Rick's Daily Tips

Why you shouldn’t leave your backup drive plugged into your computer

Posted on August 30, 2026

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Regular readers of this blog know I’m always mentioning how important it is to create regular backups of your computer’s hard drive or SSD.

After all, always having a recent backup on hand is the very best “insurance” you can have against a catastrophic drive failure or a crippling virus infection.

But there’s one important point that I probably don’t stress nearly as much as I should…

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Q&A: If I remove a computer’s hard drive will any data be left behind?

Posted on August 29, 2026

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Question from Karen: I have several old computers in my basement that I want to recycle.

I’ve always heard that you need to destroy a computer’s hard drive before you recycle it to prevent someone else from maybe getting your files.

My question is will removing the hard drive from a PC completely eliminate any possibility of someone finding my old files.

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Q&A: Is the Copy Plain Text browser extension safe?

Posted on August 28, 2026

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Question from Amber: I do a lot of copying and pasting when I’m writing posts for my lifestyle blog.

Something that always irritates me is having to paste everything into Notepad to get rid of the formatting and then copy the “clean” text and paste it into the blog post I’m working on.

I checked Google and found a Firefox browser extension called Copy Plain Text that allows you to copy text and paste it without the formatting.

My question is, do you think it’s safe to use this extension? [Read more…]

How to read Kindle ebooks on your phone, tablet, PC or Mac

Posted on August 27, 2026

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You probably already know Amazon offers over millions of ebooks and a huge selection of magazines and newspapers for immediate download to Kindle devices.

You might also already be aware that many of the ebooks on Amazon cost just 99 cents each, and many more cost nothing at all (as in they are absolutely free)!

What you might not be aware of however is you don’t really have to have a Kindle device in order to download and enjoy all of those great Kindle products. [Read more…]

5 reasons why I’ll never buy an expensive phone

Posted on August 26, 2026

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As you probably know, one can easily spend north of $1,000 for a new top-of-the-line smartphone these days.

And truth be told, you could well be one of the countless individuals who regularly spend that much every time you buy a new phone.

Let me say right out of the gate that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

This is America after all, and we’re all entitled to spend our hard-earned money on whatever suits our fancy. [Read more…]