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Tag: Brandon LeBlanc

  • New Windows 10 Feature Will Detect Failing SSD

    New Windows 10 Feature Will Detect Failing SSD

    Microsoft has announced Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 20226 with feature designed to help monitor the health of SSD storage.

    SSDs have many benefits over traditional platter hard drives. They’re faster and more energy efficient, since they have no moving parts. Just as important, they’re less prone to damage. When a traditional hard drive is stopped, the head can impact the platters, scoring them and causing major damage. With no moving parts, this is less of a concern with SSDs.

    Despite their durability, SSDs do have a failure rate. Corrupt data, weak solder joints, failing chips and other factors can cause an SSD to fail. Once they begin to fail, they tend to go quickly.

    Microsoft is looking to give users a heads up when an SSD is about to fail, giving them time to backup before it’s too late. The latest preview release includes the new feature.

    “Attempting to recover data after drive failure is both frustrating and expensive,” says Brandon LeBlanc on the company blog. “This feature is designed to detect hardware abnormalities for NVMe SSDs and notify users with enough time to act. It is strongly recommended that users immediately back up their data after receiving a notification.”

  • Windows 10 Beta Changes Start Menu

    Windows 10 Beta Changes Start Menu

    Microsoft has released the latest beta of Windows 10 and it includes a major change to the Start menu.

    The Start menu is one of the most recognized features of Windows, so any change to it is sure to gain attention. The latest changes involves theme-aware tiles.

    “We are freshening up the Start menu with a more streamlined design that removes the solid color backplates behind the logos in the apps list and applies a uniform, partially transparent background to the tiles,” writes Brandon LeBlanc / Senior Program Manager, Windows Insider Program. “This design creates a beautiful stage for your apps, especially the Fluent Design icons for Office and Microsoft Edge, as well as the redesigned icons for built-in apps like Calculator, Mail, and Calendar that we started rolling out earlier this year.”

    LeBlanc says the new menu looks good in either light or dark theme, and even has accent colors for the dark theme.

    This is a nice update to one of Windows’ most icon features, and will likely be a welcome change for many users.

    Image Credit: Microsoft