Ollie's Techno-Stress

[OLLIE]

A few weeks ago I had a nasty virus attack my laptop. It took the technicians a week and a half to get it back to me. They had to wipe the drive a half dozen times to finally get it fixed. Now I've been dealing with putting all the software back on Kane restoring all my files. I've never had anything like this hit one of my computers before. With my nasty work schedule I'm just now getting the important software back on the computer and getting back in the forums. What a PITA thIs has been. I'm even doing this post from my iTouch because I haven't reestablished my favorites for my Internet.

[salad_man]

that sucks, any idea from who or where? what type of virus if you know that is?

[smslavin]

Just got home from my work grip so feel free to holler if you need anything.

[gon2srf]

Bummer Ollie, good luck. FYI A while ago I bought a 2 TB Seagate Replica backup drive for around $100.00. Everything is backed up and updated daily on both my 500gb hard drives. One of my HD's crashed and after a reformat I reloaded from the Seagate, worked like a charm I have 20 years of photos and docs saved. A fire would wipe it all out but it least it is some peace of mind.

What is Kane?

putting all the software back on Kane restoring all my files

[socal_rubi]

I never keep any files on my computers. I have a Lacie raid drive. It is two 1tb drives in one enclosure. Everything is stored there. It writes the same info to both drives simultaneously. The drives are hot swappable. If one goes bad I pop it out the back, slap a new one in and all my files from the good one are automatically copied to the new drive. These days it's not enough to have just one external drive. You have to have a backup of that as well. In my opinion two drives is still not enough, three would be better. NASA has tripple redundancy on everything for a reason, two systems can go bad simultaneously, but the chances drop significantly when you add a third. My computers internal drive is only for the OS and software. If I ever do get a virus I just pop in a new drive, reload the OS and my software, voila, brand new squeaky clean computer. I have become quite the pro at doing fresh installs of XP and W7. our computers at work get viruses all the time and I have done a dozen or so fresh installs. I keep extra drives around just incase. I always buy the recovery disks for any computer I purchase, whether it's for work or home.

[cruiserlarry]

I never keep any files on my computers. I have a Lacie raid drive. It is two 1tb drives in one enclosure. Everything is stored there. It writes the same info to both drives simultaneously. The drives are hot swappable. If one goes bad I pop it out the back, slap a new one in and all my files from the good one are automatically copied to the new drive.

If files are copied to both drives simultaneously, than an infected file would infect both drives, correct ? The location of your files doesn't seem to be important when dealing with viruses. A back-up drive (or two, with a rotation system so that your data is never more than a day old) is good protection against drive failure or software malfunction. But unless you have a good virus protection system checking / cleaning the file before storing or opening it, you'll be holding an infected file that will still attack the computer's OS once it is loaded and opened...

[OLLIE]

Bummer Ollie, good luck. FYI A while ago I bought a 2 TB Seagate Replica backup drive for around $100.00. Everything is backed up and updated daily on both my 500gb hard drives. One of my HD's crashed and after a reformat I reloaded from the Seagate, worked like a charm I have 20 years of photos and docs saved. A fire would wipe it all out but it least it is some peace of mind.

What is Kane?

putting all the software back on Kane restoring all my files

I have no idea what "Kane" is Scott. I think that popped on for an auto insert for a word I misspelled on my iTouch.

I back everything up on a SeaGate 1 TB Drive I got when I bought the computer. Once a month or so I back that up on a 2 TB drive I've had for a few years now. I think I only lost one or two items. What sucks is that I lost all the formatting for all of my images in Lightroom. The format files were stored on the computer's harddrive so I lost all of that. Now if I want to share any og my old pics they have to be processed again.

[gon2srf]

Bummer Ollie, good luck. FYI A while ago I bought a 2 TB Seagate Replica backup drive for around $100.00. Everything is backed up and updated daily on both my 500gb hard drives. One of my HD's crashed and after a reformat I reloaded from the Seagate, worked like a charm I have 20 years of photos and docs saved. A fire would wipe it all out but it least it is some peace of mind.

What is Kane?

putting all the software back on Kane restoring all my files

I have no idea what "Kane" is Scott. I think that popped on for an auto insert for a word I misspelled on my iTouch.

I back everything up on a SeaGate 1 TB Drive I got when I bought the computer. Once a month or so I back that up on a 2 TB drive I've had for a few years now. I think I only lost one or to items.

Gotcha. Sounds like you are up and running, glad you did not lose too much. You need to stay off those porn sites!

[socal_rubi]

I never keep any files on my computers. I have a Lacie raid drive. It is two 1tb drives in one enclosure. Everything is stored there. It writes the same info to both drives simultaneously. The drives are hot swappable. If one goes bad I pop it out the back, slap a new one in and all my files from the good one are automatically copied to the new drive.

If files are copied to both drives simultaneously, than an infected file would infect both drives, correct ? The location of your files doesn't seem to be important when dealing with viruses. A back-up drive (or two, with a rotation system so that your data is never more than a day old) is good protection against drive failure or software malfunction. But unless you have a good virus protection system checking / cleaning the file before storing or opening it, you'll be holding an infected file that will still attack the computer's OS once it is loaded and opened...

That would depend on what files you are saving to your ED.

Viruses infect operating systems, they don't infect already saved files like pictures, videos, word, or excel documents that are already on your ED. These days, most viruses infect computers through the internet and email. Viruses can infect your OS through downloaded photos, video, email, and just about any other downloaded file. They hide on the main drive, in OS folders where it will be hard to find them. They have bogus names that make them look like legit OS files. Viruses will not infect an ED unless you download an infected file to your ED. They don't target an ED and then save themselves there.

I never use the backup functions that come with some ED's, and I don't use other backup software. That kind of backup could possibly backup the infected file to your ED. What I use mine for is storage. I only place files on there that I know are clean. Like pictures I have taken, video I have shot, word or excel documents that I have created. I do save some important emails there as well, but only ones that I know are clean.

It all comes down to how you manage your files, and your browsing, email behavior. I don't visit websites that are likely to be infected. I NEVER open mail from anyone I don't know. I NEVER open video, photo, or document attachments that I'm not expecting, even from people I know. If there is a file in an email, or from the internet that I want to keep forever, it gets sequestered on my main drive until I have determined it is safe then I save it to my ED. I have McAfee Suite running on my system, and it scans everything coming in and going out.