My PC won't start after an abrupt power shutdown. The hard drive has not crashed or anything. The PC itself keeps coming on and going off without starting the OS. I have even switched drives but I'm still getting the same issue.
My first experience with external USB hard drive enclosures was with Windows 98SE.
At that time, drives were IDE, not SATA, and I remember that after drivers were installed (I remember using one enclosure with GeneSys chipset,and another with ALI both with the same design), the internal USB2.0 to IDE bridge card inside the enclosure would present itself to the OS as another IDE port, with whatever hard drive (or optical device) connected to it "hanging from it" in the Windows Device Manager.
When I migrated to XP, I dont remember ever looking at such drives in the Windows Device Manager, the enclosures "just worked". I do remember, however, XP detecting the "GeneSys USB2.0 to IDE adapter", configuring its drivers, and then it immediatelly detect a new hard disk and configure it.
Fast forward to 2013, Win7 SP1 and "USB 3.0 TO SATA" adapters inside external enclosures.
For some reason, and here lies my question, the ASMEDIA USB3.0 to SATA adapter chip seems to present itself NOT as a SATA controller hangung on the USB3.0 bus, but rather as a MASS STORAGE DEVICE.
This, of course, has some benefits but also some unintended drawbacks, from the software POV.
Having access to a single version of such enclosures I'd like to know: IS THIS BEHAVIOUR (masking AS USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE) THE NORM ON ALL USB3.0 TO SATA CONTROLLERS? OR JUST ASMEDIA CHIPSETS? Ideally I'd like to buy one such device that presents itself as a new SATA controller to the system, rather than inquiring drive geometry and then presenting itself as a USB MASS STORAGE DEVICE.
I know that besides ASMEDIA there are other USB3.0 TO SATA controller chips like VIA VL700, and others from GeneSys and LUCIDPORT chipsets... any of these behave one way, or the other?
Sorry for the length of this question, I hope I have made myself clear...
I am trying to boot from CD or USB on an Asus X541NA laptop. In the boot options, the only option is to boot into Windows. I have already disabled Secure Boot and Fast Boot. I do not know if it is UEFI or BIOS . I would assume UEFI because it's a new computer, but the BIOS/UEFI menu refers to itself as 'BIOS Utility' and the Main menu refers to 'BIOS Information' and 'BIOS Vendor'. The version is 314, vendor is America Megatrends, GOP version is 10.0.1036 (not sure if any of that is relevant). I do not see any option for Legacy or CSM, or to switch between UEFI and BIOS/Legacy.
In the boot menu, the priorities list only has Windows as an option. I do have the option to 'add new boot option'. When trying to add a boot option, I have to select path for boot option. When selecting a path for the boot option, I am first asked to select a file system. I only have one option which is PCI(12|0)\DevicePath(Type 3, SubType 12)HD(Part1.Sig44fa2e2a-a76b-478e-863a-a9675829c331). I am forced to select this as it is the only option. After selecting it, I am asked to select a file to boot. My only option is EFI. Within EFI I can choose either Microsoft or Boot. Within Boot my only option is bootx64.efi. Within Microsoft I can select Boot or Recovery. Within Recovery there is no option. Within Boot I have languages to choose from. When selecting one (en-US for example) I then have no options. So ultimately out of all the options, all I can do is EFI-Boot-bootx64.efi. I tried creating a new boot option with bootx64.efi but that doesn't change anything, I still can't boot from CD or USB.
I also tried restarting my computer with a live CD in the CD drive and a live flash drive in a USB port, and they still don't show up as boot options.
I apologize if some of the information I posted is irrelevant, or if there is anything I left out that I should have included.
I don't care about installing an operating system, I only want to be able to boot from a live CD and/or live flash drive.
What should I try next?
Thanks.
I am unexperienced with cloning software and I've decided to use Clonezilla as it seemed best as freeware. I chose device > image and left most options standard. I chose expert mode anyway to see what I could configure, and decided to try the lzop algorithm instead of the default one for compression. The rest was left at default.
When Clonezilla asked me which partitions to clone (I chose parts to image), I chose the C:\ drive but Windows 7 also creates a 100MB partition on setup for system files (the actual boot partition?). I copied that into the image as well. The reason I didn't choose disk to image is that I also have a data partition that needs to stay intact.
Now I'm simply not sure that this is the way to go, should I ever need to restore my disk image. Will Clonezilla know what to do with both partitions and will Windows 7 work perfectly after restoring? Should I even copy the 100MB partition?
Edit: apparantly a similar question has been asked before. The link to the first article in the answer is not relevant to me since it covers a direct device-to-device clone.
It appears the windows installation disk can repair the 100MB partition. As for Clonezilla, it copies "hidden data after the MBR" by default too. I don't know, I feel I'll be allright whether by restoring the partition with Clonezilla or repairing it with the Windows 7 disk.
Answer
I create images frequently and you can just create a device-to-image (so full, not just partitions). Whenever you need to restore, work with image-to-device. It will create a full backup.
You might encounter an error regarding partition table out of range (atleast, I believe that is the error). You can just run any live cd and use Gparted to fix the partition table.
I've tried to install Mac OS X Mavericks using Target Disk mode, but unfortunately for some reason the installer tries to install it on the source machine, even though I choose the Disk from the attached Mac. Now I know my data is still there, because I can browse to it in the Terminal, but I can't see a way how I can bypass the installer and boot to the old system again.
Any ideas?
Very appreciated!
Looks like the problem occurs when spreadsheet is automatically generated or converted to Excel format from something different.
I've saved spreadsheet from google drive as excel spreadsheet (.xlsx) and found out that all multiline cells are displayed as single line cells:
If I select such cell's value and press enter it turns into multiline cell and finally displayed as intended (after setting proper row size):
To fix it you can just:
But this way only acceptable for smaller spreadsheets.
Isn't there any better solution?
Answer
Once you have data in cells, run this short macro:
Sub FixHardReturns()
Dim CH As String, r As Range, v As Variant
CH = Chr(10)
For Each r In ActiveSheet.UsedRange
v = r.Value
If v <> "" Then
If InStr(1, v, CH) > 0 Then r.WrapText = True
End If
Next r
End Sub
Macros are very easy to install and use:
If you save the workbook, the macro will be saved with it.
If you are using a version of Excel later then 2003, you must save
the file as .xlsm rather than .xlsx
To remove the macro:
To use the macro from Excel:
To learn more about macros in general, see:
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/getstarted.htm
and
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee814735(v=office.14).aspx
Macros must be enabled for this to work!
I upgraded from a 250 GB hard drive to a 1.5 TB hard drive. I cloned the data from the old drive onto the new drive. Now I want to expand my main partition (C:) to take up the additional space. Unfortunately, there is a 300 MB partition directly after the C: partition, which I believe is the Bit Locker boot drive.
Is there a way to move the 300 MB partition to the end of the available space so that I can expand the C: partition? Or is there some other way to get the C: drive to take advantage of the additional space without formatting and reinstalling?
Laptop was acting really weird, and copy and seek times were really slow, so I decided to scan the hard drive surface. I have a couple hundr...
