10. Quiet It Down
Over time, the moving parts and powered pieces that move your magnetic disks around at lightning speed will wear, age, and get noisy. In a desktop computer (a Windows PC, generally), you can quiet the drive with rubber shock absorbers or elastic suspension. Toting a laptop? NotebookReview has a good starter guide to cleaning your laptop, which reduces noise, removes dust, lowers temperatures, and gives your drive a bit more life—never a bad thing. (Original posts: Rubber shocks, elastic).

9. Erase It Entirely, the Right Way
There's a huge range of tools that offer spy-agency-level data wiping—some of them are complete overkill. What software actually wipes the slate clean? Jason ran through them and picked out the good stuff, along with the physical, take-no-prisoners means of data destruction, in his advice on how to properly erase your physical media. If you need to pass on or reuse a disk, those apps and boot CDs will get you there. When you just need to make sure your credit card numbers are hidden forever, there's always a hammer. No, seriously. Photo by scragz.

8. Make a Complete Image
Backups keep your data safe, but a complete image of your system on an external drive ensures that everything—applications, data, settings, wallpaper choice, the whole shot—make it back onto your system if things go wrong. Windows users can image their hard drives with DriveImage XML, a great free tool. Another free tool, SuperDuper, makes it easy, if not exactly quick, to mirror your entire Mac onto an external drive.

7. Convert It to an External Drive
Whether it's an old desktop with a surprisingly large drive, or a laptop that's getting an upgrade, you can save that once built-in storage and turn it into an external drive, one you can just plug in with a USB cable and use for backup, media storage, or whatever you need.

6. Visualize Your Usage to Free Up Space
The strangest stuff ends up clogging up your hard drive unnecessarily. Leftover files from CD rips, huge data folders from games, backup files for apps you don't have installed—the list goes on. We've previously shown how to visualize your usage, but we updated with a new look at more simple tools for analyzing and freeing up space on your hard drive. Once you know what's there, and how big it is, you can start toward getting rid of some of it.

5. Recover Files and Rescue Your System
When things go wrong with your hard drive, they usually go really wrong—lost files, no booting, and general panic ensues. Adam's run down recovering deleted files with free software, with a focus on Windows utilities, with a few cross-platform goodies sprinkled in. When you can't get into your system, we heartily recommend a live Ubuntu thumb drive to grab files and fix things up, though a system rescue CD session can work wonders, too. When we put the call out, the answer that came back for the best recovery tool was Recuva, a Windows utility that can save files from hard drives, SD cards, iPods, and much more.

4. Install a Drive Yourself
Tech shops and laptop sellers will charge you a good bit over the parts cost to install a new, likely larger hard drive in a computer. Whether it's a desktop, a MacBook, or an SSD drive, you can likely take an hour and tackle it yourself. Adam explained the desktop hard drive installation, while tech blogger Dwight Silverman has explained a MacBook hard drive upgrade. Each laptop is build differently, but if a solid-state drive is in your future, this tutorial on MacBook installation should give you some general guidance on the job. It's a good skill to have, in general, because as Silverman writes, "Whatever you have now, it's not enough. And when you add more, that won't be enough, either." (Original post: MacBook hard drive).

3. Dual-Boot Windows, Mac, and/or Linux
Just because your computer only came with one operating system doesn't mean it has to stay that way. If you're a Mac owner who'd like a little Windows time now and again, read up on Gina's guide to setting up Boot Camp for Mac and Windows. If Windows 7 looks appealing, and a virtualized XP Mode isn't quite enough oomph, you can still boot Windows 7 with XP or Vista, and just choose your Windows flavor at start-up. And if you're keen on giving Linux a real go, why not dual boot it with Windows 7 in a way that makes it easy on both systems? It's so nice when everybody at the (partition) table just gets along.

2. Upgrade It Without Re-Installing
Maybe you've settled on a spacious new hard drive for your laptop, a solid-state drive for durability, or just need to rescue your stuff before your drive goes. Time to re-install Windows, right? Not so much. Using the Clonezilla Live CD, it's possible to upgrade to a spacious new hard drive without having to completely re-arrange your operating system and applications, and tediously transfer all your media over. It's a step-by-step process, it's fairly straightforward, and you get to trick Windows, somewhat, into believing that nothing ever happened, which can be its own reward.

1. Automatically Back It Up
Don't sell your computer data short—even if your documents don't seem all that important, the time you spent setting installing applications and putting everything in order is definitely worth saving. If you've got a good spare hard drive or an web space you can FTP into, you can set up automatic hard drive backup through Windows. Most folks, though, will want to go with one or both of two routes: online backup, for the entire-house-burns-down security, and/or offline backup, for speedy backups and convenient restoring. The best tools for doing so, when we asked, were Dropbox for online syncing—even though it's not exactly proper backup—and Time Machine for external hard drive backups. For two solutions that make the process mostly painless and care-free, try web-based, automated systems like Mozy or Carbonite. Photo by miss karen.

Thinking caps on because this takes some imagination to digest. The HMK 561 is a carbon fiber bike with special electrical properties that hold power right inside the frame. Carbon fiber is highly conductive so the designer uses it as a power distribution network instead of wires. The power drives the lights and the motors in between the rims but get this… there’s regenerative braking. All that energy drives a system that turns the wheels using a counter-turning axel in lieu of gears and chains. Far fetched? No, because there’s already a prototype.

The good folks at Suzuki are serious about going green and have been spotted testing their latest concept, the Suzuki Crosscage Hydrogen Fuel Cell Motorcycle. With no gears, no noise, no clutch and no emissions, this hydrogen fuel cell / electric hybrid two-wheeler just might be the future of motorcycles and is closer to reality than you might think. Seriously, there is a guy riding one in these pictures, you won’t hear it coming, but it is.

Design: Suzuki [ Via: Hell For Leather ]

new heart-shaped d°light huggable, d°light UrHeart is just what you need this Valentines! It is a huggable heart-shaped light with a thousand roses; a perfect gift for your special someone. Imagine a dimly lit room with candlelight dinner setting on the table, your loved one sitting beside it, and you walking in, holding the d°light UrHeart … imagine the face light up with joy!

This is Diana Lin Design's special Valentines’ edition d°light UrHeart. Are you looking for the Valentine’s gift that will WOW your special someone? Have you considered a gift that can be held such as a teddy bear or a classic gift of roses? Valentine's day is about showing your special someone just how special she/he is. What better way to do it than by presenting them with a very unique gift!

So WHO will you d°light?


-provides a soft ambient lighting to any room in the house: Living room, study room or bedside table. It’s an ideal night light or the perfect conversational piece.

-works the best in a candle light environment and can be complimented by candle light dinner.

THE POLITICAL ISSUE (APRIL 2010): THE NEW RANGE ROVER IS WORTH YOUR TAXES

The local and national elections are just barely a month away. While the most powerful men and women in the land get busy convincing you that they're out to serve your interest, Top Gear gets busy reminding you not to be gullible. The fruit of that effort is this, our first-ever Political Issue.

On the cover is the 2010 Range Rover, probably the best SUV your congressman can splurge your (yes, your) money on. We count exactly 10 reasons why it is such a perfect vehicle for the typical Filipino politician.

We also report on BMW's new dark-horse model, the X1, as well as the three Italian motorcycle brands from MotoItalia (Piaggio, Vespa and Gilera). Meanwhile, we drive the Volvo XC60 all the way to Alicia, Isabela, to interview car nut and town councilor Ian Dy, who is currently running for vice mayor. (Ian Dy, by the way, is the boyfriend of the actress Heart Evangelista.)

For the Top Read, we tackle the most political issue in the car industry today: the product recall. We discuss what the recall is all about and why it is important not just to car buyers in the US but also to customers around the world. We then chronicle Toyota's recent missteps and the most significant recalls in the automotive industry's history.

For the Big Test, we compare three 4x2 midsize diesel SUVs (Mitsubishi Montero Sport, Isuzu Alterra and Ford Everest) and determine which one makes the best backup vehicle for a politician's convoy. Other Senate-approved vehicles tested are the Lexus LX570, the Mazda CX-7, the Honda CR-V, and the Mercedes-Benz ML350.

Among the personalities featured in this issue are car lovers turned politicos: bodykit designer Andy Cheng, race driver Tyson Sy and car enthusiast Arlene de Guzman. Plus, we have a story on Pinoy car designer Wini Camacho, who's making waves over at Daimler AG as you read this.

I only saw this in a ministop..
BASE in TOP GEAR PHIL. website

For those who want to earn some free meals at your hotel stay might want to look into this hotel in Denmark.

Apparently, Crowne Plaza Hotel will reward a guest who goes on the exercise bike for about fifteen minutes. This is enough for the guest to pedal out 10 watt hours of electricity. I’m not certain how much that is good for, but if a guest is willing to sweat it out that long, he or she gets a $36 meal voucher. Again, I’m not certain how much that is good for. (For all I know, the meals at this hotel could cost $75.)

You’ve got to admire this hotel’s unique way of giving their guests a break while power is generated. Now, if these bikes were put in the gym rather than outside the hotel, then you’ve got a marriage of physical fitness and green power!

Speaking of green power, I’ve discovered that this same hotel also has solar panels up on the roof. All it needs now is someone pedaling all the time, and this place would be practically self-sustaining.
by mark r

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