hard drive Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: How is my PC booting from an empty hard drive?

Posted on December 1, 2025

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Question from Marvin: I read your article about upgrading a computer by switching to an SSD to make it run faster.

The following weekend I went to Best Buy and bought a 1TB SSD and cloned the contents of the existing 1TB hard disk onto it.

I then wiped the hard drive and formatted it. Then I installed the SSD in the computer, leaving the now-blank hard drive in place to store my data files on.

Everything works perfectly but something has me baffled. When I look in the BIOS it says the hard drive is set as the boot drive.

How is this machine booting into Windows when the boot drive is blank?

[Read more…]

Q&A: How do I clone a hard drive to a larger Samsung SSD?

Posted on November 28, 2025

Question from Mike: Hi, Rick. I need some advice on the best way to clone a hard drive to a larger SSD.

I was able to get the 2TB Samsung SSD installed inside my computer but I don’t know how to clone the contents of the 1TB hard drive onto it and still use all the available space on the new drive.

Can you give me some simple instructions? Thanks. [Read more…]

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

Posted on November 26, 2025

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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…]

Tips for creating and storing your computer’s backups

Posted on May 28, 2025

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Modern computer hardware is generally more reliable than what we had back in the early days of personal computing, but users still frequently lose irreplaceable data due to hardware failures.

There are many reasons for data loss that range all the way from the simple failure of a hard drive to catastrophic events such as lightning strikes or fire damage. [Read more…]

Q&A: Will replacing the hard drive with an SSD make a PC run hotter?

Posted on April 28, 2025

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Question from Michael: I have a three year old laptop that runs a bit on the warm side. It always has, ever since I first took it out of the box.

I read your post about replacing a hard drive with an SSD and I’d love to replace the existing 1TB hard drive in this laptop with a 1TB SSD.

The thing is I’m afraid it will cause the laptop to overheat since it’s getting really warm already. Do you think it might? [Read more…]