Showing posts with label How To`s. Show all posts
Showing posts with label How To`s. Show all posts

What to Do With a Failing Hard Drive

Posted by Tushar Bedekar

 When a hard drive eventually fails, for the vast majority of end users it can come as a real shock. Panic begins to set in, then you realise you did not back up the vast majority of the files on your hard drive.

Trying to fix it is the natural cause of action, especially if you have important data on it that you would like to access. But the chances are, unless you have some understanding of exactly what causes it or what you’re doing, there’s very little that you can do to fix it.

If you’re fortunate and most of the drive has remained to intact, then the problem could be caused by the printed circuit board (PCB). A damaged PCB is usually caused by a power surge which inadvertently overheats the drive. In situations like this, you can take the drive to a computer technician who can repair it by replacing the PCB with a working one.

However, there are those other circumstances when things can be a little more difficult to gauge what is what.

Determining What Causes the Crash


When you experience a hard drive crash, the first thing you’ll want to do is determine whether or not the crash was logical or physical. This can be quite tricky; though there are some tools that you can use to monitor your drive, letting you know when there may be potential problems with it. If your computer crashes and refuses to boot up, such circumstances can be caused by both physical and logical failure.

If your computer refuses to boot up, and you hear clicking, grinding or whirring sounds, that is a good sign that the cause of the failure is physical. At which point, you’d want to power the system down and consider physical repair solutions.

That said, as I touched on earlier, there are many tools that you can use to predict when your hard drive is going to fail, these tools do that by reading the S.M.A.R.T (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) data that is recorded by the operating system. Unfortunately S.M.A.R.T is known for being quite unreliable when it comes to predicting hard drive failure as the drive failure will usually occur before the S.M.A.R.T warning kicks into action. If you have a hard drive that is working, but you’d like to keep tabs on its health, then there are a number of tools that you can use to do that. So be on the lookout for them.

Logical Hard Drive Failure


Logical failure typically occurs when the hard drive is fine, health wise, but you are unable to access your operating system. There are many different factors that can cause this. A corrupt system drive, a malicious file or human error, all are capable of causing a drive to crash. When you experience a failure on this scale, cloning or imaging the computer will usually not work. Utilising professional data recovery software is your best option, although there is a Check Disk tool that you may want to try (assuming you can boot into Windows).

Accessing this tool is as simple as doing the following:

1. First, boot into your computer with full administrative rights.

2. Then press Windows Key + R, type into the Run Command box and click on OK.



3. When My Computer loads up, right click on your Drive and select Properties.



4. This will load up Hard Drive Properties, from here, click on the Tools Tab, and then click on the Check Now button under Error-checking.



5. When the Check Hard Drive applet appears, tick the box next to automatically fix file system errors and scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors, then click on Start.



One thing you must keep in mind is that, just because you are unable to access the data on a crashed drive, it doesn’t mean the data no longer exists. The option that you choose to take will be determined by how important the data on the drive is to you.

Physical Hard Drive Failure


If the crash of your hard drive was due to a malfunction, there is still a good chance that the data on it is still intact and accessible. The best giveaway for a physical fault is clicking and grinding noises whenever you turn the computer on, never mistaken these sounds for a malfunctioning cooling fan. In most cases the sounds will be relatively loud, however in some other cases you may be required to open up your PC case to hear the sounds.

If you are still able to boot into the operating system while the hard drive is making those noises, it’s possible that you could clone or copy the hard drive, but it will come at a risk. Do not try booting up the computer then using an external hard drive to copy the files from your active faulty drive, as this will stress the drive out even more. Your best solution is to remove the drive altogether and put it in a working computer as a secondary drive and use Data Recovery software to clone or copy its contents.

If you are able to retrieve the data on it, then you’re done. Next thing you’ll need to do is purchase a new hard drive and install your operating system and applications on it. This process can take some time, but is not too difficult. Alternatively, if you were able to clone your drive, you could simply copy the contents of the old drive to your new one. That way you won’t need to reinstall anything, just install the drive as your primary and you’re good to go.

Conclusion


Its best that you do not rely on software or those tell-tell signs to let you know when, if ever, your drive will fail, as it is most likely that it will fail unexpectedly, without any signs or warnings. You’re best option is always to be one step ahead of these incidences, by backing the data up on your computer constantly.

  

--AUTHOR INFO—


Uchenna Ani-Okoye is a former IT Manager who now runs his own computer support website where he writes extensively on failing hard drives and other computer related issues and topics.


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Top 5 C++ Manipulators Every Programmer Should Know

Posted by Utkarsh Jain 2 Comments
The main purpose of C++ manipulators is to format the output. These manipulators increase the enhance ability in the program.These manipulators allow the programmer to show data in different according to his wish. Some important manipulators used in C++ are as follows:

1: endl


2: setw

3: setprecision

4: showpoint

5: setfill


To use these manipulators in a program, iomanip.h shoud be included in the program. However one manipulator called endl can be used without adding that header file. And these manipulator functions are designed to be used in conjunction with the insertion(<<) and extraction(>>) operators. For example


cout<<endl;

'endl' Manipulator:

endl is probably the most used manipulator in C++. The word endl stands for end of line and it is used to move the cursor to the beginning of next line. It works similar to '\n' escape sequence and requires no parameter.

Syntax:

cout<<endl;

Example:

cout<<"Hello"<<endl<<"World";

The above line first prints "Hello" and then endl manipulator displays a new line and then "World" is printed on the next line.



'setw' manipulator:

The setw manipulator is used to display the value of an expression in specified columns. The value of expression can be string or number. If the value of expression is less than specified columns then the additional columns are left blank from left side. The word setw stands for set width.

Syntax:

setw(n)

The n indicates the number of columns in which the value is to be displayed. This specified width is just applied to the value that is inserted after it.

Example:

cout<<setw(10)<<"Hello"<<setw(10)<<"C++"<<setw(10)<<"World";


'setprecision' manipulator:


The setprecision manipulator is used to set the number of digits to be displayed after the decimal point. It is applied to all subsequent floating point numbers written to that output stream. The value is rounded with the use of this manipulator. This manipulator has no impact on integer type variables.

Syntax:

setprecision(n)

The n indicates the number of digits to be displayed after the decimal point.

Example:

float n=2.12345;

cout<<setprecision(6)<<n<<endl;

cout<<setprecision(5)<<n<<endl;

cout<<setprecision(4)<<n<<endl;

cout<<setprecision(3)<<n<<endl;





'showpoint' manipulator:


In C++, the decimal part of a floating-point number is not displayed if it is zero by default. The showpoint manipulator is used to display the decimal part even if the decimal part is zero. When this manipulator is set then all the floating values being used in that stream displays the trailing zeros after decimal point. There is also a noshowpoint manipulator which tells the compiler not to show decimal part if it is zero. The precision setting can be modified using the setprecision manipulator.

Syntax:

cout<<showpoint;

Example:

float a = 30;

cout<<showpoint<<a<<endl;

cout<<noshowpoint<<a;



'setfill' manipulator:


The setfill manipulator is used to replace the leading or trailing blanks in the output by the specified character. It requires one parameter to specify the fill character. The parameter can be a character constant , character variable or an integer that represents the fill character in ASCII system. The manipulator must be used with fixed width output.


Syntax:

setfill('c');

Here c indicates a character or its equivalent ASCII value.

Example:

cout<<setw(18)<<setfill('@')<<"Hello World"<<endl;

cout<<setw(18)<<setfill('+')<<"Hello World"<<endl;

cout<<setw(18)<<setfill('*')<<"Hello World"<<endl;




Author Bio


Kamal Choudhary is a tech geek who writes about c++ programming tutorials on C++ Beginner. He is a student of computer science in University of Gujrat, pakistan. He loves to write about computer programming. You can find his full bio here. Follow him on twitter @ikamalchoudhary
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Basics of Sub-netting

Posted by Tushar Bedekar

What is Subnetting?


Image result for ipv6 subnettingSubnetting allows you to create multiple logical networks that exist within a single Class A, B, or C network.
To subnet a network is to create logical divisions of the network. Subnetting, therefore, involves dividing the network into smaller portions called subnets. Subnetting applies to IP addresses because this is done by borrowing bits from the host portion of the IP address. In a sense, the IP address then has three components - the network part, the subnet part and, finally, the host part.
For Example:
11111111.11111111.11111111.11110000 will be equal to 255.255.255.240 in decimal.
Where, 11111111 = 255
And, 11110000 = 240
In 11111111 the total bits in network field are 8. So, 2^8=255   and,
                         
For 11110000, Notice that the fourth byte in the network mask has four bits set to ‘1’. If you look at the chart below, its value is 240 (128+64+32+16).
There are so many reasons why we subnet:
a. It helps in the preservation of address space in other not to waste addresses.
b. It used for security.

c. It helps to control network traffic due to collisions of packets transmitted by other node (host) on the same segment.

Subnetting a Network Address.

In order to subnet a network address, The  subnet mask has to be extended, using some of the bits from the host ID portion of the address to create a sub network ID.

How to Subnet:

This mean, borrow some bits from the host part to add to the network part. This allows us to have more networks than using the default subnet mask. For example, we can borrow some bits in the next octet to make the address belong to a different network.
For example:
Now you can clearly see that the subnet mask will decide which is the network part, which is the Host part. By borrowing 8 bits, our subnet mask will be like this:
After changing the second octet of the subnet mask from all “0″ to all “1″, the Network part is now extended. Now we can create new networks by changing number in the first or second octet. This greatly increases the number of networks we can create.
So, in conclusion we “subnet” by borrowing bit “0″ in the Host portion and converting them to bit “1″. The number of borrowed bits is depended on how many networks we need.
For Example:
Calculating Host: 11111111.11111111.11111111.11110000 will be equal 14 hosts
Notice the last four bits of the network mass has set to 0,
Formula = 2^4=16, and out of 16 we have only 14 valid hosts.
16-2=14 hosts, we have subtracted 2 because it is used for broadcast and network ID in the network.
Below is a quick reminder of the two major rules governing the number of subnet valid host addresses available given the particular network mas length.
1. Number of Available Subnet Cheat Sheet
Where “S” = Number of Subnet bits
2. Number of Available Valid Host Addresses Cheat Sheet
Where “h” = Number of host bits
3. Binary/Decimal/Subnet Cheat Sheet.


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How A Software Actually Works On A Hardware

Posted by Tushar Bedekar
Hi,Today We are going to discuss a new topic which may be very old but important one, also a big question in front of  us.

What is a Program me?

As we all know that a program me is a group of instruction which is needed to be executed by the machine like a computer to perform a certain task.but the biggest question is that how these group instruction are executed on the hardware to perform a assigned task.Basically these instructions which are being executed are itself a group of micro instruction an microcode.which are executed on any machine to execute a one particular instruction. now,

what is programming?

 Actually the programming is nothing but Def:- provide (a computer or other machine) with coded instructions for the automatic performance of a task.But This definition does not gives the full idea about what actually the programming is? and also it does not gives the idea about how the software runs on the hardware.   

As we all have listened about PLA`s(programmable array logic), PAL`s (programmable logical array) and also about FPLA (field programmable logical array).Basically these are the logical devices consisting of arrays of AND & OR gates and also other different supporting devices.These devices may be Hardwired or may be re-programmable.

How To program me these devices?  

Basically devices consist of programmable AND & OR gates.That these arrays consist of fussing and re fussing technology.These fuses may be burned and or lay intact as per the requirement.This fussing can be done generally by supplying a sufficient amount of current through the fuse. 


Types of fuses:- 

  • Metallic Fuses.
  • Diode/Transistors fuses
  • Silicon Fuses.Etc
So by fussing the different fuses the programming can be done.


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