hard drive Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: How can I transfer photos from a dead PC to a new one?

Posted on August 18, 2026

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Question from Barbara: Rick, my two year old computer wouldn’t come on the other day so I took it to the Geek Squad to have it checked out.

Long story short, they said the motherboard was bad and that it wasn’t worth fixing, so I bought a new computer.

The problem is I have literally thousands of photos on the dead PC’s hard drive that I desperately want to get off of it and onto my new computer. [Read more…]

Q&A: If I replace Windows with Linux will I need to replace the hard drive too?

Posted on July 27, 2026

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Question from Marla: I have an older HP desktop PC that got really slow over the years so I bought a new laptop and put the old desktop in a closet. Well, the laptop’s screen just went bad and I don’t have the money to buy a new computer right now.

I took the old desktop out of the closet and hooked it up, and to my great surprise it still works. The problem is it has Windows 7 on it and I know it’s unsafe to use now. [Read more…]

Q&A: Do SSDs need to be defragmented?

Posted on June 29, 2026

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Question from Roger: Rick, I followed your advice and replaced the hard drive in my laptop with a solid state drive (SSD).

I’m absolutely blown away by how much faster the laptop boots up and how much faster my programs load.

I do have one question though. I read in another forum that SSDs don’t get fragmented and they never need to be defragged. Is that true? [Read more…]

Q&A: Will my PC need a new power supply if I replace the hard drive with an SSD?

Posted on May 25, 2026

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Question from Oliver: I just read your article about replacing a hard drive with an SSD and I have a question about it.

I remember hearing that upgrading the graphics card in a computer can sometimes require a power supply upgrade as well because the newer graphics card will draw more power than the old one.

My question is do I need to be concerned about the power supply if I replace the hard drive in my computer with an SSD?

[Read more…]

Tips for creating and storing your computer’s backups

Posted on January 19, 2026

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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…]