Hard Drive

Silicon-based computers are fine for typing term papers and surfing the Web, but scientists want to make devices that can work on a far smaller scale, recording data within individual cells. One way to do that is to create a microscopic hard drive out of DNA, the molecule that already stores the genetic blueprints of all living things. Stanford University bioengineer Drew Endy is a pioneer in the field of synthetic biology, which aims to turn the basic building blocks of nature into tools for designing living machines.

To all those graying rockers turned middle-class professionals streaming into the Ahmanson Theatre for "Backbeat" - I believe the technical term for this class of people is "subscribers" - a word of warning: The ads might make the show seem like the British version of "Jersey Boys," a "Liverpool Blokes" hit parade capitalizing on the greatest rock 'n' roll catalog of all time, but this musical marches to the beat of an entirely different drummer....

I have the future sitting on my desk. It's a tiny black box, a little smaller than my Palm computer, so it can fit quite easily in my shirt pocket. This device is an external hard drive offering enormous amounts of storage at a relatively low price--$250 for six gigabytes--that works on Windows computers or Apple boxes equipped with a Universal Serial Bus port. This is really cool stuff all by itself, but it's the potential to fundamentally alter computers that's really exciting.

NEW YORK -- A music mogul who offered $1 million for the return of a missing laptop was ordered to pay up after a jury ruled that he had reneged on his promise and owed the money to the auto-shop owner who found the computer. The decision came Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan, where a day earlier music producer and singer-songwriter Ryan Leslie took the stand to defend his decision not to pay Armin Augstein after the laptop was recovered two years ago. Leslie's main argument: Even though he got the laptop back, he was unable to access his original tunes on its hard drive and therefore the crucial intellectual property remained missing.

Q: How can I find out the size of the hard drive, the amount of RAM and just how much video RAM I have in my computer? --Joel P., Chatsworth * A: Double-click on My Computer and then right-click on the hard drive icon. Select Properties and you'll see both the size of your hard drive and the amount of space that remains free and available. There is also a graphic in the form of a pie chart, showing used space in blue and available space in pink.

For the last three years, I've been using a 90-megahertz Pentium PC with a 1-gigabyte hard drive. The machine has served me well, but the hard drive was getting cramped and the machine seemed a bit sluggish by today's standards. So I gave it a new lease on life by upgrading it with a larger hard drive, more memory and a new 150-MH Intel OverDrive Pentium CPU with MMX Technology.

There was a time when Iomega Corp.'s Zip Disk was the de facto standard for backing up and moving data from one PC to another. Those little disks, which typically cost about $7.50, were perfect back in the days when 100 megabytes seemed like a lot of data. But with large multimedia files, 100 MB doesn't go as far as it used to.

The Federal Trade Commission has approved IBM Corp.'s $2.05-billion sale of most of its hard-disk drive assets to Japan's Hitachi Ltd., the companies said. The deal still needs approval from Mexican regulators, an IBM spokesman said, adding that IBM expects the deal to close by the end of the year. The companies plan to combine their hard drive assets into a joint venture in which Hitachi initially will have a 70% stake. Hitachi plans to take full ownership of the venture after three years.

"Why don't we go home through Bakersfield?" I asked my wife when we left San Luis Obispo, knowing she would like the chance to visit her family. One must look at the map to see that Bakersfield is actually north of Santa Maria, though Santa Maria is 168 miles north of Los Angeles and Bakersfield only 100. (Because the state angles so far to the west, San Francisco is almost as far west as north.) "Isn't that a hard drive?" she asked. I was looking forward to it.

A radical new magnetic memory device that could eliminate the need for hard drives and provide "instant-on" capabilities for a wide range of consumer products has moved closer to the production line. One major advantage of the new technology is the memory system is nonvolatile, meaning it does not lose its contents when the power is turned off. Thus there is no need for a hard drive to "refresh" the cells in the memory device, eliminating the need to reboot a computer every time it is turned on.

Last month Apple said it would start selling new, ultra-thin iMacs in November, and on the very last day of this month, the Cupertino, Calif., company will follow through on that promise. Apple Tuesday announced that the smaller version of its revamped iMac computers, the 21.5-inch model, will be available for purchase at stores and online on Friday, Nov. 30. The new 21.5-inch iMac has a $1,299 base price, features a 1,920 by 1,080 pixel resolution display, and at its edges, the computer is just 0.2 inches thick.

Is Apple losing its grip? Most people asking that question are referring to the maps app that comes bundled with iPhone 5. The app, which is Apple's attempt to wean its users off a superb map program created by its archrivals at Google, is a spectacular flop, the NFL replacement ref of the software world. It's so bad that Apple chief executive Tim Cook has issued a formal apology  for it. But when will Cook apologize for the disaster that is Lion upgrade 10.7.5? That's an upgrade to the operating system I installed, unwisely, on my iMac desktop, a superb performer on which I haven't lost 10 minutes of work since I acquired it in mid-2010.

The former president of the National Border Patrol Council was indicted Thursday on suspicion of diverting union funds to finance personal travel, tickets to sporting events and hard drives used to store an extensive pornography collection. Terence J. "T.J. " Bonner, 59, diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars from dues-paying union members during more than two decades as president of the organization, which represents more than 14,000 U.S. Border Patrol agents, federal prosecutors said.

Clayton Kershaw smiled when asked whether he could recall the last time the Dodgers had won a game. "I don't remember, really," he said. Presented with the same question, shortstop Dee Gordon looked up as if to scan his mental hard drive, then caught himself and shook his head. "That's messed up, dog," Gordon said. The Dodgers' 8-3 victory over the New York Mets on Sunday was their first in eight days. Between this triumph and their victory in Anaheim on June 23, they lost seven consecutive games and were shut out five times.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - It was a most unusual burglary. Thieves got in through the bathroom window and walked past the flat-screen TV, DVD player, expensive camera and a couple of brand-new cellphones. Instead, they took 20 external hard drives and some digital camera memory cards. It didn't make sense to Zanele Muholi, an art photographer and activist, the victim of the April theft. Unless … Something cold shifted inside her. Could this be another hate crime against lesbians?

Silicon-based computers are fine for typing term papers and surfing the Web, but scientists want to make devices that can work on a far smaller scale, recording data within individual cells. One way to do that is to create a microscopic hard drive out of DNA, the molecule that already stores the genetic blueprints of all living things. Stanford University bioengineer Drew Endy is a pioneer in the field of synthetic biology, which aims to turn the basic building blocks of nature into tools for designing living machines.

Q: Before I sell or donate my old PC, what should I do to remove personal information? A: This is a great question. When you "delete" data from a hard drive, the information actually remains magnetically encoded in the drive until it's copied over. That data can be recovered unless the sector of the disk it's been written on has been copied over several times. Now, for most people, this isn't a big deal.

For a long time, computers were good for a laugh. Through the first decade of the personal-computer age, from roughly 1981 through 1991, the idea that these frustrating machines would make America more productively efficient had become a standing joke.

A trial pitting the creator of "Desperate Housewives" against a former leading lady on the ABC soap delivered jurors one final plot twist Tuesday in the form of a possible whistle-blower from within the show's ranks. The last-minute witness, a construction coordinator responsible for building the show's Wisteria Lane sets, took the stand on behalf of actress Nicollette Sheridan and recounted receiving an email on his work computer that he said discussed a plan to wipe hard drives clean of information relevant to her wrongful termination lawsuit.

UNDERRATED 'How to Train Your Dragon' (2010): Every year the animated feature Oscar field can be split into "Pixar" and "everyone who loses to Pixar. " That could soon change given last year's charming, Oscar-nominated film from DreamWorks. With rich visuals, sweet storytelling and inventive characters (especially those goofy-cute dragons), it shows Pixar might not be the best game in town for much longer, particularly with a sequel to the underwhelming "Cars" just ahead. The soundtrack for '180° South: Conquerors of the Useless' (2010)