Tech Questions & Answers Archives - Page 145 of 258

Q&A: How do you erase an external hard drive with a Mac?

Posted on March 24, 2021

Question from Alan: I bought a new 4TB external hard drive to hold my photos.

I bought the new drive because the 1TB drive I’ve been using to store my photos is full and I have a lot more pictures to scan and store.

My plan is to give the 1TB drive to my niece so she can use it with her iMac, but I want to completely erase everything from the drive before I give it to her.

That way she can start fresh with a blank drive.

Can you tell me how to completely erase this drive with my MacBook?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: What’s the cheapest 2TB SSD I can buy?

Posted on March 23, 2021

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Question from Marshall P.: I really want to buy a 2TB SSD to go in my Dell desktop computer that I use to run my landscaping business.

Can you help me find the cheapest 2TB SSD that I can buy that’s not a piece of junk?

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Q&A: Can I use my laptop even though it smells like something’s burning?

Posted on March 22, 2021

Question from Brenda F.: Hi Rick. I have a question about my Toshiba laptop.

I bought it about 8 months ago and everything was fine until last night.

All of a sudden I started smelling a strong burning smell coming from the bottom of the computer.

Do you think I can safely ignore the smell and keep using the laptop without causing any damage to it?

[Read more…]

Q&A: Where can I buy RAM for an older laptop and have them install it for me?

Posted on March 21, 2021

Question from Benji P.: Rick, I took my eight year old HP laptop to Best Buy over the weekend to have them upgrade the RAM for me.

This machine only has 4GB and I want to bump it up to 8GB. I know it can use 8GB because I looked it up.

After some back and forth the guy told me I shouldn’t waste my money upgrading a machine that was that old and proceeded to try to sell me a new computer. I don’t want a new laptop. I like this one!

My question is do you know of a place in the Raleigh, NC area that will upgrade the memory for me? Or is this something that I can possibly do myself?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Why did Windows stop asking me to confirm that I really want to delete a file?

Posted on March 20, 2021

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Question from Francine: I have a computer with Windows 10 on it.

It used to be that when I tried to delete a file a message would pop up asking if I really wanted to delete it, but not anymore.

Now the file is just deleted immediately with no chance to change my mind.

I really need those confirmation messages because I’ve caught myself trying to delete the wrong file several times in the past.

Can you tell me how to get Windows to start asking me to confirm file deletions again?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]