Category Archives: PC Issues

General information about PC hardware or software

Helium-filled WD drives promise huge boost in capacity

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HGST said the new seven-platter helium drives will weigh 29% less per terabyte of capacity that today’s five-platter drives. In other words, a seven-platter helium disk will weigh 690 grams, the same as today’s five-platter drives.

Reducing drag on the platters will also allow HGST’s new helium drives to use 23% less spindle power to turn. A five-platter drive today draws 6.9 watts while idle. The new seven-platter helium drives will draw 5.3 watts of power in the same state.

via Helium-filled WD drives promise huge boost in capacity – Computerworld.

Set Up the Master Boot Record

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When setting up the Master Boot Record, you need to enter appropriate partition information. In this example, Grub is in the first partition on the first hard drive, which is (hd0,0) in Grub. Change this to whatever partition Grub is in.

After getting the Grub prompt, type:

root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit

via Set Up the Master Boot Record.

This has been sitting as draft since August 5 and works in setting the MBR on a hard drive and since things like this can be easily forgotten, it has become a reference.  Even Testdisk couldn’t  write the MBR correctly when I tried to transfer a Fedora14 VM onto a real hard drive.  After setting the MBR and getting it to boot the network and graphic interfaces required manual intervention.  I’m not convinced transferring a virtual image to a physical image is much of a time saver.

Note: Not all installations have grub installed by default.  The command to get the grub prompt is /sbin/grub run as root.

Content hosting for the modern web

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In our applications, we take a risk-based approach. Generally speaking, we tend to use three strategies:

  • In higher risk situations (e.g. documents with elevated risk of URL disclosure), we may couple the URL token scheme with short-lived, document-specific cookies issued for specific subdomains of googleusercontent.com. This mechanism, known within Google as FileComp, relies on a range of attack mitigation strategies that are too disruptive for Google applications at large, but work well in this highly constrained use case.
  • In cases where the risk of leaks is limited but responsive access controls are preferable (e.g., embedded images), we may issue URLs bound to a specific user, or ones that expire quickly.
  • In low-risk scenarios, where usability requirements necessitate a more balanced approach, we may opt for globally valid, longer-lived URLs.

via Google Online Security Blog: Content hosting for the modern web.

Trusted Platform Module

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Software can use a Trusted Platform Module to authenticate hardware devices. Since each TPM chip has a unique and secret RSA key burned in as it is produced, it is capable of performing platform authentication.

Generally, pushing the security down to the hardware level in conjunction with software provides more protection than a software-only solution. However even where a TPM is used, a key is still vulnerable while a software application that has obtained it from the TPM is using it to perform encryption/decryption operations, as has been illustrated in the case of a cold boot attack.

via Trusted Platform Module – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

“Trusted Platform Module (TPM) Specifications”. Trusted Computing Group.

coreboot

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coreboot is a Free Software project aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS (firmware) found in most computers. coreboot performs a little bit of hardware initialization and then executes additional boot logic, called a payload.

With the separation of hardware initialization and later boot logic, coreboot can scale from specialized applications that run directly from firmware, run operating systems in flash, load custom bootloaders, or implement firmware standards, like PC BIOS services or UEFI. This allows for systems to only include the features necessary in the target application, reducing the amount of code and flash space required

via coreboot.

Raising the dead: Can a regular person repair a damaged hard drive?

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This is a story of my efforts to repair the drive myself, my research into the question of whether or not users can repair modern hard drives, and the results of my efforts. If your drive is still detected in BIOS, you may be able to use software tools to retrieve your data. Here, we’re going to focus exclusively on hardware-related failures, and what your options are.

via Raising the dead: Can a regular person repair a damaged hard drive? | ExtremeTech.

Surf the internet for more than two minutes, and you’ll find people who recommend you do one of the following things:

  • Stick your hard drive in the freezer
  • Pop your hard drive into the oven
  • Give it a few taps with a hammer or rubber mallet

LOL. I have been desparate to try the freezer trick a couple of times without luck.