I recently bought a Hitachi Desktar 500gb hard drive and without any prior experience, learned how to install a hard drive into my computer successfully. In other words, you can do it as well!

Beware, if you ask someone geeky, you might be told you fail in life since you can’t install something simple. Believe me, it happened to me when I asked to know how to install an internal card reader. I never asked again.

Installing a hard drive in my computer

So what did I do? I simply popped open my computer, placed the hard drive in a slot right above my old one and snapped it into place. Afterwards, I simply saw the cables that the old hard drive was connected with, and made sure the same cables were connected to it (which were the power and a SATA cable). It took about five minutes.

Feeling victorious, I booted up my computer and when I saw the drive was nowhere to be found in My Computer I threw my computer out the window. Well, not really but I was about to. It took me about 20 minutes of Googling online to figure out how to enable my hard drive.

Procedure for enabling your hard drive

1. Right click on My Computer and click on Manage
2. Go to Disk Management, and find your Hard Drive.
3. Make sure to assign it a letter, and format it by right clicking and configuring your drive to do so.
4. You are done!

Have you ever had to wait for Windows (mostly on Vista) to search through your entire flash drive before you can actually start using it? If so, here is a little trick that I use in order to make my flash drive be usable a lot faster…

If you usually place all your files on the root of the drive, this will help a lot!
Instead of going with the usual of dropping your files on the root of your flash drive, simply create folders and place your files inside of them.

Windows was programmed to search the root of your drive so that when the Autoplay menu

Sorry for being out of the picture. I just need to get my code for Pong reviewed and I’ll submit it so everyone can download and learn how to make a simple video game! Meanwhile, I’m also waiting for my Flip Mino! So after I get it, expect some video podcasts! Don’t know what a flip mino is? Check this out.

Technical Details for Flip Mino

* Pocket-sized camcorder; Flat back panel with touch-sensitive buttons; 1.5-inch color LCD screen
* 2 GB of on-board flash memory–records up to 60 minutes of video; 2x digital zoom
* Internal Lithium-ion battery recharges when built-in USB arm is connected to a computer
* Connects to TV for instant viewing
* Built-in software lets you easily edit video files and upload them to video sharing sites
Source

The Flip Mino is currently running at $139. A lot of bloggers on the internet scene already have one! I also wanted to have something to take videos with and this is pretty small so I look forward on playing with my new toy once I receive it!

Want to use your PS2 controllers to play games on your computer? What about using dance pads to play StepMania? Well, its possible with the Dual Shooter.

Use your PS2 controllers or Dancepads on your pc

It’s simple. Simply buy the Dual Shooter which runs for about $20 on Ebay or over at Play Asia. Once you receive it, rip the packaging apart, place the mini-cd that comes with it and install the drivers. After that, plug in your Dual Shooter adapter via USB, make sure the switch is on PC, then connect either the controllers or dancepads and your PC will recognize them as game pads.
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PCI cards have been around for quite a long time. In fact, they have been around for such a long time that I expect them to start disappearing from store shelves soon. However, here at Talk Binary we want to be your source for hardware and software installation without any compromise. With that said, here is our tutorial on how to install a PCI card from scratch.

If you are wondering what PCI stands for here is the definition: Peripheral Component Interconnect

Here are a few examples of what a PCI device looks like:

Data Fax Modem, Network Card, Sound Card

One of my favorite little gadgets that I have is a small ATI USB TV Tuner. It’s pretty handy for many different occasions. Like if you ever wanted to record video from a game system or a VHS player this would be an essential tool.