The more you use your desktop computer, the more stuff you’re going to be saving to the computers hard drive. Your photos, music, software, and all of your other critical data are stuck on that thing and unless you’re being extra careful, chances are you’re going to fill it to capacity. When this happens, instead of going on a deletion spree, why not just install another drive? If you’re installing a brand new one, this guide will be for you, but if you’re replacing a drive, you should find this helpful as well. In either case, installing a hard drive is very easy and an important skill to have in your arsenal. I’ll explain how to install a new hard drive to a desktop system and prepare it for a fresh operating system installation. If you’re a notebook computer or cheaper netbook user, the same principles will apply, but the connections and the sizes will differ. For the purpose of this guide, I’ll be referencing disk-based hard drives instead of solid-state drives, but the same principles apply for those as well.

What You’ll Need:

A hard drive (IDE or Serial ATA) A screwdriver (usually a Phillips head) Four screws (usually included with the drive if purchased new) An available data connection (the cable, plugged into an available port on the motherboard) An available power connector (4-pin large “Molex” for IDE or 15-pin flat “wafer” for Serial ATA) An available drive bay (usually labeled in your case) Operating System Low-static environment or a place to ground yourself

Steps:

Note for IDE hard drives

Since the cables they use can accommodate two drives per channel, the drive is equipped with jumpers that set its priority on the cable. The settings are Master, Slave, and Cable Select. When using two drives, Cable Select will allow the motherboard to select which drive gets priority on the cable. Otherwise, the Master drive gets the priority and the Slave must wait for the Master’s operations to complete before its own are allowed to go. Since Serial ATA drives are only one drive per channel, they do not require jumper settings. When using a dual head IDE cable and two drives, connect the Master to the middle connection and the Slave to the end. When using optical drives on the same channel as your hard drive, which I do not recommend for performance reasons, set the optical drive to the Slave and your hard drive to the Master setting. Most devices are labeled with the settings for each mode, but in any case, you can check your devices manufacturer’s website for the correct jumper settings.

Screw in the drive

Before you start touching stuff, make sure you’ve grounded yourself to prevent any electrostatic discharge. When you’ve chosen the drive bay you’re installing to, hold the drive in place with the label facing up and partially screw in two of the screws to the side facing you, but only enough to hold the drive steady. From here, check the power and data cables to make sure you have the length. Too many times I’ve screwed the whole thing in to find my one of my cables doesn't reach, enough times that I would be remiss to not pass it along to you. Once you’re confident your power and data cables will reach, you can begin screwing in the drive. Tighten each screw until it’s about three quarters of the way in, then tighten the opposite corners completely. This will help mount the drive securely in the bay and help prevent vibration during use.

Connect the data cable

For Serial ATA hard drives, the connection is very straight-forward. The L-shape design prevents you from inserting it incorrectly. For IDE connections, the red line on the cable goes to the right. Usually the cables are keyed to prevent improper insertion, but I’ve noticed through the years that this is not always the case, so just remember this rule of thumb: red to the right.

Connect the power cable

Your drive isn’t going to be sending or receiving any data without getting any power. Serial ATA power cables are also L-shaped to prevent improper insertion, but much wider than their data-carrying counterparts. IDE drives use the large 4-pin Molex connectors; you probably have at least three or four of these hanging about in your case. The top corners of these connectors are slanted and the bottom corners form right angles to prevent improper insertion as well.

Partition and format

Before you can use the drive, you need to create partitions and format them so they can be read and written to. There are a variety of ways to accomplish this, the easiest being just inserting your operating system into your optical drive, booting up your system, and starting the setup process. From here, the software should take you through the rest of the setup and prepare the drive for use. If for some reason it doesn’t, have your “pocket tech support” ready. From there, you’ll be able to prepare the drive for nearly any operating system.

Final Notes

Creating or deleting partitions as well as formatting a drive will delete all files stored on the drive. If you’re not using a brand new drive and you’re concerned about any data on the drive, you’ll need to copy that data to another place first. I personally recommend replacing hard drives every three years or so. A drive’s lifespan should be longer than that on average, but losing important data is a truly heartbreaking experience and erring on the side of caution is my suggestion.

By Lisa Greim, PCWorld    Apr 20, 2011 5:15 PM

The below originally appeared in the Daily Journal.

The past year has seen the emergence of a new litigation strategy that poses particular challenges for the federal courts: mass copyright litigation. Over 130 mass copyright cases – i.e., copyright infringement cases joining together hundreds and often thousands of Doe defendants at once – have been filed in just the last 15 months in federal district courts across the country, targeting over 135,000 people. These cases involve significant and substantive early, ex parte activity before the individual defendants are even aware of the litigation, much less in a position to respond. Yet even at this early stage, these cases raise fundamental due process concerns. While there has yet to develop a body of published case law about the novel issues raised by the mass copyright cases, a growing body of largely unpublished judicial decisions can help both courts and attorneys handling them, whether on behalf of an ISP (Internet service provider) or on behalf of a defendant.

The cases generally follow the same path. A complaint is filed against hundreds or thousands of unnamed “John Does,” usually involving a single claim of copyright infringement over a single copyrighted work. The cases are brought in the jurisdiction where the plaintiff’s attorney is located, while the defendants are ordinary Internet users scattered across the country. The copyrighted works are usually “independent” movies or pornographic films. One title, for instance, is “Nude Nuns with Big Guns”; others have titles even less safe for work. Immediately after filing, the plaintiff moves for leave to issue early subpoenas to the ISPs of the defendants in order to obtain their identifying information .

If leave is granted and the information obtained, plaintiffs’ attorneys send demand letters to the now-identified individuals sued, giving them a stark choice: They can attempt to defend a suit in a far away court, risking liability up to $150,000 in copyright statutory damages plus attorney fees and costs. Or, they can pay a settlement in the $2,000-$5,000 range. Because the settlement amount is less than the cost of even a pro forma defense, and the downside risk of litigation is so great under copyright’s lopsided damages scheme, the pressure to settle rather than raise legitimate defenses is high. For those accused of infringing pornographic movies, many with gay themes, the prospect of being publicly named in a lawsuit is a further reason to settle quickly. Thus, a court’s decision granting leave to issue discovery often gives the plaintiffs in these cases the only remedy they really want: the ability to demand settlements from the Doe defendants.

So what does this mean for the courts and ISPs receiving the subpoenas? It means that judicial supervision over the early, ex parte stages of these mass copyright cases is critical.

Luckily, several district courts have taken the time to review the questions raised in the ex parte phase, sometimes sua sponte and sometimes in response to concerns raised by ISPs or amicus briefs. The courts have addressed two main concerns rooted in due process: joinder and personal jurisdiction.

First, joinder. Courts in West Virginia, Texas and California have severed over 40,000 defendants from these cases on the grounds that they are not properly sued jointly. Rule 20 requires that, for parties to be joined in the same lawsuit, the claims against them must arise from a single transaction or a series of closely related transactions. The only thing linking the defendants in these cases is the use of a computer protocol, called BitTorrent, to allegedly infringe the same movie. As one court observed “[M]erely committing the same type of violation in the same way does not link defendants together for purposes of joinder.” Tellingly, only a handful of cases have been re-filed against individuals in the proper jurisdictions following these mass dismissals.

Second, lack of personal jurisdiction. This takes a bit of technical knowledge, but at bottom the concern is that plaintiffs have not met their burden of pleading specific facts sufficient to support the court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction over the defendants. In fact, the plaintiffs own filings normally demonstrate that personal jurisdiction over many of the thousands sued is lacking. This is because while the defendants initially are unnamed “John Does,” they are conditionally identified by an Internet Protocol (IP) address that plaintiffs’ allege was collected during its investigations of BitTorrent users. IP addresses are assigned to Internet users by the user’s ISP, then are used by Web sites and other places a person visits online to ensure that the information sought by the user is routed over the Internet to the user’s computer. Because it assigns the IP addresses to its customers, an ISP can usually connect a particular IP address to the customer using it at that time. Readily available free online tools allow an IP address to be tracked back to the ISP that is assigned to it, and that is how plaintiffs know which ISP to subpoena for which IP address.

Importantly, in addition to allowing the plaintiffs’ to identify the ISP to subpoena defendants, the IP address lookup also gives sufficient information to the plaintiffs to allow them to determine the location of the defendant, usually to within about 25 miles. This geolocation is generally sufficient to identify the judicial district where the defendant is located. So the process by which the plaintiff locates the relevant ISP is the same process by which it can discover the likely proper jurisdiction for the lawsuit. Yet the mass copyright cases continue to be brought not where the defendant (or even the plaintiff) is located, but rather where plaintiffs’ counsel is located, a strategic decision that greatly impacts the defendants’ ability to marshall a defense.

Indeed, a plaintiffs’ attorney in West Virginia recently brought six separate cases targeting thousands of customers of ISPs that did not even do business in West Virginia. In dismissing the case, the court admonished: “These amended complaints shall proceed only against Does with IP addresses of computers located within the State of West Virginia. According to testimony presented to the court, there is a publicly-available website that allows the plaintiff to determine the physical location of each Does’ computer at the time of the alleged copyright infringements.”

Amici are also concerned that courts have failed to apply the appropriate First Amendment test for revealing the identity of Internet users. This test, which has been applied in online copyright infringement cases as early as 2004, requires a careful balancing of the free speech interests of the defendant with the needs of the plaintiff and imposes a number of procedural and substantive obligations that help achieve that balance. Many of the mass copyright cases have failed to make those required showings.

While several courts have raised joinder and jurisdictional concerns, and many defendants have been dismissed based on them, at least one judge in the District Court for the District of Columbia, has ruled that the defendants suffer no due process concerns or harms until they are formally named in the litigation. Given the business model of pursuing settlements that are less than the cost of a defense, however, this ruling is troubling.

The explosion of these mass copyright cases raise novel issues for the courts. Moreover, given the pressure to settle created by the prospect of being named in and defending a copyright infringement suit involving pornographic works, often in a distant location, the initial decision to allow the identities of the accused to be revealed may be the only judicial decision made in the case. Judges presented with these lawsuits, and counsel for ISPs of the accused users, should carefully consider the due process issues raised by courts around the country, and take special care in considering whether to allow early discovery. Finally, this situation could be greatly helped by the issuance of some published decisions so that courts and litigants across the country can better draw upon the experience of others.

I know what you’re thinking, “I just bought my HDTV, what’s all this 3D business?” 3D is expected to be the next monumental breakthrough in the history of television. In this Tech Tip, I’ll cover the basics of 3D TV, including some of the different technologies and how they work.

How it works: three dimensional television (3D TV) uses a method known as stereoscopy to display two different images to your eyes so that they appear as one image. As your brain interprets what your eyes are seeing, it combines the two images while your eyes are still focusing on the source of the images behind them. This creates an illusion of depth to the viewer. The phrase, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch” holds true for fooling your brain, too. Long viewing sessions of stereoscopic images or video strains your eyes and can result in headaches. Worse yet, a small minority of people can’t see stereoscopic images or video at all due to any number of medical conditions that prevent their brains from being fooled.

Most of us are probably familiar with our first type of stereoscopy, the anaglyph lenses. Anaglyph lenses use contrasting colors (usually red and blue) to achieve the effect of stereoscopy by blocking the images colored to match the lenses so that each eye can only see one of set of images. With red and blue anaglyph glasses, your left eye sees only the blue light that doesn’t reflect off the red lens in front of you, and your right eye only sees the red light coming through the blue lens. The obvious drawback to the viewing experience provided by anaglyph lenses is that the image is tinted with both colors of the anaglyph lenses.

The second type of lenses used are much more modern and have even enjoyed moderate success in movie theaters: polarized lenses. Polarized lenses achieve the same effect as anaglyph glasses by restricting the images each eye gets to see using polarized filters. Half the images are allowed to get to one eye, half to the other, and they meet in 3D glory somewhere in the middle.

Our next type of 3D TV is the active method, as opposed to the passive method employed by anaglyph polarized lenses. Active lenses are more expensive than their passive cousins and get their name from the fact that they actively shut on and off at extremely high rates of speed to create the stereoscopic depth effect. However, they cannot work on their own and require a display capable of syncing with the glasses, and since they’re sitting on your face, they have to be wireless, which is accomplished via infrared technology. With active glasses synced to a 3D-ready television, your eyes are shown only the images they are supposed to see, using a method known as alternate-frame sequencing, to achieve a stereoscopic effect.

Only recently have LCD TVs and plasma displays been capable of flickering enough images at you per second to make this work. To be a 3D-ready TV, a display must be capable of display at least 120 frames per second (120 Hz) and needs a set-top-box that syncs with the glasses. The first requirement is satisfied rather easily these days, you can find 240 Hz displays in the wild already. The second requirement is what’s held 3D TV back so far; not many people are running out to purchase a set-top-box and a bunch of pairs of special glasses. Add the fact that there hasn’t been an industry standard, so manufacturers have their own stereoscopy methods that often are incompatible with each other.

The last kind of stereoscopy, and really, it’s the best kind, is known as autostereoscopy or Auto 3D. There are two major methods of accomplishing stereoscopy without glasses. The first is the parallax barrier. The parallax barrier is basically a filter that lays over the screen that tricks your eyes into focusing in front of the actual screen to create the same illusion of depth. You can see parallax barriers at work in Nintendo’s latest portable console, the 3DS.

The other autostereoscopic technology is the lenticular lens method that works by laying tiny magnifying lenses over a particular set of images. Lenticular printing has been around for quite awhile and is the method using to make printed images appear to change as you turn them back and forth.

Unfortunately, technological limitations prevent both of these methods from being implemented in large screens at this time.

A number of things need to go right for 3D TV to take off, but chief among them is the fact that the glasses have to go. Nobody wants to buy a set of glasses just in case their friends come over. The next obstacle is standardization: just like we saw consumers holding off on HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray until there was only one, they will do the same for 3D TV. It’s also worth noting that more 3D content has to be created for people to watch it, so the chicken and egg causality dilemma stands in the way. Content producers won’t be rushing to create 3D content if there’s only a small install base of 3D-capable living rooms. One thing is for sure, television manufacturers are very inclined to get you to buy a new TV and they are focused on enticing you by wowing your pants off with fantastic 3D technology. I’m prepared to allow them, but without glasses!

For the Geek on the go, there are essentials that you need! Last year Tech Tips covered some of these essentials with “Must-Have Tech Gear To Maximize Productivity Outside The Office”. In this week’s Tech Tip, we are going to cover some of the essentials to carry in your laptop bag as well as offering some guidance for picking the right laptop bag for your life on the go.

The most basic essential

Choosing just the right laptop carrying case could be called getting the most basic essential accessory for your laptop. While there is a wide array to choose from, you can narrow down your search by thinking about how you’ll use your bag. If you a student, then perhaps a laptop backpack would be your style. Is it essential to protect your laptop from unforeseen accidents, then maybe an aluminum notebook case would be your style. Do you just need your laptop lightly protected but easy to carry? Then look at one of the sleeve options. There is also the basic laptop bag – inexpensive, easy to carry and stow away, but that gives your laptop good protection. These come in a variety of materials, from simple nylon to nicely appointed leather. For the traveling set, there are upgraded luggage type bags – complete with wheels and travel handle as well as TSA approved bags for the jet setting Geek.

Whatever bag you get, be sure that it fits your needs. Is it large enough for your laptop (or perhaps too big?). Will it fit all the extra goodies that you want to bring along? If you have an eBook reader or tablet, does it have a special compartment that can easily accommodate and protect this device as well? Does it include accessories such as a shoulder strap, or it is lockable? All these need to be considered for getting “just the right bag.”

Some more obvious essentials

Some of the more obvious essentials to have include three mentioned in the Must-Have Tech Tip as well as a few others:

1. Mouse with nano receiver.
2. USB flash drive.
3. Power strip.

In addition to those essentials, some others would be:

1. Presentation pointer (some mice, such as HP Bluetooth credit card mouse, have a built in presenter).
2. Mini Bluetooth module (if your laptop doesn’t already have Bluetooth).
3. 3G or 4G modem (if your laptop doesn’t have built in 3G) or in lieu of that:
4. A cell phone device that acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot (such as Verizon’s MiFi service). This is a great service to have on long road trips where there may be multiple devices that can connect to the Internet.
5. Noise canceling headphones – be sure that you get one that easily folds down for traveling.

Some less obvious essentials Less obvious essentials to have in your laptop bag are:

1. Identification (like a business card) in case your bag is lost.
2. Some kind of tracking software on your laptop (much like BlackBerry’s Protect or Apple’s Location services for iPhone/iPad). There are software options that can be used to help locate a misplaced or stolen laptop (such as Lojack for Laptops).
3. Spare battery (but not if you are planning to fly).
4. Automobile cigarette lighter DC power cable for laptops or automobile power inverter (also great for long trips).
5. Laptop travel mat – some kind of surface that allows the laptop to stay put but keep the fans clear and the heat away from you.
6. Essential cables. Think how you are going to use your laptop – are you going to need a cable to connect to a projector or HDTV. Will you need a cable to connect your camcorder or cell phone? Will you be staying at a hotel that only offers wired Internet, and need an Ethernet cable? All things to think about when looking for items to include in your case.
7. Cleaning cloth for the screen (even if it is not a touchscreen). Be sure that you get one that is safe for LCD screens.

In conclusion

There are a myriad of essentials and must-haves that you can get for your laptop bag. With this Tech Tip we have looked at the bag itself, some of the must-have essentials to the not so obvious essentials. We encourage you to plan ahead when traveling with it and we hope that this Tech Tip helps gives you some good ideas on what essentials you’d most like to have in your laptop bag