How To Recover Lost Files And Data

Everyone loses files at some point. Roland Waddilove shows how to prevent this and how to recover them when disaster strikes

Disk drives are supposed to keep our files safe and sound, and mostly they do. Sometimes they keep them safe for five or more years, and in some cases there have been disk drives that have lasted ten years or more without developing a fault. It is unwise to rely on them, though. Indeed, there’s an old saying that goes, ‘Hope for the best, but plan for the worst’. That’s true with disk drives: although you can hope that they’ll provide many years of reliable operation, you should treat them like they’ll fail tomorrow. Could you cope?

The Best Free Alternatives To Commercial Apps

Even if your budget is limited, there’s no reason to go without essential apps with free alternatives so readily available

There’s a very popular saying that says, ‘There’s no such thing as a free lunch’. This rather cynical expression is a shorthand way of saying nothing comes for free and that you should expect to pay something, even if you don’t expect to. There’s always a catch, basically.

Making an emergency Linux installation

Having a Linux disto you can turn to in a pinch could be a lifesaver

When you’re putting together a PC, things aren’t always straightforward. If something goes wrong – a hardware compatibility issue, a corrupted drive, a misconfiguration – then you might suddenly find yourself without any way to research the very problem you want to fix.

If that happens, it’s always worth having a bootable USB drive to help you bypass whatever the problem might be and get back online so you can figure out what’s going on. If you want to do that, you’ll have to make one in advance, though. If you don’t have a Windows USB stick available (and especially if your PC doesn’t have an optical drive) then there’s no better time than the present to get that sorted out.

What components can you re-use?

Don’t cripple a system upgrade with false economies

Buying a new PC off-the-shelf might be simple, but it can be annoying to pay for components you don’t use. If someone else builds your PC for you, you also risk voiding your warranty by opening it up to install your existing gear. What’s more, if you want to transfer that expensive SSD or Blu-ray drive into a new computer you’ll have to build it from scratch yourself.

If you’re doing that anyway, there’s no reason not to re-use as much as you can, and recycling hardware has lots of benefits. It saves money, it reduces waste, and it means you’re familiar with your PC’s components if you encounter a problem you’ve solved before.

Not every piece of hardware should be recycled, however. So here’s our rough guide to what you should and shouldn’t keep.

Guide to choosing an Intel CPU & MotherBoard

If you’re after a market-leading chip and board, this is this is the way to go…

Picking a CPU and motherboard combination is one of the most frustrating parts of building a new system, but it has to be done early on so you can build the rest of your system around it. If you’re starting with an Intel system, this is the guide for you.