Your photos, music and data are just a virus or hard disk failure away from oblivion. Build a triple-layer defence using PC Authority's practical guide.

Stuck for storage space? Upgrade to one of the latest disks and you’ll benefit from better performance too

Does dropping a hard disk from a third floor window or dunking it in a cup of tea mean curtains for your data? We visit Ontrack's data recovery labs to find out.

New wizards make it easier to use, and the range of operations is impressive for such a reasonable price

Disk-imaging software can be put to many varied uses, and products like Drive Image prove particularly useful in our labs when upgrading to a new hard disk or for swiftly refreshing a test system.

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Data recovery is a mystical and varied art that shares much with archaeology. Depending on where you dig for data you may or may not find what you are looking for, and the longer you leave going after your lost data the greater the chance it will be worn away by age and reduced to fragments of its former self.

Every expert has a toolkit. Tim Dean takes you through the 10 tools any Windows expert cannot live without. So, to give you a head start, here are PC Authority's top 10 tools for the ultimate Windows user.

Looking to build your dream machine? We explore the latest components on the market, and give you advice on which ones to hunt down, along with the general price you can expect to pay for each major component.

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package

Devices that attach storage to the network aren't new, but until now they've been either very expensive or limited in ability. But this little marvel from Asus changes all that. The WL-HDD can put a hard disk on the network with no drivers or client software required, and it can do this wirelessly via 802.11g.

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Unless you keep your computer disconnected from a network and under secure lock and key there will always be the potential for prying eyes to access the data on your hard disk.

PC Authority takes a trip down computer memory lane and discovers just how PC technology has evolved... and how Microsoft and IBM nearly destroyed each other.

USB 2.0 hard disks are a convenient way of backing up your data, but if you want to share the files with other computers over a small office or home network they're not ideal. But Linksys has an alternative. The Network Storage Link (NSL) takes a USB 2.0 hard disk or flash drive and puts it on the network.

Many people upgrade their PCs by adding the latest CPU or more memory, but leave their old hard disk in place. The humble hard disk is one of the slowest components inside a PC (in fact, only optical

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package

Protect your PC from itself and yourself

Impressive and free antivirus and antispyware package