Tutorials

Article | 23/05/2011 Top 5 online backup services
At DCA we regularly deal with people who come to us for data recovery. We have a pretty good track record at salvaging important files; however, in ma...
Article | 9/03/2011 Open source FreeOTFE encrypts disks handily
FreeOTFE may sound like a political bumper sticker, but it stands for "Free On The Fly Encryption." The "Free" part is self-explanatory; "On The Fly E...
Article | 3/03/2011 Digitize your movies
Analog movies can be the easiest--or the hardest--medium to digitize, depending on the format you're working with. While older camcorder and video for...
Article | 3/03/2011 Digitize your documents
The space required to store paper documents can be a problem. Digitizing your documents renders them exquisitely portable--you can store an entire lib...
Article | 3/03/2011 Digitize your pictures
Today the digital camera is ubiquitous, but photos used to be taken by momentarily exposing something called "film" to light. Yes, film--the ode to ph...
Article | 3/03/2011 Digitize your music
In my lifetime, music has been delivered on vinyl, cassettes, eight-track tapes, CDs, and audio DVDs. How do I listen to it now? Usually with a PC or ...
Article | 5/02/2011 Prepare your PC for future data disasters
Reformatting and restoring a PC is not fun--in the way spending 2 hours in the dentist's chair is not fun. You have to back up all your data (and pray...
Article | 20/01/2011 Convert DVDs to play on a WDTV box
QUESTION: I need some advice about video conversion. Using DivX, a WDTV Live drive and a large hard drive, I've copied my entire DVD collection to dis...
Article | 11/11/2010 Get 5GB of free cloud-sync storage from SugarSync
Wouldn't it be cool if you had a "magic" folder on your PC, one that automatically synced its contents with the Web, your other PCs, your cell phone, ...
Article | 5/11/2010 How to pick NAS for any business
Network-attached storage (NAS) can make your business easier to run and more efficient in multiple ways.
Article | 27/10/2010 Flash Drive 101: Copying files, removing viruses
The other day, my wife asked me how to copy a PowerPoint presentation to a flash drive so she could take it with her to school. I was a little shocked...
Article | 22/10/2010 Flash Drive 101: Protecting Your Drive from Viruses
Flash drives are virus magnets. This is a generally accepted truth, but today I learned it firsthand.
Article | 21/07/2010 Laptop tips: Add RAM, recycle a hard drive
It's been almost a year since I served up some nice, hot laptop tips--and that's inexcusable. I'll make it up to you this week with some useful advice...
Article | 5/06/2010 DIY mod: add a USB power outlet to your car
In the very near future all cars will have built-in USB ports. Some do now, but until that future becomes a full-blown reality you can either wait or ...
Article | 5/06/2010 Fix Backup & Restore when it won't start
QUESTION: When I try to start the Backup & Restore utility on my new hard drive I get the error message: 'The backup application could not start due t...
Article | 5/06/2010 Find drivers for your hard drive
QUESTION: I backed up my Windows XP PC to a portable hard drive. This drive appears in Device Manager and Disk Management, but not in My Computer. My ...
Article | 21/05/2010 How to fix a broken USB port
QUESTION: My Windows 7 desktop PC has four USB ports, all of which are in use. However, no peripherals are automatically visible in Explorer.
Article | 5/05/2010 Keep your personal data off the market
In 2003, author and security pioneer Simson Garfinkel conducted a study of data he found on second-hand hard drives. On eBay, Garfinkel bought the har...
Article | 8/05/2010 Customize hard drive searches with Agent Ransack
Agent Ransack (free) allows for creating customized searches that go well beyond basic Windows searches. Its most powerful features are aimed at progr...
Article | 28/04/2010 How to: move your business to cloud computing
The Internet has changed the way people do nearly everything--from consuming media to performing research to maintaining relationships to communicatin...