The Digital Surgery (computer questions/problems here)

[Big Boy]

Yes, I've already considered that, but it should be easier to get them off my Portable Hard Drive.

It is the reason my old laptop hasn't been smashed with a hammer yet.

[pharvey]

I have numerous external drives - back up's for company files/photo's, my personal docs and photo's, but mostly movies/shows for when I was working away to watch and share with others.... I think I had a problem just the once with an old Seagate drive years back. Never a problem since. I tend to go for larger Drives, 1TB or 2TB but only ever fill to +/- 75% for safety (yes, I have a great deal of files).

[EDIT] I must actually go through these disks and rid myself of the crap that is on them.... That said, you won't believe what a full series of old BBC shows will get you on a mining site in the middle of nowhere! And no, I'm a married man...

[Big Boy]

I am working through my files on my existing backup disk. I'm currently up to 2014 on my photos. I've deleted a lot of duplicate files (shrunken to post on Forum) and a lot of useless videos. I have found 3 corrupted files that I can't do anything with i.e. they were photos of my granddaughter dancing at Market Village back in 2014. The 3 photos think they are videos. I have tried deleting them but it just freezes my laptop. Does anybody know how I can get rid of them?

I've tried moving the uncorrupted files to a different folder, and deleting the folder, but the delete simply freezes everything.

[404cameljockey]

That said, you won't believe what a full series of old BBC shows will get you on a mining site in the middle of nowhere! And no, I'm a married man...

Would they like the entire run of Callan? Like you I have many nuggets on my portable drives.

Long ago I used to be proud of finding stuff (I was a courier working on release groups' FTP sites in the 90s, upping games to the public on day of the cracked release) but now with torrenting replacing NNTP/Usenet any old fool can find everything. It's a good thing if I'm not being snobbish.

[Big Boy]

I have found 3 corrupted files that I can't do anything with i.e. they were photos of my granddaughter dancing at Market Village back in 2014. The 3 photos think they are videos. I have tried deleting them but it just freezes my laptop. Does anybody know how I can get rid of them?

I've tried moving the uncorrupted files to a different folder, and deleting the folder, but the delete simply freezes everything.

I don't know what I did, but when I looked for them this morning, they had gone.

[404cameljockey]

I have found 3 corrupted files that I can't do anything with i.e. they were photos of my granddaughter dancing at Market Village back in 2014. The 3 photos think they are videos. I have tried deleting them but it just freezes my laptop. Does anybody know how I can get rid of them?

I've tried moving the uncorrupted files to a different folder, and deleting the folder, but the delete simply freezes everything.

I don't know what I did, but when I looked for them this morning, they had gone.

I don't know if it was the case in your problem, but sometimes files can become locked by processes, preventing them from being deleted/renamed, etc. Maybe if your files tried to play in the wrong format the system was blocking them. I use a free file unlocker (there are several) to try to release the file before trying a dive into a command prompt or whatever else.

[laser]

.... It is the reason my old laptop hasn't been smashed with a hammer yet.

I see you've ordered the 3rd HDD but may well be that the hard disk of the old laptop is OK and can be utilised. IMO worth to get a cheap external USB enclosure, something like this:
https://www.lazada.co.th/products/e-yie ... 59842.html

Then the drive can be tested/refreshed/repaired with proper software (msg me for such) so you'd have yet another, almost free external HDD, with your historical files. Or, it can be used as a dedicated 'cache' drive to extend the life of your internal drive. I've similar drives, plus a slightly more expensive solution that does the same job and also can accommodate 3.5" hard disks obtained from my old PCs (the is from 2007) through USB + does direct/no PC needed disk mirroring/backup. It's a dual HDD dock, much like this one:
https://www.lazada.co.th/products/orico ... 05683.html

Btw, someone mentioned earlier that Win Explorer can give problems for copying a lot of files due to locked/corrupt files, and so on. It's better to use one of these (free stuff) for the purpose:
Fastcopy https://fastcopy.jp
Copyhandler https://www.copyhandler.com
Teracopy https://codesector.com

[Big Boy]

Some good advice there, thank you laser. My 3rd Portable Hard Drive should arrive today or tomorrow, but I'm away most of next week. I will obviously try the Portable Hard Drive first. If my troubles continue, I will strongly consider your advice.

[404cameljockey]

On storage in general it's best to remember that hard drives don't have infinite life. If one starts to fail I'll try to repair it, but only to extract the data from it, I keep the drive anyway to have hopefully another source of the data (paranoid? I guess so). I won't be using it on a daily basis again.

The caddy at the bottom of the photo is for desktop 3.5" SATA and IDE drives, they call it a 'docking station' but as I said I only use it for data extraction from my very old drives (which I keep anyway, and find that occasionally one doesn't spin up any more, probably through lack of use or storage in hot rooms).

The 2.5/1.8" external case at the top is the most useful for most people nowadays as they have a laptop not desktop PC.

For me the most cost effective solution for anyone needing fast external storage (for bulk file transfer, image manipulation, video editing or anything other than running your operating system) is an mSATA card in a caddy (the small black box in the pic), connected via USB 3.0. If your desktop SSD is getting full and you have already put a stick in your mSATA slot on your motherboard it's a good way to extend your quick storage.

My main point is only don't rely on old hard drives, use them as backup if you will, but secondary to your main backup. It's just safety of treasured files I'm talking about.

laser's mention of fast transfer software is a good one. I don't use it as I usually am just migrating the whole contents of one (old) drive to another, and already have professional (I'm not a professional....) Acronis software for that and for regular automated backups .

20240609_100125.jpg (87.37 KiB) Viewed 3841 times

[Big Boy]

Problem solved - thanks guys.

Portable Hard Drive number 3 has just finished copying my files - sorted

[lomuamart]

I'm having trouble attaching docs to an email in the way I want and am hoping someone might be able to suggest a solution.

So, say I've got the information I want in a file called 2023. When I open that it takes me to various sub headings, one of which I want to attach.

The problem arises at this stage because that sub heading is further broken down by month and when I open it to attach, I'm taken to the final monthly page.

I can highlight all the months and attach them but the recipient is going to get 12 attachments rather than the one yearly one that I'd prefer to send.

Is there any way I can send the yearly report without having to open the monthly stuff?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[lomuamart]

Ah, I think I may have solved the problem myself. The answer appears to be to compress the file and send that. The recipient then needs to download the zipped file and they can open individual months from there.

Don't know why I wasn't able to find that solution from my original Google search.

[404cameljockey]

Ah, I think I may have solved the problem myself. The answer appears to be to compress the file and send that. The recipient then needs to download the zipped file and they can open individual months from there.

Don't know why I wasn't able to find that solution from my original Google search.

Many years late, I've just woken up to the benefits of Google Drive. If you don't need a cover letter (email) for yourself and the recipient, it's a great way to make any type of file available to anyone to whom you give your web link to access or download that item (not the whole Drive). I don't know the maximum file size it will handle but it's at least many MB.

Drag and drop the files onto your Google Drive and when they have uploaded then create the link and send the link to the recipient. You can delete the files from the Drive after the recipient has downloaded them if you don't to keep them there (make sure you still have your original files on your computer!)

[HHTel]

Not been on Outlook for a while. Now when I try, after signing in i get 'trial offer' for the new Outlook. This ad covers most of the screen and I can't get rid of it to get my mails underneath.
Am I missing something?

[404cameljockey]

Sometimes the 'x' to cancel ads button is almost invisible, but also sometimes it's way off up to the right of the page, well away from the visible ad. Hope that's the problem.