diskpart

Infopackets Reader Bill G. writes: " Dear Dennis, My question is about how to compact a VHD file (virtual disk). I recently virtualized an old Windows 2016 server and am using Virtualbox as my hypervisor. In the process of updating and configuring ... the virtual machine, I created 3 snapshots (live backups) in case I needed to undo changes. The .VHD is the Server 2016 C Drive and was originally only 60GB - however, I noticed that the 'snapshots' folder has grown to a massive 168GB! I went into virtual machine's snapshot window and deleted all the snapshots, hoping to free up space on the disk ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Sam G. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have an old external 1 TB hard drive I'd like to format for use with Apple Time Machine backup. The problem is that the disk is currently formatted as NTFS and is not readable with Time Machine. I ... have searched Google on how to convert a Windows disk to Mac (format to HFS+ on Windows) but can't seem to find a solution to this problem. Any help would be appreciated! " My response: I asked Sam if he would like me to connect to his machine using my remote desktop support service in order to have a closer look, and he agreed. Below I will discuss ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Bob S. writes: " Dear Dennis, ... [I run an accounting firm and was recently hit with a ransomware attack which encrypted over 70,000 of my files . I nearly lost everything, though I was finally able to overcome this and recover ... my data through your help] ... What I need is a comprehensive backup solution that will allow me to automate my backups - which means having the backup drive attached to my system 24/7 - yet, the backup drive must be protected such that ransomware cannot spread to the drive and encrypt my backup data. If that were to happen, my backups would be ... (view more)