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  • Showing only topics in ~tech with the tag "hard disk drives". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. IT helpdesk request?

      I'm frankly all out of ideas on how to solve an issue, so I'm hoping that the Tildes community might have a suggestion for solving this issue. I have an 8tb HDD that spins up and is recognized by...

      I'm frankly all out of ideas on how to solve an issue, so I'm hoping that the Tildes community might have a suggestion for solving this issue.

      I have an 8tb HDD that spins up and is recognized by windows when plugged into a USB HDD dock, but in another machine (also running windows 10) the drive can't be seen (**this is using data connections directly to the motherboard).

      There is:

      • Nothing mechanically wrong with the drive as it reads/writes on the HDD dock.
      • I've tested the drive as an NTFS formatted drive and as unallocated.
      • Neither Disk Manager nor the bios sees the drive.
      • Multiple SATA cables and Power jacks tested on working drives and the non working drive.

      Open to thoughts, prayers or possible solutions.

      Thank you!

      21 votes
    2. Anyone know of any good way to transfer Apple Music playlists onto a hard drive?

      EDIT: As one user pointed out, this is not about Apple Music the streaming platform, this is about basically itunes but itunes no longer technically exists as an application. So a little...

      EDIT: As one user pointed out, this is not about Apple Music the streaming platform, this is about basically itunes but itunes no longer technically exists as an application.

      So a little background: my father just died and a big part of his life was listening to music, for most of his life he's been building themed compilations of songs he liked using whatever medium was available, magnetic reel tapes in the '60s and '70s, then cassette tapes, then CDs, and of course playlists for the last 20 or so years. Now my mother and I would like to back up and save a lot of that work as those compilations have a lot of sentimental value and are pretty unique. There's lots of old obscure rhythm and blues and soul songs that you aren't really going to come across anywhere else. However, it's pretty much all locked into Apple Music, which isn't really a problem in the here and now, because we all have tended to use macs since my mother adopted them in the '80s or '90s. However, we don't really want that data just locked into a private ecosystem that has been getting more and more restricted and where we have less and less control.

      So I'm looking for a way to keep those playlists intact and export them out of Apple Music in a playable format and into a less locked in system to then back them up. Most of the music should be DRM free as a lot of it would have been taken off of CDs probably as MP3 files, though a lot of that would've happened 15+ years ago.

      Does anyone have any ideas about the best way to do that? I seem to be able to manually export each one into a .txt file but of course it's not really playable sound files. My tech skills are pretty limited, I have about an average amount of knowledge or even slightly more for someone my age (30s) who grew up around computers and the internet but I grew up after it necessary to have basic coding skills to use computers so my experience doing even basic coding or running scripts is pretty much nil. Any ideas would be appreciated.

      Edit: it’s version 1.0.6.10

      18 votes
    3. I need helping figure out why the Hard Disk Drive BBS priorities keeps changing

      I have this Motherboard with 3 hard drives. I want the order to be P2 Windows P5 and I have set that order many times, but for reasons I can't figure out, every once in a while, the order changes...

      I have this Motherboard with 3 hard drives. I want the order to be

      • P2
      • Windows
      • P5

      and I have set that order many times, but for reasons I can't figure out, every once in a while, the order changes like you can see in this screenshot or other times, P5 somehow becomes the first option.

      I can't figure out how to fix this?

      11 votes
    4. Please help me understand and manage external HDD sleep

      I have an external drive (3.5" hdd, SATA) in an enclosure (usb 3) (purchased separately), connected to a thunderbolt dock (OWC) connected alternately to an iMac and a macbook pro. The HDD goes to...

      I have an external drive (3.5" hdd, SATA) in an enclosure (usb 3) (purchased separately), connected to a thunderbolt dock (OWC) connected alternately to an iMac and a macbook pro. The HDD goes to sleep, and causes problems. Freezes, weird internet access problems, kernel panics.

      I have done some research, and can't seem to figure out:

      how to know whether it is the drive, enclosure, or computer causing the sleep, although, fiddling with various settings on the mac seemed to have no effect, although it may have increased my battery usage :(

      how to adjust settings on the drive, or in the enclosure.

      How to determine what the sleep behavior of prospective drives will be.

      As a workaround, I tried to write a zsh script to touch the drive ever few seconds. This kinda worked, but was a struggle to figure out appropriate permissions issues and how to make it run automatically.

      I welcome all guidance, pointers to resources, clarifications, incantations, well-wishes.

      8 votes
    5. Help needed: slow external hard drive

      I've got a 2TB Toshiba drive (formatted as NTFS) that has become very slow and I was wondering if anyone here as any ideas what the problem could be and how I could fix it. All the data I'd need...

      I've got a 2TB Toshiba drive (formatted as NTFS) that has become very slow and I was wondering if anyone here as any ideas what the problem could be and how I could fix it. All the data I'd need off the drive is backed up, but I would at least like a drive to put it back on to!

      In short, it became slow after I had to force power-off the system it was connected to (Pop OS installed on another external drive which I unplugged by mistake) and I haven't bothered to try to fix it in the six months since.

      I've tested it on Pop and it takes about 10-20 minutes to mount, and 2 minutes to unmount and safely remove. The data itself seems fine but performance is slow, accessing a 20MB image takes several seconds and selecting the drive in GNOME Disks caused it to freeze.

      The drive sounded louder than normal, especially after plugging in.

      On Windows, the drive was recognised and browsable immediately, but browsing through folders was very slow - opening some folders causes Windows Explorer to freeze for a while. Some of my double-clicks were mis-recognised as click-to-rename, which took several seconds to activate and during which time Task Manager reported the average response time between 5000 and 11000 ms.

      Attempting to load an audio file resulted in lots of buffering. Task Manager reports an active time of 100% (even when not loading files or folders) and the activity never exceeded 100 KB/s (and doesn't sustain it for more than a second). Ejecting the drive takes forever - after ejecting it using the tray icon, the tray icon is not removed (even though there are no other drives connected or listed) and the active time is still 100% with the indicator LED blinking non-stop. The system did not enter sleep right away after me asking it to either.

      All of that to say, does anyone know what the issue could be, or how I could find and fix it? Thanks!


      Edit: fixed and normal functionality restored (at least so I can check the drive a bit easier) using Scan & Repair in Windows (see my comment).

      4 votes