives you need before ‘chia’ gets them all

  Posted on May 10, 2021 at 01:06 CDT by B. Livingston • Comment in the Forums

  PUBLIC DEFENDER

  

  By Brian Livingston

  Prices of high-capacity solid-state drives (SSDs) have almost doubled at the producer level just in the past few weeks — and shortages are already affecting us. The cause is a new kind of cryptocurrency that demands vast amounts of disk space around the world for its financial network to function.

  The new digital coins, which began trading only a week ago, bear the odd moniker of “chia.”

  Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.17.0 (2021-05-10).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Public Defender AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Cryptocurrency, hard drives, Public Defender, SSDs

• Tips for speeding up Windows PCs

  Posted on November 1, 2020 at 20:15 CST by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums
  

  TROUBLESHOOTING

  By Nathan Segal

  With each update and upgrade of our Windows machines, overall speed seems to take another hit.

  Additional memory and a solid-state drive can significantly improve the performance of some systems, but there are other factors to consider. While researching this topic, the Microsoft Doc article “Speed up your computer” popped up in my search results. It provides a helpful summary of tweaks that might put more zip back into a hard-working PC. Here’s my hands-on take on those suggestions.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.43.0 (2020-11-02).

  AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Troubleshooting AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Benchmarks, PC performance, Solid-state drives, SSDs, System cleanup

• Terabyte update: The hard-drive price advantage

  Posted on June 1, 2020 at 01:15 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums
  

  HARDWARE

  By Will Fastie

  Solid-state drives (SSDs) have rapidly become the drive of choice for all types of devices, with smartphones and tablets leading the way.

  Today’s laptops commonly include an SSD, and an increasing number of desktop PCs are configured with a smallish boot SSD and a larger spinning-platter, hard-disk drive (HDD) for long-term data storage. Given the ongoing changes in storage technology and cost, there’s little doubt that solid-state memory will someday replace mechanical rotating disks. The only question is when?

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.21.0 (2020-06-01). This story also appears in the AskWoody Free Edition 17.21.F.

  Hardware AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Hard-drive pricing, Hybrid drives, Solid-state drives, SSDs

• ‘Overprovisioning’ your SSD

  Posted on April 27, 2020 at 01:10 CDT by Tracey Capen • Comment in the Forums

  LANGALIST

  By Fred Langa

  You may be able to extend the life and increase the speed of your solid-state drive through overprovisioning — reassigning some of the drive’s file-storage capacity for use by the drive’s firmware.

  As usual with tech “hacks,” there are significant gotchas to overprovisioning: its benefits might be minimal on a consumer PC, and you may have to move or resize some disk partitions to set it up.

  Here’s what’s involved and how to do it — plus some excellent free tools for managing the technology.

  Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 17.16.0 (2020-04-27).

  LangaList AskWoody Plus Newsletter, Overprovisioning, SSDs
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