Tax Returns on my laptop

I'll let others who know better answer your specific questions. I just want to let you know to be aware that if Dell can't fix your computer, they will find a pretense to void your warranty and they will not do a thing for you. They did that to me with two different computers, and I'll never do business with them again.

1. You don't say what's wrong with your laptop, but if the hard drive is still functioning, you can delete/remove the files. The procedure is not simple (or free), but fairly easy. Assuming you have another computer available, you need to remove the hard drive from the laptop and connect it as an external hard drive to the working computer using something like the Kingwin EZ-Connect
   formatting link
   You can then access all the files on the laptop drive as if they were on an external USB drive (which they are). When you are done copying and deleting, replace the drive to the laptop.
2. It's not just your tax returns you need to worry about. Any banking programs, Quicken, basically anything that contains personally identifiable information such as SSNs, account numbers. stored passwords, photos could be a problem. You are relying on the integrity of the employees working on your system.

3) If you have the program disks, yes. (Don't forget to install all update patches afterwards.) If you downloaded the software, you should be able to retrieve your license information from Intuit. 4) I don't use Google Drive, so I don't know. I suppose it depends on what folders you have linked to Google Drive.

Ira Smilovitz, EA Leonia, NJ

Some of this depends on exactly how and why the laptop is not functioning well. Since you don't say it doesn't work at all, I'll assume you can do some operations and in particular access your files.

The most important thing would be to back up your personal data. One fairly easy way to do this would be to copy them to a USB thumb drive. Alternatively you could get an external hard drive and back up to there. It would be a good idea to have your files backed up anyway. Especially since if there are disk-related issues, you may get your laptop back with a new, empty disk. It would not contain any of your files or programs.

So copying the files and potentially the applications before you send the machine in would be a good idea. Depending on what you do with Google drive, you may already have some of your files backed up. You can go look at the contents of your Google drive to see what is backed up there.

Yes. You can just delete them in the normal way. But don't do that without first backing them up. If you drag them to the trash, you need to remember to empty the trash.

If you want to be extra cautious, there is usually a "super erase" that you can do that will overwrite the files before deleting them. That might require a separate utility program to do that.

As a general rule, it isn't the best idea. If your operating system (Windows?) has disk encryption and you have enabled it, then it should be OK. I use a Mac, so I'm not sure what is available. Macs have been encrypting disk content for several years.

Should be. You could also consider backing up those programs. Some tax programs can create a (large) archive that includes a copy of the software. You would need to store that on another computer, disk drive, thumb drive or Google drive. Where ever you have enough storage space available.

Depends on how you set it up. Generally I don't think people have Google Drive set up to back up their applications. But you could do that, again, given enough space.

Make sure you have a backup of your files. They may get deleted during the servicing of your laptop, especially if the disk needs replacing. If you don't have the disk encrypted, you should move your personal documents off the machine.

Good luck.

Ginger snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote in news:986a96ee-877f-47b6-957b- snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com:

Hi,

First, you should not return your laptop to Dell without moving your personal data off the laptop's harddrive. Even if you trusted Dell to not 'peek' at your personal data, Dell could accidentally or intentionally delete your data. They may have to reinstall your OS, and that requires wiping your drive clean. Second, I believe that their policy is that they are not responsible for lost data.

I would image my laptop's harddrive, or clone it to an external harddrive. Macrium Reflect Free will do what you need. Next, if the laptop's harddrive still has the Dell recovery partition, I would recover the OS back to the harddrive, and send it off to Dell. When it comes back, use Macrium Reflect Free to restore your data and programs.

You'll have to learn a little bit about backup/restore/clone, if you're not already familiar with these procedures.

It's hard to advise not knowing what's wrong with your laptop. But, don't send it to Dell with your private data.

Good luck.

Just a thought. If your problem is not disk-rated, then remove the HD, replace, do a min. W install, send it in.

mel