Do you have several physical hard-drives on your computer, but would like to have them collaborating as one? This can be useful for smaller SSD-drives or similar.

A quick Note before we continue!
Spanned volumes are not RAID volumes and they are not fault tolerant. If one of the disks in the volume should fail, you lose the data on both disks. That being said, let’s continue…

Preparations

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Windows Guides’ Rating	Compatible with	System
5 out of 5	[ratings id=8250]

Here’s a little reminder on the JV16 PowerTools Giveaway Contest which runs through Sunday If you didn’t see the review on JV16 PowerTools 2010 you might want to do so now. Jv16 PowerTools is the ultimate Windows optimization and tune-up utility suite, and by far the best tool I have every put to the test.

The Competition is open to everyone !

The competition has now ended.

Winners will receive notification by email.
Thank you to all contributors.

Localization:

For those of you tuned in from around the world – welcome. I’m a Kiwi (a person from New Zealand) and this article was written primarily to address NZ Windows Media Center users lack of access to the Electronic Program Guide from Sky Broadcasting.

Having said that, there are topics covered herein that could well be of use to others beyond the borders of New Zealand. Our primary tool in this article is “Big Screen EPG” that’s now being used by many people around the world to push the contents of an XMLTV file (the EPG information) into the Windows Media Center database. If this sort of thing is of interest to you, please read on.

Did you miss the previous posts in this series?

• Big Screen EPG Puts the “E” in Electronic Program Guide [Part 1 of 3]
• Big Screen EPG Puts the “E” in Electronic Program Guide [Part 2 of 3]

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You’ll recall from New and Improved EPG that Big Screen has just released a final (not a beta) version of their Big Screen EPG program that grabs program guides from the internet, prepares them, and loads their data into Windows Media Center’s Program Guide to use in conjunction with the WMC Live TV function. We ran through a basic setup of the program in part I, in part II we’ll cover the setup process in more detail, examining the options and perhaps arriving at a transparent process that will provide you with the best EPG for the New Zealand broadcast area.

Did you miss the previous post in this series?

• Big Screen EPG Puts the “E” in Electronic Program Guide [Part 1 of 3]

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First there was VGA, Video (or Component), S-VHS and Scart connectors. All of which use analog signals. Analog signals means that we don’t need any kind of computer to process images (and sound). All we need is old-fashioned electronics or even just a piece of paper and a needle. Today when “everything” has gone digital we have got two new standards called DVI and HDMI.

Though HDMI is the new all-round standard of connecting Computers and TV (and soon every gadget and appliance ) you will still come across DVI. Especially when connecting your computer to your flat screen monitor, TV or Projector.

DVI comes in several flavours, DVI-A, DVI-D, DVI-I and M1-DA. But which is what ?

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Now, more than ever, we carry more digital information on thumb drives and, in many cases, this information is sensitive and, in the wrong hands, could be used in ways we’d like to avoid. In this guide, I’ll show you how to encrypt your USB drive so that only you can access your data.

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