Life Is Something Like That

If you have had hard shutdowns on your computer a number of times, or improper shutdowns (e.g. due to power breakdown), or you simply have never done a check of your hard drive, perhaps you would want to run a scan of your disk and fix/repair it, before you start losing data or even the entire drive. I hadn't done a disk check since a few months back, and who would've known, I had a corrupted file (a pretty large one at that) and it's lost. Luckily though, I had a backup of the file. So, it's better for you to make frequent backups of your important data (e.g. to an external hard drive) and to check your disk for errors, perhaps once every few months. Better be safe than sorry. Here's how.

A disk check scans for file system errors as well as check the disk surface for bad sectors. How to check your disk? In Windows there is a Check Disk feature built into every version. In Unix, a similar method is the fsck command. We'll be looking at some of the ways to perform a disk check in Windows 7 (similar in other versions).

Ubuntu 11.04, codenamed Natty Narwhal, has been out for a few months now. Immediately, there were mixed responses to the 'new' release. Some absolutely like it, some totally hate (if it's not too harsh a word) it, while others think they can still live with it.

In this release, a number of changes can be seen, compared to previous releases such as the Maverick Meerkat. For one, Natty was designed to be suitable for desktops, laptops or netbooks regardless, instead of being specific. The classic Gnome desktop was replaced with a different and new Unity. Instead of panels at the top and bottom, the Unity launcher sits, by default, at the left edge of the screen. It has the autohide feature and some key shortcuts to bring up the targeted applications. The dash, which opens up via the super key, spreads across the screen (almost 3/4 of the space), where you can type in a few key letters or words in a searchbar and the space below will change to show the related applications. A quicker way perhaps, to access your desired applications compared to the previous Gnome panel where the applications are grouped in categories in menus (which can be quite cluttered when the number of applications increase considerably). In addition, there were a few other shortcuts implemented, such as Alt +F2, to quickly enter a command.