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22 Nov 2024

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Teenage talent, wanted for Super Rugby, commits to All Blacks Sevens
Oli Mathis is one of rugby’s hot properties and caught the eye with a stunning try in his breakout NPC season with Waikato.

Homes evacuated after large fire in Bay of Plenty
Evacuations are underway as a blaze in Te Puna threatens properties.

Pilot rescued after light plane crashes off Tasman coast
The pilot was winched to safety by a rescue helicopter after ditching the plane in Tasman Bay, Maritime New Zealand’s Rescue Coordination Centre says.

More than Internet: 9 tips to maximize your home network
So you’ve secured your router and ensured that all computers and other devices in your home have a stable connection to your network. You no longer have any problems with the internet. Why not take advantage of the fact that all your gadgets can communicate to do more than just get online? Other articles in this series: How to choose a new router and get started with important settings Solve your Wi-Fi problems with these smart router settings Protect your home network with these essential router tweaks File sharing One of the seemingly simplest things you can do to get more out of your network is to start sharing files and other stuff between different devices. It was always easy in the past and you don’t have to carry around a USB stick or an external hard drive. Unfortunately, Microsoft has made it a bit more complicated in Windows 10 and 11, including the transition to Microsoft accounts and logging in with Windows Hello. File sharing using the SMB protocol requires accounts with usernames and passwords, which most people no longer have. But it can still be arranged, and may make sense if you have multiple computers and want to be able to move files here and there across the network. Especially if you don’t want to install any additional software or have computers with operating systems other than Windows. Foundry File sharing settings used to be in Control Panel, but now that’s found in Settings > Network & internet > Advanced network settings > Advanced sharing settings, where the settings have their new home. Expand the Private networks section and switch on File and printer sharing to enable the feature on networks that you have set as private. Underneath are the settings for Public networks (for example, the Wi-Fi network at a cafe), for which you can leave file sharing turned off. Windows now assumes that all networks are public, so you also need to go to the Ethernet or Wi-Fi settings in Network & internet and change to Private network. To connect, you also need an account with a password. Microsoft accounts are complicated, so the easiest thing to do is to create a new local account with a name and password that you only use for file sharing. You do this in Settings > Accounts > Other users. If you never log into Windows with it, the account will barely take up any space on the disk. Make sure you don’t choose administrator but default account. When you connect, you will always access the home folder of the account you connect as, but if you want to access other folders as well, you need to enable sharing for those. Right-click on a folder you want to share in Explorer and select Properties. Select the Sharing tab and click Share. Select the new user account you created for the purpose from the drop-down menu and click Add. Foundry One final issue you may encounter is that Windows’ built-in firewall blocks connections when it should automatically allow connections for features you have enabled, like file sharing. If you have trouble connecting, try the following: 1. Open Windows Security. 2. Select Firewall & network protection and then Advanced settings. 3. Click Inbound Rules > Ports > Protocol and ports and then New rule in the top right corner. 4. Select Protocol and Ports, fill in 445 next to Specific local ports, and select TCP. 5. After hitting Next, select Allow the connection, and on the next screen tick Private only and give the rule an informative name. Engin Akyurt Share printers If you have a printer connected to one of the computers in your home, you can share it so that it can print from other computers on the network. On a computer running Windows 10 or 11, do this: Foundry Open Settings and go to Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners. Click on the printer you want to share and then on Printer properties and a separate window will open. Select the Sharing tab and tick Share this printer. You can change the name to something more sensible if you like — in the image above, I’ve chosen the brand of the printer and the room it’s in. If I later share a Brother in the basement, for example, it will be easier to tell them apart on the network. Foundry To add a shared printer to another computer, open Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners again and click Add a device. The printer should now appear and you can click Add device to the right of it. On other operating systems, of course, you do it differently. On Mac, for example, the setting is in System Preferences > Printers and Scanners. Foundry On Android, you can usually add printers in Settings > Connected Devices > Connection Options > Printing. Select the default service (if there is none, you must first add one). Then select the network printer you want to connect to. Printing from iOS is a little more complicated as it doesn’t have built-in support for regular network printers. If your printer doesn’t support Apple’s Airprint feature, try installing an Airprint server on your computer. Clausio Schwartz Get a NAS device If you have a lot of computers and other devices in your home and want a centralized repository for backups and shared files, for example, a NAS device can be a good investment. It’s basically a simple server computer in a multi-hard drive enclosure, which comes with a customized operating system. Synology is the most well-known manufacturer of NAS devices, and has the advantage that the operating system has many add-ons to run different types of servers directly on the device. Other brands include Asustor, Qnap, and Terramaster. A NAS drive usually has space for two or four hard drives and the idea is that they should be used in a so-called raid setup that provides redundancy — if one of the drives suddenly fails, you won’t lose any files. You can then replace the broken disk and continue as before. With four hard drives, you can choose RAID 5. If the four drives are the same size (which they should be), this means that 75 percent of the space is available for storage and that a drive can fail without losing data, but hurry up and replace a broken drive. One thing to remember is that even if your NAS has RAID for added security, it’s not a backup, and if you store important files on it, you should definitely consider getting a separate large external hard drive to back up your entire NAS to. Three uses for NAS 1. File server It may sound obvious, but an always-available NAS is a great place to store files for a variety of purposes. For example, you can use it as a dumping ground for files that take up a lot of space — something that comes in handy these days when many computers are sold with relatively small but fast SSDs for internal storage. For example, you can archive photos and videos from a camera on the NAS. Another example is if you have surveillance cameras in your home. It is often possible to set where these should store recordings, and then you can choose the NAS as the destination. 2. Backup server How many copies of your irreplaceable files do you have? You may be familiar with the 3-2-1 rule, which means you should have at least three copies, on at least two different drives, at least one of which is in a different location. With a NAS device, you have a simple and relatively safe way to store backups of all the computers in your home, and quite easily, mobiles and tablets too. The easiest way to do this is with a backup programme like Arq Backup or Duplicati on the computers you want to back up. If your NAS supports separate user accounts, you can create separate accounts for each family member and connect with them from the backup software. Connect with SFTP if possible, otherwise with SMB. Synology 3. Private cloud Instead of paying Dropbox or any other company for cloud storage, you can run your own private cloud with your NAS. This is an area where Synology is popular, as the company’s NAS devices come with a cloud sync service called Synology Drive. It’s easy to set up and has clients for most operating systems. Security is especially important if you open any part of your home to the internet. There is no easy way to securely access gadgets in your home from outside, but of the methods available, a VPN server is probably the least complicated. Some routers, for example from Asus, have it built in. Hugo Clément Reuse an old computer as a server You don’t necessarily need to buy new hardware to try running some kind of server at home. Do you have an old computer sitting in a closet/attic/storage room that was retired when you got a new one? It can work great as a server. A desktop computer of the tower type often consumes considerably more power than a small mini PC, and of course takes up a lot of space, so in the long run it may be better to get something more appropriate. But if you’re just trying it out, or have plenty of space and don’t mind the slightly heftier electricity bill, it’s at least a cheap way to get started. With a regular computer as a server, you can also stick to Windows if that’s what you’re used to, and avoid learning Linux, which is otherwise most common for such so-called home labs (check out the Reddit group r/homelab if you’re curious about what others are putting together at home). Skärmdump 1. Media server with Plex or Jellyfin If your old computer has a sixth-generation Intel processor or later, it can work well as a media server to stream films and TV shows you own to all the devices in your home. That’s thanks to the Quick Sync Video feature that can transcode video formats so that a device or browser that doesn’t support the format the file is stored in can still play the video. Plex and Jellyfin are the two most common media server programs. Both make sense for home users, but Jellyfin is more open and you don’t need to create an account with the developer, for example. Skärmdump 2. Minecraft server Do you have children or grandchildren who like Minecraft? You can easily repurpose an old computer as a Minecraft server without having to install Linux or anything else complicated. All you need to do is install a modern version of java, create a folder for the server where you put the Minecraft server software, and then run it and follow the instructions. There are plenty of guides, both written and on YouTube, that show you how to do this in more detail. Look up a guide if you want to run a server with different mods, for example. 3. File server If your old computer has space for multiple hard drives, you can turn it into a NAS-like file server for shared files, backups, and anything else you would normally use a NAS drive for. A full-fledged file server can provide higher performance and more features, and if you install Linux as your operating system, you can use the ZFS file system and merge multiple hard drives into a common storage device with higher performance and increased security compared to regular RAID. Foundry 4. Smart home center with Home Assistant This is something that’s really better suited to a Raspberry Pi, but if you’re curious to try it out and already have a computer, you don’t need to run out and buy one. You can either install Home Assistant as a full operating system or, if you already have Windows on your computer, as a virtual machine using Virtualbox or Vmware Workstation, for example. Installed directly on the computer, it can feel like a bit of a waste of a full computer, as Home Assistant is just a simple server that requires very little hardware beyond a network connection and a USB adapter for Zigbee and/or Z-wave to directly connect smart lights and other things. The developers of Home Assistant have made a simple guide to installing in a virtual machine on Windows, and have also prepared ready-made disc images for Virtualbox, Vmware Workstation and Hyper-V (where USB does not work, which is a major limitation if you want to use Zigbee/Z-wave). The instructions for Virtualbox are the easiest. All you need to do is create a new virtual machine for 64-bit Linux, make sure the virtual machine uses EFI and not BIOS, select the downloaded .vdi file as the hard drive, and select the Bridged Adapter for networking and Intel HD Audio as the audio device. Note that the computer must be connected with Ethernet.

Kiwi Scrabble team celebrates underdog win in trans-Tasman challenge
It's the first time since 2010 that the New Zealand team has won against Australia.

Light plane crashes off Tasman Coast
Emergency services are responding to a light plane crash that has happened this evening off the Tasman Coast.

Free drive repair tools that fix HDD errors & avoid data loss
In case you are experiencing hard disk logic errors in your Windows PC and need hard disk repair software, this page shows six disk repair solutions to save you from data loss, including free hard disk repair tools. In addition, we also explain the common causes of hard disk errors and how you can avoid the inconvenience of a corrupted disk at work or in life in the future – scroll down for more details. Common Hard Disk Issues Before learning how to repair a hard disk that doesn’t work properly, you should figure out the condition of your disk – is it physically damaged, a logical error, or a firmware fault? Below are common disk errors and how they manifest themselves: Logical Errors Problems occur in the software or data on the hard disk, not the hardware itself, such as virus infections, malware, corrupted system files, bad sectors, etc., leading to data loss, file system corruption, performance degradation, or boot failure. Firmware Issues When firmware gets corrupted, it is usually accompanied by obvious telltale signs, such as the drive slowing down in reading and writing data, the clicking noise happening when the read head is seeking the right sector, the operation system can’t recognizing the hard disk and showing “Disk Unknown/Not Intialized” message, etc. Physical Damage Physical damage is also a common cause of hard disk failure, including high temperature, water ingress, falling from a height, extrusion, etc. Unfortunately, if a hard disk has suffered severe physical damage, especially to the components but not appearance, it is virtually impossible to recover stored data. Important: Rescue Data from the Corrupted Hard Disk Before Repair EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard is a powerful hard disk repair tool with a user-friendly interface. It helps you recover data from a hard disk that is corrupted, formatted, or not working on a Windows PC. Before repairing your problematic hard drive, install the EaseUS hard disk repair tool on your computer and follow the three steps below to perform hard disk data recovery: Step 1. Install and launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and select the hard disk from the “Hardware Disk” tab. Step 2. Click the “Search for Lost Data” button, and use “Path” or “Type” to find the lost files you want to recover. Step 3. “Preview” to see file content, click “Recover” to get the lost files back and save them in a safe storage location on your PC. Use Hard Disk Repair Tools to Fix Hard Disk Errors After successful lost data recovery from the corrupt hard disk via the EaseUS hard disk repair tool, check out the 6 methods below to repair your hard disk without losing data! 1. Run Disk Checking in Windows File Explorer Hard disk errors can be checked and repaired by a built-in hard disk repair tool on a Windows PC; here’s how to run disk checking process on a Windows PC: Step 1. Launch File Explorer, and choose “This PC” to see all hard drives connected to your computer. Step 2. Right-click the hard disk that needs to be checked and repaired, and choose “Properties > Tools > Check.” EaseUS 2. Update Hard Disk Drivers Updating the disk drivers can solve the disk errors caused by firmware faults. Here are the steps: Step 1. Launch Device Manager by pressing “Win + X” or typing device manager in the taskbar search box. Step 2. Locate your hard disk in the Disk Drives section, and choose the “Update Driver” option. Suppose updating the hard disk driver does not fix the problem; try the “Uninstall device” option below the “Update driver’ and Windows will automatically reinstall the latest version of hard disk drivers. 3. Use CMD Hard Disk Repair Tool (CHKDKS) Many file systems are not completely immune to various errors that can cause access problems on a hard disk. The good news is that most of these errors can be solved using the built-in hard disk repair tool – CHKDKS. Here’s how to run CHKDKS to repair a hard disk: Step 1. Type cmd in the search box on the taskbar to launch a Command Prompt window. Step 2. Enter this command and press “Enter”: chkdsk N: /f Note: The “N” should be replaced with with the drive letter for your hard disk. e.g. chkdsk D: /f. Then, wait for the CHKDSK command to finish.CHKDSK can be one of the top 6 command prompt commands that greatly improve your efficiency. 4. Check Bad Sector via Hard Disk Repair Tool Bad sectors can be repaired using the “Check File System” feature provided by a free hard disk repair tool, EaseUS Partition Master. It enables you to check and repair bad sectors and prevent data corruption. Open the EaseUS hard disk repair tool, right-click the disk you want to check, then click “Advanced > Check File System.” The operation will be performed immediately, and all bad sectors will be marked red. 5. Format the Hard Disk [No Data Loss] Formatting a non-functioning hard disk is an extreme practice, yet its effectiveness is undeniable. Formatting the drive will recreate the entire file system and start from scratch, repairing all bad sectors and data corruption issues in the process. However, don’t forget to save the recovered files from the hard disk using EaseUS data recovery software. Then, format the Hard Disk without data loss by clicking the “Quick Format > Start” button. 6. Turn to Hard Disk Repair Experts If none of the above methods solves the problem, and the data stored on the disk is particularly important, you can contact Data Recovery Services to save all the data on the disk first. Then, you can send the hard disk to repair experts without worrying about losing data. How to Prevent Data Loss on a Hard Disk As we mentioned earlier, disk problems can be categorized into three dimensions: physical damage, logical errors, and firmware issues. So we can also think of some preventive measures as follows: Keep your hard disk in a safe place: Make sure your hard disk stays at a secure physical location, which is far away from high temperatures, your drinking cup, high places where it can be easily dropped, etc. Periodically back up your important files: Backing up your data frequently can help prevent data loss, such as backing up once a week or uploading important files to the cloud drive. Even if you have a hard disk failure, backups will minimize the impact on your workflow. Choose a trustworthy hard disk: Hard drives vary in quality, so choosing a well-known and trustworthy brand may reduce the risk of firmware issues. Seagate, WD, and Toshiba may be trusted companies. Conclusion This post discusses free hard drive repair tools with step-by-step tutorials to help users repair their corrupted hard disk quickly and safely. EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard supports data recovery from a corrupted or formatted hard disk; even if the files were deleted, the EaseUS disk recovery tool can help retrieve them. So, even if you can’t access your stored data after a disk error, you can save your important files first with this powerful disk data recovery tool, and then you can send your disk for repair without worrying about data modification or just format it before putting it back into use.