Best backup practices and recovering lost data.
Backup and Recovery
What options do I have for cloud storage over 2TB?
Episode 1567
James fromJames has a large family that records many videos, and he's run out of storage in the cloud. He can't buy anymore iCloud to store everyone's movies and music. Leo says that James has transitioned to the enterprise-grade needs. Especially for backups. Leo says maybe just creating a duplicate Synology NAS off site and have it Sync. That way he can have as much storage he needs, rather than paying for it in the Cloud. It's also far more practical, since it won't take up bandwidth. Carbonite will even send a hard drive to back up and ship to them for storage. But that isn't readily available.
How can I recover my Google account?
Episode 1564
John fromJohn can't find his phone, and he can't see it through Google's location service. He also can't get into his account because he's lost the recovery codes. Leo also recommends going to the Google "I'm Having Trouble Logging in Page" and answer all the challenge questions. Then he'll be able to recover his account and get a new code.
Why can't I download photos to my phone from Google Photos?
Episode 1562
Arnold fromArnold has a frustrating time with Google photos because he can't download his photos to his phone, and when he deletes a photo in Google photos, it deletes it on his phone. Leo says turning off sync in Google Photos will prevent that. And unfortunately, he has to download each photo individually.
Should I back up my photos to the cloud?
Episode 1562
Don fromDon wants to know why he needs to back up his photos to the cloud and what should he use? Leo says backing up to the cloud is vital because if the computer hard drive fails, or the computer dies, you still have that data. Leo recommends a 3-2-1 strategy. Three copies, two formats, one off site. OneDrive and Carbonite are good, but you have to have it all in one folder, and OneDrive has a backup limit of 1TB which should be enough. Leo also has all his photos upload to Google Photos. Unlimited high-quality storage!
Can I use Time Machine with macOS Mojave?
Episode 1546
Charles fromCharles wants to know the best way to set up Time Machine on his Mac with macOS Mojave. Leo says that in the new OS, there is a new APFS file system, and there have been backup issues with Time Machine and others. He may need to use an external drive formatted with the old HFS file system. That will insure that if his internal drive dies, his backup is secure. Leo also recommends not using Time Machine as his primary backup system. He should make an image backup with SuperDuper.
What's a good alternative to Drobo?
Episode 1541
Rick fromRick bought a Drobo 2, and it's a bit flakier than his gen 1 Drobo. If it gets jostled, it has to reboot and rebuild. He's concerned that it's a single point of failure and he'll lose his data. Leo says that Drobos are a RAID (called Beyond Raid) where if one drive fails, it rebuilds form the other drives. So it's not really a single point of failure. But if all the drives go bad, then he's in a world of hurt.
Why are my browsers crashing?
Episode 1541
Steve fromSteve is having trouble with Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. After about 2 minutes, both apps crash. Leo says that it could be malware infecting his browsers. But more likely there's a render driver that both browsers use which is causing the crash when he visits certain websites. Leo recommends doing a thorough scan using Windows Defender, and he should also run the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool from the command line. To get to that, he can press the Windows Key and type MRT. Leo also suspects that Java is broken.
How can I clone my hard drive?
Episode 1541
Rob fromRob has set up a new computer, and he wants to clone his hard drive before he does anything else, so he'll have a backup. Leo says that's a great idea. Windows 10 has its own imaging utility under backup. But there are other solutions:
How can I stop a blue screen of death in Windows 10?
Episode 1536
Simon fromSimon recently encountered the dreaded Blue Screen of Death. He suspected it may be his Chrome browser. Could it be? Leo says that modern versions of Windows don't really allow a program to call a BSOD these days. The operating system protects against it. But it could be a bad driver. Flakey hardware like a power supply or loose RAM can also cause it. But Chrome doesn't have system access to cause a BSOD. If he can replicate it, that could lead him toward the culprit. If it's crashing right away, that's usually a hardware issue.
How can I move my data from one SSD to another?
Episode 1536
Sean fromSean has four hard drives on his computer. He then removed all the bloatware by reinstalling Windows. But now he has a full SSD and wants to know how to migrate all his settings, bookmarks, temp files, etc. to a larger drive. How can he do that? Leo says it's nontrivial to do this. The key is to make a perfect copy of his home directory. The problem is his Windows Registry. He can't just move that over. Settings for programs and logins are stored there, and he will lose those.
