Ask A Geek

Q: I have an external hard drive that spins up correctly when the power cable is plugged in but once it is connected via USB to a computer it shuts off. What can I do to fix this?

A: It sounds like there is a short in the USB connection of the external hard drive. The first thing you should do is try a different USB cable. If this does not work then you should try to connect the external hard drive to a different computer. If this fails as well then you will want to figure out if your external hard drive is under warranty. If it is you will probably want to contact the maker of the drive but specifically ask them if there is a way for you to get the data off it if you send it back. Some might be able to do this while some might not. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: Okay so my external hard drive has stopped working. When I plug in the power cable in it just automatically starts. Then when I put the USB cable in it just turns it self off. What can I do to fix this and get my movies back?

Q: Can I record audio directly to my external hard drive using esata?

Q: I want to clone a hard drive. I would like to copy the contents onto a portable external USB hard drive as It is not my computer. How can I do this?

A: There is a great user contributed article at microsoft.com called Windows XP Backup Made Easy that has a section called Decide What to Backup and it describes how to backup All information on this computer. This should help you get a clone made of your hard drive onto an external USB hard drive. Read the rest of this entry »

Q: I’m wanting to “clone” a hard drive. I would like to copy the contents onto a portable USB hard drive, as It is not my computer. How can I do this?

Q: Does anybody know what kind of external hard drive enclosure this kind of hard drive needs? It’s a Samsung Model: HD080HJ/P SATA 80GB sorry for the bad picture, camera phone was all I have!

Q: How do I connect my external hard drive to my TV?

Q: Is there any way to use an external hard drive to create a boot disk so I can wipe my computer and just use the external hard drive to get windows back? I’ve got windows xp and several trojans. Any help would be gratefully appreciated.

Q: Windows Vista won’t let me access my external hard drive. It comes up with an error message saying access denied. I have made a registry key but this is only for files and folders. I have tried to change the permissions but for some reason this doesn’t work.

Q: My computer just crashed and I had a USB hard drive attached at the time it crashed. When I restarted the computer and attempted to access my USB hard drive it no longer showed up as a drive. I unplugged it and replugged it in. What happened was it asked me if I wanted to view files etc on the USB hard drive but then when I clicked on view files it told me there was no USB hard drive. Does anyone know what happened, how to fix my USB hard drive, and whether or not the info is still on it?