Articles in Category: Applications

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

Paper Pile

How Can I Manage a Lot of Scanned Documents?

Over the years I’ve put together a system that requires just a push of a button to scan and store all my documents.

Discs

What Repair Discs Do I Need?

You may not need every kind of rescue disc possible, but you should certainly have one from your backup program.

Email

Will Backing Up My Computer Back Up My Email?

In order to figure out how to back up your email you first have to figure out where it lives. It might be on your computer; it might be out on the internet.

External Backup Drive

How do I protect the files on a portable hard drive?

The answer to this is simple. If it’s only in one place… it’s not backed up!

DVDs

Is an external hard drive better for backing up than DVDs?

DVDs can be a clumsy solution for backing up – especially if you want to take a full system image. It’s much better to go for an external hard drive.

Upgrade!

Can my backup programs restore my settings to a new machine?

Programs and settings aren’t easily migrated to a new machine. For the most stable upgrade you’ll want to work from scratch.

House of Cards

Can I Just Keep Making Incremental Backups After I’ve Made a Full-image Backup?

Incremental backups, in a practical sense, have a limited shelf life. I’ll explain why a full backup once a month is just about right.

Can my image backup of Windows XP be used on my Windows 8 computer?

Backing up, particularly with backup image software, is for recovering from a disaster. It can also be handy when moving to a new machine, but probably not in the way you are thinking.

Hacker in the night

Is application-provided encryption secure?

Lots of people keep their passwords and sensitive information in documents or spreadsheets sporting a password. Is that really safe?

Tools

What’s in your toolkit?

It’s useful to have a set of tools ready to be used for debugging, diagnosing, and resolving system problems of various sorts. This is called a toolkit. I’ll show you mine.

Office 2010

Do I need all these Office 2007 updates if I also have Office 2010?

Even if you don’t use all the software on your computer, malware might! So it’s best to always accept updates when they are offered.

External Backup Drive

Why can’t I restore my AppData folder from a backup?

Trying to restore Windows Live Mail through the AppData folder is not going to be clean or pretty. But with that image backup, there is an easier way…

Computers connected to the cloud

If I Use a Cloud Sync Program to Back Up, Won’t Accidental Deletions Delete the Backup?

Backing up to auto-syncing cloud services is very convenient. But what happens when it syncs your mistake?

Dragging and Dropping multiple messages

How do I save individual Outlook messages to a flash drive?

Copying messages out of Outlook is easy – as long as you’re willing to live with the restrictions that Outlook places on what you can do with those messages later.

Encrypted!

Will Malware Infect the Backups on My Connected Backup Drives as Well?

In truth, malware can infect anything that it wants to, but there are a lot of reasons why your backup files aren’t targeted.

Dropbox

How Can I Back Up My Data More or Less Continuously?

With hardware failures, accidental deletions, and more, it’s easy to lose files as you are working on them. What’s the easiest way to back up your computer as you go?

Where is my Outlook “PST” file located?

Outlook’s PST or Personal STore is a single file that holds your email, contacts, and more. You can use Outlook itself to find the location of the file.

Two networked computers

Can I backup one computer to another?

Your computers are probably already attached over your home network. You just need to  “share” them.

What are your thoughts on utilities like SyncToy for backing up?

SyncToy is a useful tool as long as you understand what it can, and cannot, do.

Can I use backup software to move programs?

Moving data to your new machine from your backup is easy. Moving the programs is a different story.

External Backup Drive

Will backups run if my PC asks for a password?

Scheduling regular backups is an important step in your overall backup strategy. But they do have to run when your computer is on and accessible.

Your Disk is on Fire!

Why does my computer crash when I try to back up?

Backing up shouldn’t crash a computer, and neither should attaching a hard disk.

External Backup Drive

Archiving – What it is and why you need to start

As our lives become more and more digital – from digital documents to photographs and videos – it’s time to become a little more intentional about how we keep and manage all the digital data that we’re accumulating. It’s time to think about archiving.

External Backup Drive

How Do I Recover My Data from a Crashed Computer?

As long as the problem isn’t a damaged hard drive, you may be able to access your data with a Linux CD, or even better, a backup recovery CD.

Will locking my computer prevent scheduled and autorun programs from running?

Macrium will run just fine as long as your computer is still turned on. Other automatic programs may have trouble, depending on their configuration.

An Active Hard DIsk

Is cloning to a second internal drive a viable backup strategy?

Any backup system puts you ahead of the game. But a few “gotchas” could sneak up on you when relying on cloning a hard drive.

XP Mode Being Installed

Does Restoring Windows 7 from a Backup also Restore XP Mode?

When you create a backup image of your machine, it contains everything; that’s the definition of a backup image.

Windows

What is WAIK that Macrium seems to want me to download?

The Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) allows programs like Macrium Reflect to create bootable rescue media. If you don’t have this, you have two options.

Java

Why is Java telling me it’s not installed when it is?

Java in your browser, and Java on your computer, are actually two different, related, things. If you install it in the browser, then it won’t work elsewhere. Confused? I don’t blame you!

Make a Backup!

Is It Better to Use Incremental or Differential Backups?

Incremental and differential backups store your data changes differently. Ultimately, the difference is one of granularity and managing disk space. But the biggest thing is that you are backing up regularly and happy with the results.

Infected!

Should I back up if my machine is infected?

If you believe you’ve been hacked, you will want to protect and preserve your data right away. First, make sure exactly what has been hacked.

How Do I Back Up Multiple Partitions?

How you backup partitions depends on your backup software. Most allow you to backup multiple partitions into a single backup image file, but more than likely, you get to choose.

PowerPoint

How do I extract and identify the music in a Powerpoint presentation?

You may not be able to extract music files from a Powerpoint presentation that is not editable. However, there is an amazing way to find out if that song is available to download.

Can I Just Run Macrium and Do a Restore?

You typically can’t just run Macrium in Windows to do a restore because you’d be restoring on top of a running operating system. But yes, you can easily restore the whole machine. I’ll explain.

Can I create rescue disks for any point in time?

You can indeed create rescue media to restore your machine to any point in time. Rather than calling it rescue media, though, it’s nothing more than an image backup.

Can I Play My Old Games on My 64-bit Computer?

Games can be some of the most demanding software out there. Many older games will play just fine on newer machines, but occasionally you’ll run into problems. I’ll look at some of the alternatives.

A Cloud (not THE cloud)

Does My Information Get Deleted from the Cloud If I Delete the Associated Software?

Make sure you understand how any software you use keeps personal data in the cloud and the steps necessary to delete, or secure, that data.

CCleaner Drive Wiper

Can I Use a Backup Image to Wipe Free Space?

There’s an app for that! An easy combination of programs can help you clean a computer before you sell it or give it away.

Do I need to have a separate data backup if I backup my system regularly?

If you are doing regular image backups of your computer, and incremental backups of new data you’re good. But what about the files you are working on today?

Why Does the Size of My Office File Grow Excessively after I Make Simple Changes?

Microsoft Office documents can sometimes grow larger as you save them. There are a few options to explore to reduce the likelihood, and the space used.

Windows 7 Boot Options

How Do I Restore a Registry Backup if I Can’t Boot?

For a full, catastrophic failure where you cannot reboot into Windows, it may not be possible to restore a registry backup. You may need to have previously done a full system backup that you could then restore to get your machine working once again.

CD-R

Can I Back Up Files to Save Space?

If you have only one copy – it’s not backed up. If you delete files to save space on your hard drive make sure that doesn’t leave you without a backup.

Macrium Reflect Disk Space Management

How Do I Automatically Clean Out My Accumulation of Backups?

Many backup programs allow you to specify that old backups be deleted. It’s not always obvious how, so I’ll show you in Macrium Reflect.

Can I Simply Copy Everything on My Drive in Case Something Bad Happens?

There are in fact utilities that can do an actual clone of your computer, but I would prefer you move to a more traditional image backup system.

Safety Deposit Boxes

Is My Data Safe in an Online Backup Program?

Whenever we use an online service, such as an online backup, we’re trusting that they’re doing what they say they do: keeping our information secure.

Back Up!

If There’s Only One Copy, It’s Not Backed Up

Not a day goes by that I don’t get a question from someone in trouble; trouble that could have been completely avoided by having a simple backup.

Images versus Files and Folders

What’s the Difference Between an Image Backup and a Files-and-Folder Backup?

This choice is about what you back up on your computer. It can make the difference between an easy or difficult recovery.

Email envelope

How Do I Back Up Email to an External Hard Disk using Outlook?

Backing up or archiving portions of your email collected in Outlook is pretty easy with one basic concept: creating and opening your own PST files.

Is an Image Backup Useful if I Need to Restore to a Different Machine?

While image backups are optimized for restoring back to the original hardware, they remain critically useful in other scenarios as well.

Macrium Reflect – Powerful Windows Backup Software

Macrium Reflect is a full-featured backup program that supports everything that I consider critical to keeping your important data safely backed up.