Data transfer between external hard drives and computers happens frequently. We copy files from PC to SD cards, USB flash drives, HDDs or SSDs to backup important files and free up local disk space. We also copy files the other way, thus keeping the external data on the computer. However, the data transfer process does not always go smoothly. Some users find the external hard drive freezes when moving files. Here is a post about the problem:

“I’ve been trying to transfer files to several external hard drives of mine in order to clear up space on my HDD, however every time I do begin a transfer, it will only do so for about 2-3 seconds, and then the transfer rate will drop rapidly until it is 0mb/s. It remains stuck there until Windows notifies me that something went wrong during the transfer process. Has anyone else had the same issue/know how to remedy?”

How to resolve external hard drive freezes when copying files efficiently?

If you find the external hard drive crashes when copying files, you can refer to the following methods:

Method 1: change the way of copying files

Repetitive, quick drag/drop can result in a hard drive freeze. Try to use copy/paste or cut/paste to transfer files. Moreover, you may transfer files in small groups rather than a big chunk, thus improving the transfer rate.

Method 2: enable/disable write caching

If you are copying files to the external hard drive, you can fix the issue by enabling write caching in Device Manager:

1. Right click on the Start icon and select Device Manager.

2. Find the external hard drive, right click on it and select Properties.

3. Under the Policy tab, choose Better performance and click “OK”.

Tips: If you are copying files from the drive, choose Quick removal.

Method 3: repair bad sectors on the frozen external hard drive

1. Tap the Search button on the taskbar and type “cmd” in the search box. Right click “cmd” and select “Run as administrator”.

2. Type chkdsk F: /f /r /x and press Enter. You should change the drive letter “F:” to that of the frozen external hard drive.

Tips: The meaning of the parameters used—“/f” tells chkdsk to fix any errors it finds; “/r” tells it to locate the bad sectors on the drive and recover readable information; “/x” forces the drive to dismount before the process starts.

3. Type exit and press Enter to exit Command Prompt.

Quicker way to copy files from/to external hard drives

As you see, to fix the issue that external hard drive freezes when copying files, you should use copy/paste or cut/paste to transfer files, which would be very troublesome for transferring a large number of files. What’s more, enabling/disabling write caching each time you want to copy files from/to external hard drives is also annoying. Is there a more efficient way to transfer data without worrying about frozen hard drives?

AOMEI Backupper Standard, the best file sync software for free, can help you with quick data transfer between two locations.

Learn how to copy files from the computer to an external hard drive via AOMEI Backupper’s Sync feature below. 

1. Connect the external hard drive to the computer and make sure it is detected. Download, install and launch AOMEI Backupper.

Click “Sync” and select “Basic Sync”.

Name the task so that you can distinguish it from other sync tasks. Click “Add Folder” to select the folder you want to copy.

Tips: To sync more than one folder, you can click the “+” button after adding the first folder.

4. Click the folder shaped button in the second column to select the external hard drive as the destination path.

Click on “Start Sync” button to perform the operation. After the operation is finished, safely disconnect your drive.

The post External Hard Drive Freezes When Copying Files – Micro PC Service appeared first on Micro PC Service LLC.

When starting the HP computer, some users receive an error message: “Boot Device Not Found. Please install an operating system on your hard disk. Hard disk (3F0).” It is a common boot error seen in HP models which indicates your computer fails to detect the hard drive that contains the operating system.

Usually hard disk 3F0 error can be caused by following reasons:

• Wrong boot order in BIOS
• Hard disk connection problem
• Outdated or misconfigured BIOS
• Corrupted or died bootable disk
• Damaged system files…

For the first two reasons, you should check to make sure that your hard drive is the primary boot device in BIOS and the cables connecting it to the motherboard are tight and secure. For other reasons, please learn HP laptop 3F0 error fixes in the next part.

How to fix boot device not found on HP laptop?

Here I’m going to show you four quick fixes to boot device not found 3F0 error on HP laptop:

Fix 1: Perform a hard reset

1. Turn off the computer. Remove the computer from any port replicator or docking station.

2. Disconnect all external connected peripheral devices.

3. Unplug the AC adapter from the computer and remove the battery (if applicable).

4. Press and hold down the Power button for 15 seconds to drain the electrical charge.

5. Insert the battery (if applicable) and plug the AC adapter back into the HP laptop.

6. Press the Power button to turn on the computer. If a startup menu opens, use the arrow keys to select Start Windows Normally and press Enter.

7. Reconnect each of the peripheral devices. Run Windows Update and HP Support Assistant to update all device drivers.

Fix 2: Restore default settings of BIOS

1. Turn off the computer and wait five seconds.

2. Press the Power button to start the computer and repeatedly press F10 to enter the BIOS setup menu.

3. On the BIOS Setup screen, press F9 to select and load the BIOS Setup Default settings.

4. Press F10 to Save and Exit. When asked “Exit Saving Changes?”, use the arrow keys to select Yes and press Enter.

5. Follow the prompts to restart your computer.

Fix 3: Test the hard drive using HP PC Hardware Diagnostics

1. Plug the AC adapter into the computer.

2. Press the Power button for at least five seconds to turn off the computer.

3. Turn on the computer and press Esc repeatedly. When the menu appears, press F2 to open HP PC Hardware Diagnostics.

4. On the main menu of HP PC Hardware Diagnostics, click Component Tests. And then click Hard Drive > Quick Test > Run once successively.

5. If the computer has more than one hard drive, select the drive you want to test. To test all the hard drives, select Test All Hard Drives. Then, the Hard Drive Quick Test begins.

6. When the test completes, the results will be displayed on the screen and also in Test Logs on the main menu.

Fix 4: Run system recovery with HP Recovery Manager

Take Windows 10 as an example. Learn how to fix boot device not found on HP Windows 10 laptop below:

1. Turn off the computer and disconnect all connected devices and cables except the mouse and power cord.

2. Turn on your computer and immediately press F11 repeatedly.

3. When the Choose an option screen appears, click Troubleshoot and then select Recovery Manager.

4. Under Help, click System Recovery.

5. When Recovery Manager prompts you to back up your files, select Back up your files first (recommended) and follow the wizard to complete the process. You can also select Recover without backing up your files if you have backed them up before.

6. When you back to the System Recovery screen, click Next to start recovery preparation.

7. When recovery preparation is complete, click Continue to proceed to the installation phase of the recovery process. The computer will restart several times during the recovery.

8. After the system recovery is complete, click Finish to restart the computer. Complete the setup screens and wait until the computer finishes the setup.

9. Once the setup is complete, turn off the computer, reconnect all devices and cables, and then turn on the computer to see if hard disk 3F0 error is fixed.

The post Hard Drive Not Found 3F0 Error on HP Laptop | 5 Ways to Fix It – Micro PC Service appeared first on Micro PC Service LLC.

With the daily use of Windows Server 2003, there are many unexpected factors that could cause the system crash or cause a hard drive failing to our computer. These factors may be, hardware conflict, bad ram, hard disk drives overload, viruses or hacker attack, software conflict, power supply problems, and some unknown reasons.

We can clone hard drive in Windows Server 2003 to solve hard disk drive overload or failure. Yet to fix all of them, we have another two choices. One is to re-install the operating system, settings, and all applications, which may cost us hours. However, if we backup C drive for Server 2003 ahead of time, we can choose the other quick and fast way, restore the computer from system image backup.

How to restore Windows Server 2003 system files?

First of all, we might think of using Windows Server 2003 internal backup tool to restore the operating system. Nevertheless, Windows Server 2003 does not embed with one automatic system restore feature like Windows XP, Vista do. Due to this factor, the system doesn’t automatically create restore points for the computer current state. This means we cannot restore Windows Server 2003 to previous state.

In this case, two options are placed in front of us. One is to download System Restore. The other option involves manually creating a restore point for the computer’s current state using Windows Server 2003’s System State.

Click “Restore and Mange Media” tab after backup system state, check the box next to “System State”, and start the restore.

Before we use this tanglesome and roundabout method to do a system restoration, there is one thing we should pay attention to: Windows Server 2003 Backup utility (NTBackup.exe) is a backup and restore tool that based on files. This means it will backup and restore file-by-file. As the master server of companies or organizations, it is inevitable to producing masses of files, registries, photos and so on.

Thus, either to backup Windows Server 2003 or to restore Windows Server backup image is a time-consuming thing for NTBackup. We could imagine how much time it would cost to restore the operating system, settings, and so many applications.

Even worse, what if the system fails without a reason before we have enough time to do a system backup? We can re-install applications but we may lose our important personal data forever.

Software to restore Windows Server system backup image

Fortunately, there is one alternative backup and restore software could help us restore Windows Server 2003 system state backup safely and fast–AOMEI Backupper Server edition, which designed for Windows Server backup and disaster recovery, system migration for both physical and virtual Windows Server 2003/2008/2012(including R2).

This software supports system backup, incremental backup, differential backup, schedule backup and system restore, disk restore, universal restore as well as for advanced users, command line backup and restore. Other than backup and restoration, there are plenty of helpful features in this program.

To sum up, it provides us powerful backup and recovery management to safeguard our data and minimize server downtime as well as ensure business continuity.

Restore Windows Server 2003 with AOMEI Backupper

If the system refuses to start, we can create a bootable disk with AOMEI Backupper. Backup is the base of restore. Therefore, if there is no ready system image backup, create one with AOMEI Backupper firstly by linking the very first chaining. Note that the target disk or partition will be overwritten after restoration, so we’d better backup important data in advance if necessary.

In the first place, download AOMEI Backupper Server, install and launch it. This software has a 30-day free trial, so just enjoy it.

Step 1. Choose “Restore” in the left panel. Click “Select Task” to choose the system image. If the image file was stored in other places, select “Select Image File” to browse.

Step 2. Select the backup image.

Step 3. Choose the backup point. If you want to restore the system image to another place please click “Restore system to other location” to make it.

Step 4. Select the location if you are planning to restore to another place.

Step 5. Check Operation Summary. Then click “Start Restore”.

A pop-up window will prompt us to restart the computer later. Then, the operations will be completed under the Restart mode.

About Universal Restore

If you would like to restore Windows Server 2003 (R2) system image backup to a dissimilar hardware computer, before pressing Start Restore, check Universal Restore option to ensure it will boot normally after the restoration.

1. After restoring Windows Server 2003 (R2) to a computer with dissimilar hardware, it may be necessary to enter license codes to reactivate Windows, Office, etc.

2. Some drivers (such as the video/sound card drivers, display driver, NIC drivers, etc.) are not installed by Universal Restore for dissimilar hardware. As these drivers will not affect system startup, they can be installed manually after the restoration.

The post How to Restore Windows Server 2003 System Image Backup (Secure Boot)-Micro PC Service appeared first on Micro PC Service LLC.

HDDs and SSDs are both the most popular disk type on the market, both of them have its own obvious advantages and that’s what we are more concerned about. In sum, at the same price, HDDs have bigger capacity while SSDs have higher performance (eg: faster writing and reading speed).

To gain better performance, it’s a wise choice to replace ASUS laptop hard drive with SSD. It makes you feel your computer is like a brand-new computer, boot faster, run multiple programs smoothly, etc. This can’t be done by cleaning up useless files, deleting large files, unintalling programs no longer used, defragmenting hard disk, etc.

Also, SSDs own a greater security than HDDs. Because SSDs does not have any removable parts internally. To reduce the possibility of losing data to the most extent, it’s a wise choice to replace laptop HDD with SSD.

But if your original hard drive works well, the best practice is to use SSD for OS and HDD for storage, which makes full use of advantages of HDDs and SSDs. 

Of course, if you think SSDs are too expensive or just for home use, there is no problem with using a larger disk as replacement. It can makes your computer faster but limited.

Replace hard drive with SSD on ASUS laptop: Backup & Restore or Clone

In fact, the replacement hard drive for ASUS laptop is a reasonably simple task, whether for ASUS X555L hard drive replacement or for ASUS Q302LA/ASUS Q504U. You just need to open the back cover and replace the old hard drive with your new SSD. However, how about all the data stored on the old hard drive? Just leave them behind?

Well, if you don’t care about the old files, even you need to install all of your programs one by one and all of personal data will go forever, you still can reinstall Windows 10/8/7 so that your laptop/desktop can start normally.  It’s a time-consuming and problematic job.

If you need to keep all your programs and data, it’s suggested to backup disk or system and then restore disk or system image to new hard drive or SSD. For easier way, you can clone laptop/desktop HDD to SSD directly, with system files, installed applications, and all of your data files. To make it, you need an all-in-one software integrated with backup & restore or clone function, here is AOMEI Backupper Standard. 

How do I easily replace ASUS laptop hard drive with SSD?

As mentioned earlier, you have two working ways to perform ASUS laptop hard drive upgrade, namely upgrade ASUS laptop with backup and restore solution, clone laptop HDD to SSD. Then, which method should you use?

>>  If your laptop only has one slot, you could first backup your disk to an external hard drive, then swap hard drive and SSD and restore the image externally to new SSD. Or you can also choose to backup and restore system image from external hard drive. 

>> If your laptop has two slots or it’s a desktop, you coulddirectly clone the entire hard drive with different sector size, even smaller SSD, or migrate only operating system (supported on the professional version) as per your needs. There is no doubt, this cloning method will be much easier.

Method 1: ASUS SSD upgrde with disk backup and restore 

To backup disk in  ASUS laptop, plug your external hard drive and initialize it, launch this freeware, click “Disk Backup” under the Backup tab, click “+ Add Disk” to add your ASUS hard drive, then select destination path and click “Start Backup“.

To switch ASUS laptop hard drive, free up the laptop back cover with screwdrivers and place the screws in the small box, plug the plastic card in the gap, twist and move it to take off the cover, use screwsrivers to free up hard drive frame and replace with SSD, then install all stuff to the previous locations. At last, turn on the laptop and start to restore disk image.

To restore disk with backup image to your computer, plug your external hard drive contaning image and run this software, click “Restore” > “Select Image File” > “Restore the entire disk“, then select SSD as destination path and click “Start Restore“. If you are asked to backup important files first, click “OK” to continue.

In general, if your disk image is saved externally, such as, external drive, NAS, network location, you need to manually locate the image by “Select Image File”. But if your image can be detected, you can click “Select Task” as instead.

Method 2: Directly replace ASUS laptop hard drive 

This is a quick method. Unlike “Backup and Restore”, the cloned hard drive or SSD can be used to boot computer directly without restoring image file. Let’s get started.

Step 1. Plug your new SSD hard drive into laptop via connector, or directly install SSD on your desktop.  Then select “Clone” and “Disk Clone”.

Step 2. Select your ASUS hard drive (eg: disk 1) and click “Next”.

Step 3. Select your new SSD as Destination disk and click “Next”.

Step 4. Preview the Operation Summary and click “Start Clone” to run the disk cloning process. Tick “SSD Alignment” to accelerate the outputting and inputting speed of SSD.

Step 5. Take out hard drive and add the new SSD disk with screwdriver. Then, boot computer from it.

Make full use of ASUS hard drive: format it for storage

Formating old disk is the last thing to add SSD to laptop/desktop and keep HDD. As mentioned before, SSDs have a higher performace while HDDs always have a larger capacity. Therefore, if your HDD is still working well, you could consider using it as storage. Now, let’s start to format disk and restore files to HDD.

To format disk, press “Win +R” and type “diskmgmt.msc “in the box, then hit “OK” to open the Disk Management. Next, right-click the HDD disk and select “Format…“, follow on-screen instructions to finish the rest of steps.

To restore files from backup, connect your external drive with file backup, launch AOMEI Backupper, click “Restore” and “Select Image File“, select the files or folders need to be restored, tick “Restore to new location” and select HDD as storage, finally click “Start Restore“.

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