Monthly Archives: February 2012

Cloning and IDE disk when all your computers now use SATA disk connectors

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I’ve been recently asked to upgrade the system disk on someone’s PC. It’s an old IDE disk based computer, but has some old software on it that only works on XP and we don’t have the installation disks. An upgrade is out of the question. The only solution is to clone the system disk onto a larger drive.

I really didn’t want to do the cloning on the PC itself as I didn’t want any more risk of damaging anything in it than absolutely necessary. However, I did want to be able to use my laptop to do the job.

After a bit of searching, I found this device which is a simple IDE to USB adapter. It also comes with a power supply to the disk.

You simply plug it the correct connector on the adapter into the disc, plug in the usb to your computer and you have a new disk drive on your PC immediately.

The device is a lot better than a  hard disk enclosure as it works with 2.5 and 3.5 inch IDE/EIDE and SATA disks too.

The cloning itself is done using Macrium Reflect.

Cloning isn’t something I do regularly, but for £12.95, it was worth it for a one off. I’ve a feeling that it will be somnething I’m glad I’ve got some time in the future!

 

Adding Graphs into WordPress

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One of the things I wanted to add to the website was a graph of the output from our solar panels. I had a quick check round and came across two good candidates for this:  easychart and Simple-Graph. Being me, I decided to try both – see the solar panel output page for the result.

Easychart can be used when you want to produce a professional looking chart and you have a fairly simple set of data to hand. Once you have installed the plugin, you simply construct a paragraph  of text which defines all of the chart parameters and insert into any page you want.

Simple-Graph is designed to graph any quantity against time. The plugin adds a database table behind the scenes and gives you a data control page to load the data. It’s good for tracking your strength or weight for example.

Both of the approaches work well for the solar data – take your pick!

 

Improving Windows 7 Startup Time

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Recently my laptop has started to boot really slowly. It’s true that it’s got an awful lot installed on it, but it’s a pretty powerful beast so it shouldn’t be this slow.

It turned out that a lot of the performance problems were caused by my trial of Perfect Disk 12 not getting on with my ESET Antivirus program, but along the way I discovered a couple of useful tips on diagnosing boot time:

  1. The easiest way to configure what starts up at boot time is to type “msconfig” in the search box at the start menu and hit return. This tool allows you control what runs at boot (careful…!)
  2. There is an excellent resource here on how to diagnose what is taking up all of the time. Basically, you open up Administrative Tools/Event Viewer and look in Applications and Services Logs/Microsoft/Windows/Diagnostics-Performance/Operational. Everything you need to know about boot up time is enclosed within.