Remember to make full drive image backups

[f0dder]

http://support.kaspe...m/viruses/rescuedisk

Free effective external scan, does wonders for cleanup of all sorts of evilware.

-Stoic Joker (October 15, 2012, 06:42 AM)

Thanks for the link - trying to diagnose a friend's royally messed-up laptop... I'm wagering hardware fault, it's either that or some really nasty malware.

Kaspersky's tool to write the ISO to USB flashdrive is severely retarded, though, it can't handle neither 16- or 8gig drives. 32bit arithmetic bug?

[nosh]

You know what thing we need to add to our "kit" of tools recommended for dealing with data loss situations is: A second PC.

+1

I added a Mac Mini to my home setup a couple of weeks back. It basically serves as an HTPC, and could serve as a backup computer if the main machine goes on the fritz. It's nice to be able to shut down the beast (noisy, hot...) at night. I'm sure my power bill's going to be considerably less since the AC and the main machine both run in the same room nearly 24x7.

OT:

Spoiler

A side benefit: running OSX has made me appreciate my current (XP) setup a lot more. OK, 15 years vs. 15 days of exposure to an OS is probably a contributing factor.

I like some ways in which it's different from Windows (no registry!   ) but the "it just works" thing is sooo much baloney. It just... wouldn't let me login after I changed my username (this happened in the first 5 minutes of running the new machine, hilarious  ) - had to restart a couple of times to fix that, it just... couldn't repartition a 3 TB external drive that it had formatted and partitioned earlier (a confirmed bug) and it just... froze the f*** up on more than one occasion when third party apps raised some hell. D-oh!

[rjbull]

You know what thing we need to add to our "kit" of tools recommended for dealing with data loss situations is: A second PC.

-mouser (October 15, 2012, 10:00 AM)

+1.  And maybe a second router too.  When my router failed, it was a pain to even order another one.  Without Internet access, it's getting very hard to do anything with computers, from finding help to ordering parts.

[40hz]

Thanks for the link - trying to diagnose a friend's royally messed-up laptop... I'm wagering hardware fault, it's either that or some really nasty malware.

-f0dder (October 15, 2012, 12:15 PM)

FWIW, I have an old PC dubbed Sydney Cove that sports a very stripped down version of Windows and is loaded with every form of malware scanner I could put my hands on. It's never connected to my internal network. (Most times I leave its NIC unplugged.) I use it to scan and disinfect suspect and severely infected Windows HDs when all else fails to root out the problem. Just pull the drive from its PC, mount it on SC, and "Bob's yer uncle."

It has yet to fail although sometimes it only results in my being able to safely salvage the user's data since some malware occasionally damages Windows enough it becomes unbootable after the scrubbing.

Right now I just nuke and then reimage Sydney Cove's drive after each use to remain as safe as possible.

I was tempted to implement it as a virtual machine, but haven't gotten around to it. And in the wake of some new nastiness that can affect virtual machines I think I may just keep it on hardware for the time being.

YMMV  

[mouser]

I think an important way to think about backing up stuff is to consider what you are protecting yourself AGAINST.

I make full drive images to protect myself against a hard drive failure, or a malware attack; in such a scenario the only good option is to restore the entire operating system and all installed programs to a known good state.  The odds of this happening are very low on a day to day basis, so I don't do this very often -- perhaps once a month.  I try to do this to external drives which are only connected for this purpose.

I have versioned document backups running in real time, onto a separate hard drive mounted on my pc; I do this to protect myself from accidentally deleted a file i later realize i need, or making changes to a document that i realize i shouldn't have, etc.  This has to run all the time.

Now this dual approach takes care of most of my WORRIES.  However, I have recently forced myself to use an online backup system.  Even though I dislike the speed of such a thing, I am forcing myself to use it because it's the only protection I have against a fire or robbery that would result in the PHYSICAL loss of both my computer and my onsite backup drives, or against the unlikely scenario of a voracious malware that struck while my backup drives were connected.  This is a very low risk event, but the total catastrophic loss that would result from it is enough to scare me into using an online backup solution.

Keeping an old ENCRYPTED full drive image at a friends house (or safety deposit box) is also a good protection against robbery+fire.

[tomos]

I have versioned document backups running in real time, onto a separate hard drive mounted on my pc; I do this to protect myself from accidentally deleted a file i later realize i need, or making changes to a document that i realize i shouldn't have, etc.  This has to run all the time.

Now this dual approach takes care of most of my WORRIES.  However, I have recently forced myself to use an online backup system.

-mouser (October 20, 2012, 03:57 PM)

I back up [my versioned backups of important stuff] online.
Should do the off-site backup as well but dont ...

[rgdot]

So this begs another question may be in another thread, beside the big usual places (newegg, etc.) where can I find cheap external hds shipped to Canada?

[IainB]

Just thought it might be useful to make a side note in this discussion thread about the Volume Shadow Copy facility and in particular ShadowExplorer, if you don't have access to Volume Shadow Copies.
In the event that you didn't make a full drive image backup, or had somehow irretrievably lost/deleted something prior to backup, then accessing a VSC might just save your bacon. Not to be relied upon as a standard backup/recovery tool though.

I don't think I had heard of ShadowExplorer before reading of it in the DC Forum:

• Re: Special File Recovery Software
• Re: IDEA: TELL me how many objects I am deleting!
• Re: What are the options for restricting access to applications?

As it says on the ShadowExplorer pages:

ShadowExplorer
Since the Volume Shadow Copy Service is included, and turned on by default, in all editions of Windows Vista/7, why not take advantage of it? All it takes is an additional tool like ShadowExplorer, that can access the shadow storage and make the point-in-time copies accessible to the user.

Features
    * Show available point-in-time copies
    * Browse through Shadow Copies
    * Retrieve versions of files and folders

[wraith808]

^ Thanks for bumping that.  It looks quite interesting.