PC Help Guide

If you have decided to purchase an external hard drive, you now realize the importance of research to identify the best external hard drive that properly matches your needs. You are relying on the drive to store your files and keep them safe in the event of an unfortunate computer crash.

Trying to make sure you have the best hard drive relies not only the product itself, but also how it relates to your specific needs as a user. By knowing how to seek out the best one for your purposes, you will be able to ensure that it offers exactly what you need with the quality that you are looking for.

External Hard Drive Space Storage Space

The amount of storage space is infinitely important when looking for the best external hard drive for your needs. While there are many different options available, you should determine the amount of space that you need as it relates to what type of user you are.

There are external hard drives that exist that are as large as 1T (1 Terabyte), which is likely too much storage space for the average computer user. While these sizes are impressive to say the least, they may not be perfect for you, and will wind up costing you more for storage that you simply will likely never use.

Quality Enclosure

If you have the opportunity to look at a high quality external hard drive at a retail location, you can get a feel for the physical quality of the product but not necessarily the performance rating.

A quality external hard drive will have a sturdy, strong enclosure that is designed to protect the internal components that reside inside. It is important to have a strong case on the hard drive, as you want to make sure that even if something happens to the drive, the percentage chance of the data not being affected will be increased.

External Hard Drive Brand Name and Backing

There are numerous brand names and companies that sell quality external hard drives, and consistently find themselves on the top of the quality chart ratings. Famous brand names are well known for a reason; they produce a quality product with fewer problems. By looking for quality ratings, you can be sure that you can find the best external hard drive that will serve you for years to come.

Reasonable Price

Even though there are good brands and brands that seem to be a notch above the rest, the prices are quite reasonable. When trying to find the best external hard drive for you, be sure to look at the prices. There is no reason to pay more than you should when there are quality products available at a lower cost.

These four different areas all tap into your own personal needs as a computer user. If you have found a product that matches this research criteria, you can be confident you have found a handy external hard drive for your situation. Not one external drive is the best for everyone, and that is what makes the search for the best that much more important.

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Throughout the world of computers, it’s simply amazing just how many people are scared to death of losing their data. Most of those who are scared, don’t give a second thought to backing up their data. Even though the thought may be the same, most people are worried more about losing their data than actually backing it up – which can prove to be a downfall in the face of disaster.

The process of backing up files is done by using servers, floppy disks, CD, DVD, external hard drives, or other methods to keep the data protected.

This way, when something happens to your hard drive and you lose your information, you’ll have the information backed up so that you can easily access it again. Data that is important, such as tax files or business records should always be backed up, to ensure that nothing happens to it.

If you are using Windows as your operating system, it will be a lot easier to back up your files. Windows XP has a back up facility in it, so that it can make things a lot easier when you create your backups.

If data that is stored on hard drives with XP becomes lost, Windows will immediately fetch the file from another drive or area where it has been stored as a back up. This is a very useful technique, although it still has to be practiced to ensure that you understand how it works. Although it may be very useful, it isn’t as safe as other options.

In order to back up your data and programs in a safe and efficient manner, you’ll need to use some of the more reliable methods, such as external hard drives or servers. Offsite backups are great as well, as the data you backup isn’t left around your office, it is instead entrusted with a company who will ensure that it stays protected.

No matter which method or methods you have decided to use for backing up your data, you’ll be happy to know that they are all easy to use. CD and DVD backups are easy to create, all you need is the software installed on your computer to create the backups with. Servers are easy to use as well, all you have to do is upload your data to a server, then log into the server anytime you need to have access to the data.

All in all, creating backups of your data and information is the perfect way to ensure that you always have it in the event of a disaster. Disasters can happen at any time, which is why you should always back up your data anytime you have something new or something that you haven’t backed up yet.

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Do you want a faster PC?

There are a few simple ways you can fix your computer so that you will get super fast speed without having to get a new one. Here are a few basic steps you should take to clean up your PC and make it faster;

Read the rest of this article here

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Do you have a bunch of songs on your windows media player that you just want to delete? I had heaps of old stuff and all the defaults songs on my player and I actually didn’t know how to delete them all.

The process of deleting the songs is very easy, just follow these points;

• Open your windows media player
• Select the library
• Navigate to the song you want to delete
• Highlight the song (click on it)
• Now simply press delete on your keyboard
• You can also hold down your CTRL button while clicking on songs and select multiple songs for deletion
• Done

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United States Attorney for the Northern District of Florida, announced today the sentencing of  Robert Matthew Bentley, 21, Panama City, Florida, for conspiring to commit and committing computer fraud.  United States District Judge Richard Smoak sentenced Bentley to 41 months in prison to be followed by three years supervised release.  Bentley was also ordered to pay $65,000 in restitution.

His arrest came after an international investigation, which began in London, uncovered a computer hacking scheme that was operating from computers in northwest Florida.

Bentley and others were able to hack into the Rubbermaid Corporation’s European computers, and managed to infect hundreds of computers throughout Europe with Adware.

Bentley pleaded guilty to two charges earlier this year. Smoak sentenced him Wednesday to the 41-month prison term, followed by three years on supervised release. Bentley also will have to pay $65,000 in restitution.

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The threat to firms of their web sites being hacked has risen dramatically, according to new research from web security vendor ScanSafe. In a security report entitled A comparative look at the state of web security, May 2007-May 2008, released on Thursday, ScanSafe found 68 percent of all internet-based malware was now being hosted on legitimate sites.

“The compromise techniques being used now allow hackers to quickly ‘colonise’ thousands of legitimate sites, from big brand-name sites, to smaller but equally legitimate sites,” said Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at ScanSafe.

For example, ScanSafe reported earlier this week that some pages on the Wal-Mart website were compromised in the latest phase of an ongoing series of SQL injection attacks. The attack was used to plant exploits of recent Flash vulnerabilities onto Wal-Mart’s site.

“The criminals are leveraging the popularity of these web sites – when you compromise a site drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors a day it’s a much faster way to reach [a large audience],” said Mary Landesman.

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Do you have problems with drivers, well you need to scan your PC for them.

We have just started allowing a free Driver scan here at PC Help Guide.

To access the Driver Scan just click the link below.

Run a Driver Scan

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In order to widen reach of its “Live Search”, Microsoft today announced a deal making “Live Search” the default on Hewlett Packard (HP) personal computers shipping within the US and Canada.

“This agreement with HP is a strategic indicator of our increased focus on securing broad-scale distribution for Live Search,” said Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft’s platforms and services division.

“This is the most significant distribution deal for Live Search that Microsoft has ever done, and we are very pleased to be partnering with HP to help bring Live Search to millions of consumers across North America.”

Microsoft plans to build a custom, Live Search-enabled toolbar for HP customers using Microsoft Silverlight. While the deal could boost use of Microsoft’s search platform, it could also boost support of Silverlight, Microsoft’s new browser plug-in and development runtime for adding multimedia to Web applications.

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