external hard drive Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Can I use an old external hard drive with my new MacBook?

Posted on January 24, 2026

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Question from Lawrence: Hi, Rick. I’m hoping you can answer a question for me about hard drives.

I have an older Seagate STHN2000400 2TB external hard drive that I used for several years to store photos and other files from my old MacBook. Well that MacBook finally died and I replaced it with this MacBook Pro.

The problem I’m having is the MacBook Pro won’t work with the Seagate drive because there’s no connector on the laptop that will accept the old-style USB plug on the drive cable.

If at all possible I’d like to keep using this drive with the new MacBook Pro because it contains thousands of photos that don’t exist anywhere else.

Is there any way I can use this drive with the new laptop? Maybe some kind of adapter? [Read more…]

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: Can I delete the files that came on my new USB hard drive?

Posted on May 17, 2024

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Question from Maurine: I bought a 2TB external USB hard drive to store my large collection of old family pictures on.

When I plugged the new drive into my computer I noticed that it has several files on it already.

One is a file with info about the warranty. Another is a user guide. I’m not sure what the other two files are.

My question is can I delete all these files or do I need to keep them?

[Read more…]

Q&A: Can you recommend a good external hard drive for a Mac?

Posted on May 1, 2024

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Question from Maria: Hi, Rick. I recently purchased a MacBook Air with an M processor.

I am new to MacBooks so I am on a learning curve even though I have both an iPhone and an iPad.

I wanted to buy an external hard drive for my processor but have no idea what type I should get. I would like it mainly to back up my iTunes library and photos. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Read more…]

Q&A: Should I replace a 4 year old SSD just to be safe?

Posted on January 26, 2024

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Question from Kendra: Hi, Rick. I really love your blog, especially the section where you answer questions from your readers.

If you don’t mind I’d like to ask a question of my own.

Back in March of 2020 the tech guy I used at the time installed a Crucial 500GB SSD in my Acer laptop and it really made it run a lot faster.

I recently read on another site that all SSDs wear out over time because they can only be written to a certain number of times.

That has me sort of worried because this drive is now about four years old and I have a lot of personal files on it that I don’t want to lose.

My question is do you think this drive is likely to fail at some time in the near future? [Read more…]