Articles in Category: Applications

Applications include third party programs, software packages and software suites that run on your computer.

When Backups Might Not Save You from Ransomware

Ransomware is known for encrypting your data and holding it hostage. It turns out that it can do more that backups won’t protect against.

How Should I Back Up an Encrypted Disk?

Backing up an encrypted hard drive shouldn’t be difficult, but it’s important to understand what you’ll get.

Can’t I Just Copy Everything to Back Up?

It’s tempting to just use file-copy tools to back up what you think you need. But you can easily miss something very important.

External Hard Disk for Backups – 8 Reasons They Are Your Best Option

An external drive is by far the best piece of additional equipment you can get for your computer to keep your data safe.

Just What Is a Backup?

“If it’s only in one place, it’s not backed up” really tells you all you need to know.

What’s an Incremental Backup?

Backing up is important, but terms like “full”, “incremental”, and “differential” can easily confuse. I’ll look at what these terms mean.

What Backup Type Do I Want: Full, Incremental, or Differential?

Terms relating to backing up can be confusing. Understanding them helps you make better decisions about backing up.

Testing Your Backups Is Critical

Testing your backups is an easy step to overlook, but an important one to take. Make sure your backups will be there when you need them.

What’s the Difference Between a Clone and an Image?

The difference between a clone and an image boils down to what they contain: everything, or absolutely everything.

What is an Image Backup?

Backup terminology can be confusing. I’ll define one of the terms I use frequently and explain why I think it’s so important.

If It’s All Digital, Won’t You Lose It Anyway?

A single original of anything is not backed up, and backing up is significantly easier, and of higher quality, in digital media.

How You Recover When Good Apps Go Bad

I frequently advise people what to do about unexpected and undesirable software changes. It’s time for me to take my own advice.

How to Back Up Photos and Never Lose Them Again: the Steps You Need to Take

Follow these steps to avoid losing precious and irreplaceable memories.

Are the Free Microsoft Office Alternatives for Windows 10 Any Good?

Depending on how you use your word processing program, you may be able to find a good, free alternative to Word.

How to Back Up Before a Windows 10 Upgrade

Always back up before a Windows 10 upgrade, update, or reinstall. Create a full system image backup of up your entire machine.

What Backup Program Should I Use?

Backing up your computer’s data is critical. What backup program should you use? There are many, but pragmatically, the best is whatever you’ll actually use.

What Good Is an Image If I Can’t Restore an Old Backup to a New Computer?

Image backups are excellent protection against data loss, but restoring an old backup to new computer isn’t why you do them.

Why Don’t You Back Up Your Computer?

Backups are one way you can protect yourself from everything from hardware failure to virus infections. So why don’t you back up?

Free Microsoft Office in Windows 10? Sort Of

Microsoft Office appears in every new install of Windows 10, but is it really “included”? Yes and no.

Can I Back Up to an Internal Drive?

Backing up to a second physical internal drive can be a good tool in your backup arsenal, as long as you understand its limitations.

Setting Up Macrium Reflect Free (Webinar #2)

I neglected to set up automated backups on my rebuilt laptop. I’ll walk you through downloading and installing Macrium Reflect free, and scheduling automated backups.

Creating a Backup Image Using Windows’ Built-in Backup

I don’t think much of the Windows backup utility–but any backup is better than no backup. Let’s take a look at how to use it.

How Do I Restore a Backup Image to a Smaller Drive?

Restoring to a smaller drive is often difficult. I’ll list the steps necessary to get the job done.

Can I Back Up Files to a Separate Partition on the Same Hard Disk?

It’s tempting to back up to a separate partition, because it’s somewhat like another disk. The problem is, it’s not. You could be risking your data.

Do I Need to Make a New Rescue Disc Every Time My Backup Software Updates?

If you don’t have rescue media, you can use another machine to make it. You certainly don’t need to make one every time you back up or update the software.

How to Protect Your Computer from Natural Disasters

Natural disasters remind us that our computers, among other things, are at risk. I’ll look at protecting your computer, and more importantly, your data.

Are Deleted Files also Deleted from Backups?

Old backups typically have all of the files that were on your machine at the time the backup was taken — and that’s what you want.

How to Move an Office 365 Subscription to Another Machine

The Microsoft Office 365 subscription model makes moving to a new machine very, very easy.

What Is Your Most Trusted Method of Backing Up?

Backing up is important. Knowing which tools, techniques, services, and even advice to trust can be a challenge.

Will a Scheduled Backup Wake My Machine Up If It’s Sleeping?

Some backup programs can wake up a sleeping machine, but there are still things that could go wrong and cause a backup to fail.

Can I Use Office 2003 with Windows 10?

Installing 14-year-old software on current operating systems is likely to create problems. Office 2003 and Windows 10 is one such match.

Enable File History in Windows 10

File History is advertised as Windows 10’s backup solution. In reality, it can be a useful component of a larger strategy. I’ll show you how to set it up.

How do I Copy Photos from My Phone to My PC?

Copying photos from your phone to your PC is simple with a few readily available tools.

Why is My Backup Program Saying There’s Not Enough Space on System Reserved Partitions?

Your computer’s system reserved partitions should have nothing to do with backing up (other than needing to be backed up themselves). I’ll review what they are, and how a back-up program might be mislead.

What Should I Back Up?

Backing up is incredibly important. Knowing what to back up, where to back up, and how often to back up are just as important.

EaseUS Todo Gave Me An Error on an “Unknown Partition”. What Should I Do?

EaseUS Todo will throw an error if one of the partitions you want to back up has an error, or isn’t in an understandable format. I’ll walk you through your options.

How Should I Back Up My Hard Drive with Several Partitions to an External Drive?

Backing up to an external drive is an easy way to make sure you’re covered in event of failure. But how should that external drive be configured?

A Peek Behind My Backup Curtain

I talk about backups a lot. So how do I back up? It’s not for the faint of heart, and you may be sorry you asked…

What about Windows 10 backup?

While Windows 10 backup is included as part of the operating system, I consider it to be barely adequate, and prefer a more full-featured solution.

Is an Online Backup Service a Good Idea?

Backing up data using an online backup service can seem to be an effective solution, and it can be an important part of an overall strategy, but there are important limits and considerations.

Why Are My Incremental Backups so Large?

Understand why incremental backups can sometimes be much larger than expected.

Are Backup Image Files more Fragile than just Having Copies of All the Individual Files?

I’m often asked if backup images as one large file are more susceptible to failure than storing the contents as individual files. My take: not really.

Do You Back Up?

For the past several weeks I’ve been asking new subscribers, “Do you back up?” The responses have been a little depressing.

How Do I Schedule Automatic Backups?

Next to simply making an image backup, scheduling those backups to happen automatically is one of the topics most people find confusing. Depending on the backup software that you’re using, it’s typically not hard at all. I’ll show you by walking through the steps of scheduling a monthly full backup, using the free version of the backup … Read more

How Do I Create a New Machine Image?

When you get a new machine, creating a new machine image backup as soon as you can is a convenient way to reinstall should you ever need to.

How Do I Make an Outlook PST File Smaller?

The the Outlook PST file or Personal STorage file can easily grow to an extreme size. Here’s a 4-step plan to managing that size and getting it back under control.

Should I back up to DVDs?

In the past it was common to back up to DVDs. Today, the landscape has changed, and backing up to an external hard drive is more appropriate.