Hi!

Greetings from ... Salt Lake City! As you read this I'm attending a conference there and geeking out with techie friends. :-)

If you run Windows 10 you really, really want to back up before the October update arrives on your machine. Critical: Back Up Before the 1809 Windows 10 Update! explains why this is extra important this time around.

It's not a secret that I'm a big fan of cloud storage, and Dropbox in particular. If you have a smartphone and take pictures with it, automated upload is one reason why.

Find a file you're itching to delete, but you're just not sure if you should? You'll want to read Is it Safe to Delete This File? to figure out if, and how, you can, safely.

I'm seeing more occurrences of external drives that when plugged in make the connection sound but still don't appear in Windows File Explorer. Read Why Doesn't My External Drive Appear When Plugged In? to learn what to do. Chances are it'll work just fine.

Enjoy this week's newsletter...

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Back Up Smartphone Photos Using Dropbox

I'm going to take a small departure from my usual PC-centric discussions, and talk for a moment about using your smartphone.

Specifically, since I'm such a fan of Dropbox, I want to show you how to install and use Dropbox as an automatic way of backing up the photographs you take using your smartphone.

I'll use my old Android-based Samsung Galaxy Note for these examples, but the concept applies to just about any smartphone running either IOS or Android.

Continue Reading: Back Up Smartphone Photos Using Dropbox
https://askleo.com/17803

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Is it Safe to Delete This File?

My C: and D: drives have many gigabytes of .DAT files under “Documents and Settings”. I'm trying to free up space on the C: drive. Can I delete any of these files? I really don't know what they are, how they got there, or why they occupy so much space on my computer!

I don't know.

Honestly, I have no idea either what they are, how they got there, or why they occupy so much space. That's the problem with “.dat” files — there's no way to know what they are without more information.

But I do have some ideas on how to determine if deleting them is ok, and ways to do it safely — and those ideas apply to any file type, not just “.dat”.

Continue Reading: Is it Safe to Delete This File?
https://askleo.com/2841

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Why Doesn't My External Drive Appear When Plugged In?

Some time ago, when attempting to back up a new Windows 10 laptop, I inserted one of my external USB drives and … nothing. Since then, I've heard similar reports from others. If anything, it seems to be getting a little worse in recent months.

Now, to be clear, I don't have an answer as to why things don't appear.

But I can tell you what seems to work to make it show up.

Continue Reading: Why Doesn't My External Drive Appear When Plugged In?
https://askleo.com/23541

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Critical: Back Up Before the 1809 Windows 10 Update!

Several media outlets are reporting that some, though not all, Windows 10 upgrades to the 1809 October update have lost data files in the process. It's apparently a bug in the update. While it's unclear how many people are affected, even if it's just a few, it's a bad thing.

There are steps to take to prevent data loss. Hopefully, you're already taking them.

Continue Reading: Critical: Back Up Before the 1809 Windows 10 Update!
https://askleo.com/64699

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