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  • 22 December 2012

  • How-Tos: Bugs & Fixes: Turning power off turns trouble on

    Sometimes, you can't win. The very thing you do to prevent potential trouble winds up causing you grief instead. Such was the case for me in today's episode of Bugs & Fixes. It's a story that also features a surprise ending.

  • 07 December 2012

  • How-Tos: Find out what's using all the space on your hard drive

    Problem: Your hard drive is getting full.

  • 05 December 2012

  • How-Tos: Remains of the Day: Born in the USA

    New iMacs are coming from inside the country! Elsewhere, Apple lets you buy iPhone 5s until your heart is content, and Ashton Kutcher's Steve Jobs impression is a little eerie. The remainders for Tuesday, December 4, 2012 are just dancing in the dark.

  • 26 November 2012

  • How-Tos: What's the best file system for an external drive?

    Cyberknight asked the Hard Drives, NAS Drives, Storage forum if a new flash drive should be formatted in FAT32 or NTFS.

  • 14 November 2012

  • How-Tos: Restore your data from the cloud

    Online backups are a useful component of a well-balanced backup strategy. Whether you rely primarily on cloud storage for backups (see "Backup Basics") or use the cloud to supplement local backups such as bootable duplicates (see "Bulletproof Backups"), it's crucial to understand how you will go about restoring your data after disaster strikes.

  • How-Tos: How to restore data from Time Machine in Mountain Lion

    Now that you've been using Time Machine regularly to back up your computer, you should be fully prepared if your Mac crashes or if you need to move data from one Mac to another. Restoring data from Time Machine is just as easy as backing things up in the first place.

  • 12 November 2012

  • How-Tos: Set up Time Machine in Mountain Lion

    If you value your data—whether it’s some perfect photos you took last weekend, your entire music collection on iTunes, or your draft of the next great American novel—you must stay on top of regular system backup. One of the easiest ways of doing so is to use OS X’s built-in backup program, Time Machine. Time Machine works with your Mac and an external drive to save important documents, photos, and system files regularly. Apart from keeping spares of every file, Time Machine maintains a record of how your system looked on any given day, so you can easily put everything back the way it was if something goes wrong.

  • 04 November 2012

  • How-Tos: Prepare your business for digital disaster

    Note: This article was originally published in late September 2012. However, following hurricane Sandy and increased concerns about disaster preparedness, we have decided to reprint this guide. If you have any suggestions not covered in the article, please share your ideas in a comment below.

  • 04 October 2012

  • How-Tos: Can I recover some files and securely wipe others on a crashed hard drive?

    Zeterjons asked the Utilities forum how to rescue files off of a physically crashed hard drive, while making sure that other files on that hard drive are destroyed beyond rescue.

  • 03 October 2012

  • How-Tos: How to free up iCloud storage space

    When Apple introduced iCloud in 2011, it announced that every customer with an Apple ID would receive 5GB of iCloud storage space for free. You can add more storage at a rate of $2 per gigabyte per year, in 10GB, 20GB, or 50GB increments. But if you're not interested in ponying up extra cash for iCloud storage, that 5GB can quickly get tight.

  • 26 September 2012

  • How-Tos: Windows Explorer says DVD drive has been changed or moved

    What do you do if the DVD drive in your PC or laptop simply stops working? This was the problem faced by one of our readers. When he wrote in our Helproom Editor explained what to do when Windows Explorer says your PC's DVD drive has been changed or moved.

  • 21 September 2012

  • How-Tos: Automatically save Gmail attachments to Dropbox or another cloud service

    Reader Meg wants to know how she can save her Gmail folders to her Dropbox account.

  • 04 September 2012

  • How-Tos: How to find which hard drive fits your laptop

    Here we give you a few tips and pointers to show you how to find which hard drive fits your laptop.

  • How-Tos: How to Securely Erase Your Hard Drive

    The siren has sung and you've finally succumbed to her call: You're the proud owner of a shiny new PC; a faster, better SSD; or a bigger, better hard drive. It's time to toss your old equipment in the trash and start playing with your new toys, right? Not so fast.

  • 27 August 2012

  • How-Tos: Dropbox Two-Step Verification: Hands On

    Two-step account verification is a hot topic after hackers nearly wiped out the digital life of tech journalist Mat Honan recently, and Dropbox is the latest online service to enable the added security measure.

  • How-Tos: PC is running slow and noisy

    Is your PC running slowly and making a lot of noise? It could be overheating. Our Helproom Editor explains how to deal with an overheating PC.

  • 23 August 2012

  • How-Tos: Problem with hard drive in new PC case

    When a reader moved his PC to a new chassis, everything seemed to be fine. Then he started receiving hard drive error messages. Our Helproom Editor suggested checking the SATA cables and connectors, as well checking the motherboard.

  • 20 August 2012

  • How-Tos: Supercharge Your PC With a RAM Disk

    If you've ever wished that you could emulate the performance of a solid-state drive without installing a new piece of hardware, consider creating a new virtual hard drive on your PC that runs purely from RAM, also known as a RAM disk. Setting one up is a little tricky, but the performance benefits (if your system has enough RAM) are worth the effort.

  • 17 August 2012

  • How-Tos: How to Add RAM to Your Laptop

    One of the best ways to perk up the performance of an older laptop is by increasing its memory. Most of the time, the process of adding RAM is little harder than changing a light bulb. But not every laptop is easy to upgrade, and some modern thin-and-light units can't be upgraded at all--you have to buy the laptop with as much memory as you expect to need for its lifetime. Here's a primer to upgrading your laptop with additional RAM.

  • 30 July 2012

  • How-Tos: Problem with hard drive enclosure

    Our Helproom Editor explains how to spot problems when putting an old hard drive into a new caddy to make an external hard disk.

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