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Remember to make full drive image backups

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mouser:
A family member recently got hit with a nasty malware virus (File Recovery Virus).
The steps required to remove it are numerous and painful, and there is no guarantee you'd get everything.

Let this be a reminder to everyone that the idea of removing all traces of a nasty malware/virus after you are exploited is at best a very troubling solution.

You cannot guarantee you won't be hit by one of these, but the best thing you can do if you are, is have a FULL DRIVE BACKUP on an external hard drive that you can restore, to put your machine back to where it was before the infection.

If you don't yet have a drive imaging tool and an external hard drive, go out and get these now.

It doesn't really matter which brand you use, and many of the external hard drives come with imaging software included.

Decide on a schedule (like once a month) to perform a full drive backup, and follow it religiously.

I'd also add that for optimum safety you probably want to keep that external drive disconnected when not being used for backup, to avoid the possibility that a really evil malware could wipe it -- though that's unlikely.


Bottom line -- put yourself in a position where you don't have to go through the hell of trying to clean your files of an infection and hope you can get all the bad stuff removed and never know for sure.  Have a drive image you are willing to go back to.

40hz:
+1 x 10^24! :Thmbsup:

What we suggest to our non-techy clients for their personal machines:

1. Set up your PC with at least 2 partitions C & D.

2. Put your OS and programs on C

3. Move your MyDocuments folder to D

4. Make a habit of saving all your data to folders on the D drive if you don't like the using the MyDocuments folder for everything.

5. Download a copy of Macrium Reflect Free Edition. Install it and follow the directions for making a rescue CD. Make at least two copies. Store the disks in a safe place.

6. Use Macrium to copy the C (system) partition to an external drive either bi-weekly - or after any major system upgrade or new program installation. Keep the two most recent copies.

7. Use Macrium to copy the D (data) partition to an external drive at least once per week - although daily or every other day would be best. Just kick it off when you're done for the day and walk away. Keep your two or three most recent copies.

8. Stop worrying.

 8) :)

Note: this is far from ideal from an efficiency viewpoint. But it's as close to "no-brainer" as we can make it. Fortunately, once set up, it's easy enough for the most technophobic user to handle and understand.

Carol Haynes:
By the way if you rely on Windows 7 backup for imaging I discovered it no longer works on 3Tb drives (or any drive that has a 4mb block size). Seems Windows backup is optimise for 512kb block size.

Very annoying as a customer just bought a 3Tb Seagate drive to do backups.

It is supposed to be fixed in Windows 8.

FWIW Paragon Free Backup and Recovery seems to do a good imaging job, though it lacks a lot of the subtlety of their paid offerings.

NigelH:
Partition level back tools are somewhat unreliable - even if they offer file level recovery from their image backups.

I'd add a 3rd level of backup.
Use a folder synchronization tool to backup your important data folders to separate external drives or machines with shared folders.
Make sure you do a one way sync - targeting the remote folders.
That way, if you accidentally delete something, the deletion is not sync'd to the remote folders and you can reverse the direction of the folder sync to restore what was deleted. Or to delete from the remote folders what you intentionally deleted on the primary.
Folder level synchronization is also very quick comparatively.
There are free options for this as well as paid options.

If this (conceptually) is difficulty for you to do, get a copy of  Fab's AutoBackup 3 (EUR 4.90 or $6.50 ).
Fabs "knows" about most of the default folders on all recent Windows releases and will backup your important stuff.
You can also add separate folders to the backups.
If you restore, it knows how to put everything back in the correct place even if you restore from backups made on an XP machine to a Windows 7 or 8 machine etc.
Fab's backups are "full" backups, i.e. all your data files each time, so this takes a while. But if you start running of space on your target drive, you can delete the older backups.
Fab's Autobackup tools

rjbull:
have a FULL DRIVE BACKUP on an external hard drive that you can restore-mouser (October 14, 2012, 11:37 AM)
--- End quote ---

How many levels of old backups is it recommended to keep?

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