Make the backups!

[Matej]

Because my stupid decision, I was just attacked by a combination of a very felonious and resistant trojan horses, that infected my system files, MBR table and one of them set itself as the system restore file, so it attacked my clean reinstalled Windows. It took me nearly the three days to clean everything and reinstall the software.

The reason, why I am writing this is, that I didn't loose any bit of data, because I had multiple backups. Valuable data are cross-stored on another internal harddisk (something like non-realtime raid) and another backup is on the external HDD. It means that despite the complications I didn't loose any aircraft picture, any PDF file, any saved web page... So I appeal to you - MAKE YOUR OWN BACKUPS! You never know, what can happen with your valuable data, that you collected for years!

 

[Antonio]

Thanks Matej, I'm already Mr Backup.

 

[Hammer Birchgrove]

I did a back-up on a portable hard disk when I just had bought my new laptop and moved stuff from my stationary and my old laptop. Should do it again, really. Good call Matej.

 

[Bailey]

Could not agree more! Always, always backup your files, ideally on a daily basis, but a minimum of weekly. Get good anti-virus and firewall programs installed, and keep them updated. I used to be an I.T director, so I know the cost of loosing data.

 

[Matej]

reminder

 

[Nik]

And don't trust the back-ups !!

I had slide-mount D-drives on both my Browser and CAD_Tower PCs, a vast library of 3D meshes and mapped textures *mostly* duplicated. Then one D: drive began to fail. Before I'd completed the back-up via a USB soap-on-rope, the *** drive died and took who-knew-what with it. However, I had the partial back-up on the other drive, many of the original zipped files in PCs' 'download' directories plus essentials on a portable drive. Next thing, my second D-drive began to fail. I managed to salvage most of those files, but my library was never the same and, the wwweb having moved on, many download sources had vanished...

Uh, yes, I'd bought those three drives at the same time. A year later, my portable drive stuttered to an end...

I've had branded CD-Rs fail though stored 'correctly'. I've even had a branded 4GB SD card lose 'read' access to half its capacity.

One result is that I now have two big NAS drives, which are powered down between 'updates' to prolong their life expectancy. These days, I've dropped out of CAD, so only archive my SF WIP weekly. Also, I work in Notepad, so my tales are pure text, compact and robust. I've lost commercial documents to Word crashes, and do not wish to repeat the experience...

There's a lot to be said for on-line 'cloud' storage, but I'd be tempted to use two locations to be sure, to be sure...

FWIW, when I bought a reference book on Spice modelling through Amazon, I was *most* surprised to find a floppy disk tucked inside the back cover. No, I'm not prepared to try it...

A robust Firewall is a must. I've a paranoid Norton's, and my router has its hardware firewall facilities enabled, plus 64 bit encryption on lap-top's WiFi link to deter drive-by hacking.