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Laptop Owners ...

About the Laptop Owners Category
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 08 July 2008
I began this category to host a series of articles which you can examine using the link below. But as well as this group of articles I plan to write further similar articles for laptop owners which will complement what I have already written.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Choosing a backup policy.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 09 June 2008
Now it's time to explain my reasons for adopting the policy that I also recommend to you.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Buying A Drive - some basic facts.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 09 June 2008
So what do you do now if you have a laptop and you don't yet have a second drive? What do you need to know to be able to go out and buy a new drive? This article answers those questions and more.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Choosing a second hard drive.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 08 June 2008
This article covers what you need to know to be able to go out and buy a new drive. First you need to decide if you are going for a ready housed drive or a naked, unhoused, one. This is dragons and butterflies territory but it is an important decision and will make all the difference later on so it is worth spending a little time on it.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Buying A Drive, capacity.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 08 June 2008
The capacity choice facing you is 20, 40, 80 and 120 GB, gigabytes. ....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - How to handle a hard drive.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 09 June 2008
Although the basic handling of a hard drive doesn't involve anything complicated the failure to stick to the rules can cause damage that may stop the drive from working. Despite this not being any kind of mysterious subject I find that whenever I receive one, delivered to me, it is clear that someone the other end hasn't got much of a clue; I get it in a sealed anti-static wrapper (blackish plastic bag) but without any suitable packing to protect it from knocks and bumps during transit. That is a caution to you to consider rejecting a drive that isn't packaged properly and also to make sure that you yourself don't make the same kind of mistake, I, perhaps foolishly, have accepted these badly packed drives but I should add that they don't seem to have suffered any damage.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Buying A Drive. Physical Size.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 08 June 2008
The first choice is size, physical size that is. The drive must be 2.5". This is the standard size for laptops. The only other size is 3.5" which are destined for non laptop PCs. Larger than 2.5" won't fit. Smaller ones are likely to be available as time goes by but for now it's just 2.5" to look for. By the way, don't bother taking a tape measure to the shop trying to measure 2.5" as this the the diameter of the internal disc that you won't be able to see. At some point you are going to open up your laptop and then you will see one for real and you won't then have to worry about measuring anything to see if it is 2.5"....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - How To Prepare Your New Hard Drive.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 30 June 2008
If you buy a drive all ready to fire up and use, that's already in an enclosure, then you probably won't need to prep it but if you buy a drive on it's own then you probably will have to.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Choosing a drive, housed or naked.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 09 June 2008
It is a lot easier to pop into a 'high street' computer shop and buy the whole assembly combined as a single unit already for you to connect (via a USB or Firewire lead) but while this is better if you're not very confident to deal with the two separate items, it presents a problem that needs to be explained now. ....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Buying A Drive, IDE or SATA.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 25 January 2011
The only reason this is important is the actual physical connectors; you cannot use one in place of the other (you can, possibly, but not in a laptop because there isn't the room to add all the extra bits). Don't attempt to understand what IDE and SATA means. You will end up in a black hole along with the RS232 mystery, just leave it, it's not worth it.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Introducing cloning.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 30 June 2008
In order to be able to take a drive that you have backed up to and be able to swap it with your laptops drive so that you can start up your laptop without any apparent change, you have to clone that backup drive. ....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Introducing the need for protection.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 08 June 2008
Anyone who owns a laptop needs to assess the value of their data and not just the value of their laptop. If they don't and disaster strikes then the cost could be a lot more than the cost of the laptop.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Main Contents
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 01 July 2008
Each of the articles in this short series can be accessed using the clickable links in the list below, so it might be a good idea to bookmark this page for a while. ....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - A little personal history.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 01 July 2008
For years I wasn't interested in buying a laptop. They were expensive and PCs were, it seemed to me, better. In 2003 I got one because online work I was doing made it advisable to have a back up computer. After a while I realized that the times when I needed to turn on my PC were fewer and further between. Now, five years on, I know from my own experience that I don't actually have a use for a PC at all. ....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 11 June 2008
I have now published a whole category for laptop computer owners which replaces this long article (that was here but I have now deleted.*) so you may prefer to just click and go straight to my new article series, it's here:....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Swapping the hard drives.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 01 July 2008
Changing the hard drive on a laptop is actually easier than it is on a typical PC. It doesn't require a lot of skill or knowledge - but be cautioned now, it does require some. Don't let that put you off as I plan to enlighten you. The average laptop owner will be able to do this job in a breeze.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - The Laptop Disaster Scenario
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 08 June 2008
If you own a laptop computer and have had it for even just a month or two then the chances are that you would be quite upset, to put it mildly, if you lost it even if you managed to get a suitable replacement on the insurance, assuming you could do that. ....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - A True Confession
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 03 July 2008
At the beginning of this series of articles I had in mind the total loss of your laptop but it needs to be understood that it isn't necessary for this to happen to end up in the same boat, failure of the hard drive will have the same result. Do drives fail? Inevitably they must do despite how reliable and excellent they usually are. This is because they have moving parts but also because of the precision involved and relative sensitivity to physical shock. But even if there weren't any moving parts the risk, although much less, would still be enough to cater for it. It is best to assume that it will fail when you least need it to!....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Drive choice, USB or Firewire.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 08 June 2008
This is easy to understand. Most laptops have USB as standard and very few have Firewire. Even if they do have Firewire they will almost certainly also have USB too. So choosing USB makes more sense. You will find it more universally useable for many years to come. But Firewire needs a mention because it is becoming more prevalent. The speed gain that Firewire offers is to be ignored for our purposes so don't get carried away by those figures that you will see.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - What you need to do.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 09 June 2008
The solution to part of the problem, the data loss, is backing up and the solution to the total problem, software loss, is to backup and clone. That short assertion obviates any need to read all the competing information on the subject. It is all you need to know, as a user as opposed to being technically interested in the subject. Does a child need to know how a crayon is made before redecorating? ....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - What to backup to.
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 30 June 2008
Always backup to a separate hard drive; no if's, no but's, no P word. Use a second drive. Don't even come near me with that word: "partition"; I have banned it along with the 'F' word on my site.....(more)

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Protecting yourself from a laptop disaster - Who should read these articles?
This article is in the Laptop Owners category and was published or updated on 08 June 2008
Anyone who has a computer with Windows and is not already backing up adequately should read these articles as they apply almost equally to them as much as they do for a laptop owner.....(more)

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