The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Ask George George Skarbek |
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Making easily identifiable USB devices
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Question: I have a question that you probably will say No to, but here goes. I use several USB drives and to prevent copying to an incorrect one is it possible to have more identification then just the label. A: Actually the answer is yes. Many people use several USB drives and to prevent backing up to an incorrect one it possible to show more distinction for its identification than just the label of the device. In fact there are a couple of other things that you can do. One is to assign a specific drive letter for each device. To assign a drive letter to your USB drive or CD, open Control Panel and select Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management, and now when you right-click on the drive you will see a menu to Change Letter. Ignore any warning messages when altering the drive letter. You can have M for mail, S for spreadsheets etc. At the same time you could give the drive a Label appropriate name under Properties to further assist in identification. The second way is to have a distinctive USB drive icon. If you have several USB drives it can be beneficial to have a separate icon for each to appear in Windows Explorer when you insert it. The way to achieve this is to copy an icon to that drive and then use Notepad (found under Accessories) to create a two line file that reads: [autorun] icon=MyIcon.ico where MyIcon.ico is the name of your icon. If you do not have any then you can either search you hard disk for *.ico or use Google to search for "free icons". Having created that file you must save it as "Autorun.inf" onto your USB drive. Please note that the quotes in the filename are essential as by default Notepad save files as .txt. Using these methods will make your identification virtually fool-proof. Question: Every now and then the fan in my PC gets very loud I believe that you can give it a touch of some kind of oil. How do I go about it and what sort of oil do I use. Answer: You should never have to oil the fans for several reasons. One reason is that the bearings are sealed and oil will not get in. |
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However, in trying to oil them you can make matters much worse. The oil can
become spread around when the fan starts covering a larger area and the oil
will then attract dust which then will
act as a blanket and can cause overheating which would not have occurred
normally.
The reason why your fan can occasional become more noisy is that a sensor on
your motherboard will raise the fan to a higher speed if the CPU becomes very
hot when there is a high ambient temperature or workload. When the CPU cools
down, the speed reverts to normal. The only exception is if you hear mechanical
grinding as this means that something may have come loose and is rubbing or
jamming the fan. In such a case the fan should be replaced.
Reprinted from the July 2009 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
