backup Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Do SSDs need to be backed up like a hard drive?

Posted on January 26, 2025

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Question from Brenda: I took my laptop to Best Buy after the hard drive crashed and they installed a 2TB SSD for me. I can’t believe how much faster the computer runs now.

Luckily I had a backup when the hard drive crashed. I was reading an article today that said SSDs don’t break because they have no moving parts, therefore you don’t really need to back them up.

Is that true? [Read more…]

Q&A: Does a System Image Backup save everything on the hard drive?

Posted on June 17, 2024

Question from Olivene: Rick, I spent a few minutes reading your post that explains how to create a System Image Backup in Windows 10, but I’m a little confused.

I had Carbonite backing up my files for a couple of years and they didn’t back up any of my Windows files.

I learned that the hard way after my hard drive crashed on me.

What exactly is backed up when you create a System Image Backup? [Read more…]

Review: Carbonite Online Backup Service

Posted on April 29, 2024

Have you ever had a laptop stolen or suffered a hard drive crash?

If so, you already know that losing your precious photos, music, Word documents and other critical files is even worse than having to replace the hardware.

If you didn’t have a current backup, you most likely lost every scrap of your irreplaceable data. That’s why always having a current backup of your hard drive on hand is absolutely critical.

But did you know that just backing up your data onto an external hard drive isn’t enough?

[Read more…]

How to easily back up the photos on your smartphone

Posted on October 20, 2023

Do you have a large collection of irreplaceable photos stored on your phone?

Photos that you’d hate to lose if your phone should ever go belly-up, or get lost or stolen?

If so, there’s a very easy way to prevent losing your photos if something ever happens to your phone: Keep them backed up to the cloud!

[Read more…]

3 reasons why you need an external USB hard drive

Posted on August 14, 2023

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External hard drives used to be expensive luxuries that transferred data between the PC and the drive at a relative snail’s pace.

But thankfully, that has all changed thanks to the proliferation of incredibly fast, yet very inexpensive external USB hard drives.

In fact, prices have now dropped to where you can pick one up starting at around $50.

I now believe that every computer user should own at least one external USB hard drive, for the following reasons: [Read more…]