How to Clone a Hard Drive to an SSD

by Irv Krick | Mar 30, 2024 | Windows 10

How to Clone a Hard Drive to an SSD

1. Preparation Before Cloning:

Before you start, make sure you have the following:

• An SSD with sufficient capacity to accommodate your data.
• A backup of essential data from the target disk (since the new data will overwrite it).
• Properly initialize the SSD in Disk Management and set its partition style to match the HDD.

2. Choose a Cloning Tool:

There are several free tools available for cloning HDD to SSD. Here are a few options:

a. EaseUS Partition Master Free:

• Reliable and free.
• Supports all Windows OS versions.
• Features include cloning entire disks or specific partitions, aligning SSDs, and handling bad sectors.
• Download EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition.

b. MiniTool Partition Wizard:

• Another free tool with a straightforward interface.
• Supports cloning and aligning SSDs.
• Download MiniTool Partition Wizard.

3. Steps to Clone HDD to SSD:

a. Install and Launch EaseUS Partition Master:

• Select Disk Clone on the left side.
• Choose Clone Partition to clone the target partition from HDD to SSD.

b. Select the Original Partition from HDD:

• Click Next to proceed.

4. Start the Cloning Process:

• The tool will begin cloning your HDD to the SSD.
• Once completed, shut down your PC.

5. Swap the Drives:

• Install the new SSD into your laptop or PC.
• Boot up and enjoy the faster performance!

Remember to follow the specific instructions provided by the tool you choose. Cloning ensures a seamless transition to your new SSD without reinstalling the OS or applications. Happy upgrading! 🚀

!Cloning Process

For more detailed instructions, you can refer to this PCWorld article on cloning HDD to SSD for free. 😊

Photopea review: A free Photoshop alternative that works in your browser

by Irv Krick | Jul 29, 2021 | Windows 10

You don’t need to spend money to get a quality photo editor. In fact, you don’t even need to download an app.

Some powerful photo editors require a monthly subscription fee or a high initial investment. Photopea bucks both of these trends, and instead gives you a free option that doesn’t even require you to download anything.

Photopea is a unique editing application — I’ve never used anything like it. It’s a Photoshop alternative that you just open in your web browser. Both the interface and its feature list will be familiar to anyone who has used Photoshop. While it doesn’t have every feature of Adobe’s flagship photo editor, Photopea isn’t a lightweight editor either. It has enough power and features to keep many users from having to purchase a photo editing software.

It’s free and open source, with some ads that help support its development, but the ads aren’t intrusive. You can upgrade to a premium account for $9 per 30 days to remove ads and support the developer.

Web-based editing

Photopea

A powerful photo editor that lives in your browser.

Photopea is a powerful photo editor that’s a progressive web app — it lives in your browser. You can use it to make edits to photos, enhance them, and use both vector and raster tools all without having to download a thing.

• Free at Photopea

Power within a browser

Photopea looks and feels like Adobe Photoshop, and that’s a good thing because it feels very familiar to creators. If you’ve used any photo editing software that has a similar design, you’ll be able to dive right into Photopea. You can make global edits like adjusting an image’s HSL or brightness, and also make more specific edits like selecting an image from a background. It works with raster images and vectors and supports several file formats.

What’s impressive about this to me is that it’s all within your browser. Photopea doesn’t require a download. It’s a PWA that you can either use inside a normal browser interface or “install” as an app through browsers such as Google Chrome or the version of Microsoft Edge that’s powered by Chromium. But even when “installed”, you still don’t have to download anything. The app is in your browser, but the editing is done on your machine. All of your work is stored locally, so nothing is put into a server or a cloud.

Because of how Photopea works, you can open it instantly on just about any machine, including PCs running Windows 10 in S Mode or even Chromebooks. It works with PSD files well and also supports the vast majority of file formats that image editors will need. It’s a great photo editor for working across platforms and being able to jump into an edit on any device without having to download anything.

Editing anywhere

Photopea’s most significant selling point is that it’s so easy to use anywhere. It works very well with PSD files, with support for layer editing and saving a file as a PSD file. That means that you can take a file that you have on the cloud, a USB drive, or any device, and make some quick edits on any device without having to download anything.

For a professional user, Photopea isn’t going to replace Photoshop, though that’d be a big thing to ask from a free piece of software. Instead, Photopea is an excellent companion for photo editors who need to make edits on a machine that isn’t their normal setup.

If you’re a prosumer or casual editor, Photopea will meet many of your demands. It’s convenient, can handle a wide range of edits, and is easy to learn thanks to Photopea’s online tools.

An impressive and convenient editor

I’m a fan of Photopea. It’s unique, is a progressive web app, and can work on just about any platform. I love that it supports PSD files so well and plays nicely with other file formats. It’s a good companion for professional users who have to make an edit on a machine other than their usual setup and a good editor for prosumers and casual editors looking for something more than a basic editor.

4 out of 5    

I ran into some performance issues when I tested it, which is unfortunate. Selecting a background to remove was a bit janky in my testing, but other edits ran smoothly. It’s hard to judge how much that will vary for each person as hardware setups can differ significantly. What I can say is that editing in Photopea was less smooth than using my photo editor of choice, Affinity Photo. That being said, Photopea still performed fairly well, and the fact that it’s free and can be tested by literally clicking on a link makes it worth a try for anyone on the hunt for a photo editor.

Pros

• Free version isn’t restricted
• Large feature set
• Doesn’t require a download
• Can work in several browsers

Cons

• Performance can stutter during edits

Anti-Virus. Is Windows Defender good enough

by Irv Krick | Jun 30, 2021 | Windows 10

What’s the Best Antivirus for Windows 10? (Is Windows Defender Good Enough?) Windows 10 won’t hassle you to install an antivirus like Windows 7 did. Since Windows 8, Windows now includes a built-in free antivirus called Windows Defender. But is it really the best for protecting your PC–or even just good enough? Windows Defender was originally known as Microsoft Security Essentials back in the Windows 7 days when it was offered as a separate download, but now it’s built right into Windows and it’s enabled by default. Many people have been trained to believe that you should always install a third-party antivirus, but that isn’t the best solution for today’s security problems, like ransomware. So What’s the Best Antivirus? Please Don’t Make Me Read All This What you need is a great team: Malwarebytes + Windows Defender We definitely recommend you read the entire article so you fully understand why we recommend a combination of Windows Defender and Malwarebytes, but since we know that tons of people will just scroll down and skim, here is our TL;DR recommendation for how to keep your system secure:

• Use the Built-in Windows Defender for traditional antivirus – the criminals have moved on from regular viruses to focus on Ransomware, zero-day attacks, and even worse malware that traditional antivirus just can’t handle. Windows Defender is built right in, blazing fast, doesn’t annoy you, and does its job cleaning old-school viruses.
• Use Malwarebytes for Anti-Malware and Anti-Exploit – all of the huge malware outbreaks these days are using zero-day flaws in your browser to install ransomware to take over your PC, and only Malwarebytes provides really excellent protection against this with their unique anti-exploit system. There’s no bloatware and it won’t slow you down.

Editor’s Note: This doesn’t even mention the fact that Malwarebytes, the company, is staffed by some really great people that we really respect. Every time we talk to them, they are excited about the mission of cleaning up the internet. It’s not often that we give an official How-To Geek recommendation, but this is our favorite product by far, and something we use ourselves. A One-Two Punch: Antivirus and Anti-Malware You need antivirus software on your computer, no matter how “carefully” you browse. Being smart isn’t enough to protect you from threats, and security software can help act as another line of defense. ADVERTISEMENT However, antivirus itself is no longer adequate security on its own. We recommend you use a good antivirus program and a good anti-malware program. Together, they will protect you from most of the biggest threats on the internet today: viruses, spyware, ransomware, and even potentially unwanted programs (PUPs)—among many others. So which ones should you use, and do you need to pay money for them? Let’s start with the first part of that combo: antivirus. Is Windows Defender Good Enough? When you install Windows 10, you’ll have an antivirus program already running. Windows Defender comes built-in to Windows 10, and automatically scans programs you open, downloads new definitions from Windows Update, and provides an interface you can use for in-depth scans. Best of all, it doesn’t slow down your system, and mostly stays out of your way—which we can’t say about most other antivirus programs. For a short while, Microsoft’s antivirus fell behind the others when it came to comparative antivirus software tests—way behind. It was bad enough that we recommended something else, but it’s since bounced back, and now provides very good protection. So in short, yes: Windows Defender is good enough (as long as you couple it with a good anti-malware program, as we mentioned above—more on that in a minute). But Is Windows Defender the Best Antivirus? What About Other Programs? If you look at that antivirus comparison we linked to above, you’ll notice that Windows Defender, while good, does not get the highest ranks in terms of raw protection scores. So why not use something else? First, let’s look at those scores. AV-TEST found that it still caught 99.9% of the “widespread and prevalent malware” in April 2017, along with 98.8% percent of the zero-day attacks. Avira, one of AV-TEST’s top rated antivirus programs, has the exact same scores for April—but slightly higher scores in past months, so its overall rating is (for some reason) much higher. But Windows Defender isn’t nearly as crippled as AV-TEST’s 4.5-out-of-6 rating would have you believe.   Furthermore, security is about more than raw protection scores. Other antivirus programs may occasionally do a bit better in monthly tests, but they also come with a lot of bloat, like browser extensions that actually make you less safe, registry cleaners that are terrible and unnecesary, loads of unsafe junkware, and even the ability to track your browsing habits so they can make money. Furthermore, the way they hook themselves into your browser and operating system often causes more problems than it solves. Something that protects you against viruses but opens you up to other vectors of attack is not good security. Just look at all the extra garbage Avast tries to install alongside its antivirus. Windows Defender does not do any of these things—it does one thing well, for free, and without getting in your way. Plus, Windows 10 already includes the various other protections introduced in Windows 8, like the SmartScreen filter that should prevent you from downloading and running malware, whatever antivirus you use. Chrome and Firefox, similarly, include Google’s Safe Browsing, which blocks many malware downloads. How to Speed Up a Slow PC Volume 0%   If you hate Windows Defender for some reason and want to use another antivirus, you can use Avira. It has a free version that works fairly well, a pro version with a few extra features, and it provides great protection scores and only has the occasional popup ad (but it does have popup ads, which are annoying). The biggest problem is that you need to be sure to uninstall the browser extension it tries to force on you, which makes it hard to recommend to non-technical people. Antivirus Isn’t Enough: Use Malwarebytes, Too Antivirus is important, but these days, it’s more important that you use a good anti-exploit program to protect your web browser and plug-ins, which are the most targeted by attackers. Malwarebytes is the program we recommend here. Unlike traditional antivirus programs, Malwarebytes is good at finding “potentially unwanted programs” (PUPs) and other junkware. As of version 3.0, it also contains an anti-exploit feature, which aims to block common exploits in programs, even if they are zero-day attacks that have never seen before—like those nasty Flash zero-day attacks. It also contains anti-ransomware, to block extortion attacks like CryptoLocker. The latest version of Malwarebytes combines these three tools into one easy-to-use package for $40 per year. Malwarebytes claims to be able to replace your traditional antivirus entirely, but we disagree with this. It uses completely different strategies for protecting you: antivirus will block or quarantine harmful programs that find their way to your computer, while Malwarebytes attempts to stop harmful software from ever reaching your computer in the first place. Since it doesn’t interfere with traditional antivirus programs, we recommend you run both programs for the best protection. Update: Starting with Malwarebytes 4, the Premium version of Malwarebytes now registers itself as the system’s security program by default. In other words, it will handle all your anti-malware scanning and Windows Defender won’t run in the background. You can still run both at once if you like. Here’s how: In Malwarebytes, open Settings, click the “Security” tab, and disable the “Always register Malwarebytes in the Windows Security Center” option. With this option disabled, Malwarebytes won’t register itself as the system’s security application and both Malwarebytes and Windows Defender will run at the same time. Note that you can get some of Malwarebytes’ features for free, but with caveats. For example, the free version of Malwarebytes program will only scan for malware and PUPs on-demand—it won’t scan in the background like the premium version does. In addition, it doesn’t contain the anti-exploit or anti-ransomware features of the premium version. You can only get all three features in the full $40 version of Malwarebytes, which we recommend. But if you’re willing to forego anti-ransomware and always-on malware scanning, the free versions of Malwarebytes and Anti-Exploit are better than nothing, and you should definitely use them. There you have it: with a combination of a good antivirus program, Malwarebytes, and some common sense, you’ll be pretty well protected. Just remember that antivirus is only one of the standard computer security practices you should be following. Good digital hygiene isn’t a replacement for antivirus, but it is essential to making sure your antivirus can do its job.