The stress of finals is enough to drive just about anyone to their limit. When the woes of technological breakdowns compound that stress — as the campus saw when a Trunk service disruption brought ...

I knew better. I vowed to do routine backups after my last hard-drive failure. It didn't take long, however, to fall off the backup wagon. The process was difficult and time-consuming.

That's a huge convenience if your hard drive crashes after you've made an image of your drive. The free program ( www.hdclone.com ) is limited in both features and speed.

1] Disconnect and reconnect the drive The first thing you should do if an external drive keeps freezing whenever in use is reconnect the drive. Sometimes, the issue can be just a glitch, and ...

The serial number will be displayed. You can check your hard drive’s operating hours using a tool like CrystalDiskInfo, which reads S.M.A.R.T. data. This helps estimate the drive’s age.