Quick Overview: Intel Next Unit of Computing

Intel is pushing a new form factor, the Next Unit of Computing (NUC), and it is looking good. I recently got two of these and have some pictures and experiences to share. The NUCs have some exciting properties and a couple of gotchas, read on and avoid my mistakes. First of all the box itself has a small surprise. When it opens it plays the Intel jingle from some embedded electronics with a light-sensor and a speaker. Oh, the humanity. ...

November 10, 2013 · 2 min · wpgundersen

More SSD space: how I got an extra 13GB free

SSDs are great (except they can also be the worst of drives), but they usually have less capacity than modern conventional drives. In 2013, 128GB is still a common size, and even a 256GB drive can only hold so much. At the same time, main memory is increasing and 8GB of RAM is quite common. The increasing main memory will often reserve unnecessary space on your drive for hibernation and paging. This guide shows how to reclaim that space on Windows 7 and Windows 8 (but should work for any windows with minimal changes). ...

January 3, 2013 · 2 min · wpgundersen

Under the hood of a SSD

Solid state drives look surprisingly simple under the cover. If it wasn’t for the 2.5" form factor they inherited from ordinary drives, they could probably be both smaller and lighter than today. Shown here is a 160GB Intel SSD. The die cast aluminium casing is surprisingly thin and light. It is held together with four small screws, some of which are covered by do not void stickers. The 10 large chips comprises the actual storage, 16GB each. The two other chips are controllers for the storage and SATA interface. ...

July 5, 2012 · 1 min · wpgundersen

Back to basic: convert dynamic disks without formatting

For the last time a dynamic disk in Windows has gone rogue on me. I won’t go into why I even used them, but here is how to get out. If for some reason you are stuck with an “Invalid Dynamid Disk”, unable to use the disk manager in the computer management applet of control panel’s administrative tools (or, at least unable to have it convert back to basic disk without formatting), then this is for you. ...

July 4, 2012 · 1 min · wpgundersen