Category Archives: hard drive

Speed up your computer with SSD

upgrade hdd to ssdIf you have a computer with only a mechanical hard drive inside and it’s getting too slow, upgrading to an SSD is a cheap and simple way to get a big speed increase. Traditional hard drives are mechanical devices that on the inside look like mini record players. They can be damaged by bumps and drops. A typical hard drive speed maxes out 120MB per second.

An SSD drive uses memory chips to store your information. There are no moving parts so vibrations, bumps and drops do not damage an SSD. Most SSD drive speed maxes out at 550MB per second.

SSD speed increase will help with the following;
Starting your computer and opening programs
Opening multiple webpage tabs and windows at the same time
Photo and video rendering programs like Photoshop and Premiere
Music editing and DJ programs like Audacity and VirtualDJ

Our favorite internal SSD we recommend for our clients is the Samsung 860 Evo it has a great price to performance ratio. You can purchase an SSD from this link just make sure you pick one that has more space than you are using. Also available are external SSD drives that can be purchased from this link.

We can clone your existing mechanical hard drive to a new SSD so all your programs and settings will be exactly the same. An SSD can be installed in laptops and desktops. For most computers the cost will be $150 in labor call today to schedule an appointment.

Check Your Mac Hard Drive For Failure

On Apple iMac and MacBook computers if the hard drive is failing you do not get a warning. The hard drive uses an internal program called S.M.A.R.T. to report its condition but OSX never tells you about it. A sign of a failing drive is when it takes a long time to open a program. Use one of the following trial programs to check your mac hard drive for failure. If the program shows bad sectors call us and we can duplicate your bad drive onto a new one and save your data.

Voltan Smart Utility
http://www.volitans-software.com/smart_utility.php

Core Code SMARTReporter
http://www.corecode.at/smartreporter/

#macdrivefailure

SMART utility

Windows Check Disk Simple Procedure

When a hard drive starts to fail the computer can start to work slowly even when everything else is fine. We recommend running check disk on your internal and external hard drives once a month and it will attempt to recover the drive. Below is a free program CheckDIskGUI that reduces the number of steps to check your hard drive. The scan takes about 2 hours to complete, start it before you go to sleep or leave the office. After the scan completes the computer will automatically restart back into windows. Then run a program called CrystalDiskInfo that will report  the condition of the hard drives. If CrystalDiskInfo reports a problem call us right away and we can duplicate and save your information on a new drive. Once a hard drive starts to go bad it will only get worse so don’t hesitate to replace it.

Perform the following steps on all you Microsoft Windows computers to check if your hard drive is working properly.
1. Download and run Check Disk GUI at
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/checkdiskgui.html
2. Select all your internal and external usb drives you want to check. Your main internal drive is usually C: . If you are running bootcamp on an Apple computer do not select Macintosh HD.

Check Disk GUI

3. Select Fix and Recover
4. Select yes to schedule a scan and restart your your computer

check disk gui step two

5. After the scan completes download and run CrystalDiskInfo at
http://crystalmark.info/redirect.php?product=CrystalDiskInfo
If the program says caution or bad then the drive is failing.

crystaldiskinfo