Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Will a computer tech be able to see my personal photos?

Posted on September 16, 2022

Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

Question from Kristen: The hard drive in my laptop has stopped working and I need to take it somewhere to have it fixed.

I’ve been taking your advice about creating regular System Image backups and I have a fairly recent backup they can use to restore everything once the bad hard drive is replaced.

What worries me is I have a lot of really personal photos that were backed up along with everything else. Will a tech be able to see them? [Read more…]

Q&A: Does using two drives in RAID 1 eliminate the need to make backups?

Posted on September 14, 2022

Question from Bill: I recently read an article about using hard drives or SSDs in a RAID configuration.

The article said RAID 1 copies all data to every drive in the array at the same time, essentially creating a clone of the primary drive in real time.

In the comments on the article someone suggested that using two drives in RAID 1 will automatically create a backup, eliminating the need to back up the hard drive in the usual way.

That made sense to me but then someone else commented and said that’s a really bad idea. But he didn’t explain why.

What’s your opinion on using RAID 1 to create automatic backups? Is it a good idea or not?

Rick’s answer: [Read more…]

Q&A: Can I reset a laptop if I don’t know all the passwords?

Posted on September 14, 2022

Question from Barry: I bought an Acer Aspire S7-391 laptop with Windows 8 at an estate auction.

I took a chance on it because it looks brand new and I was able to buy it for only $20. I’m hoping that’s a good deal (LOL).

Once I got the laptop home and booted it up I found out that it has 3 user accounts on it.

The machine boots up fine into an administrator account that doesn’t have a password on it. The other two accounts I can’t get into because they do have passwords (and I don’t know them).

I’d like to reset this machine back to the factory default setting so I can I install Linux on it. Can you tell me how to do the reset? [Read more…]

Review: Recoverit Free Data Recovery Software

Posted on September 13, 2022

It’s a fact of modern life: If you use a computer you WILL lose important files at some point due to a drive crash or some other unforeseen catastrophe.

Of course you’ll probably be able to recover those lost files if you have a recent backup on hand, but what if the file(s) you need to recover aren’t included in your backup set?

Even worse, what if your backup gets lost or corrupted?

Luckily, there are data recovery tools you can use to recover lost files from a damaged or corrupted drive when the need arrives.

[Read more…]

Always check Windows’ Firewall settings after removing malware from your PC

Posted on September 13, 2022

The security components of both Windows 10 and Windows 11 include a very important tool called Windows Defender Firewall.

In a nutshell, this firewall helps protect the PC from Internet-based attacks by blocking incoming traffic that could potentially pose a security risk.

The thing is, your PC’s firewall protection becomes useless if it happens to get turned off for some reason. [Read more…]