Computer wiped out again.

After my computer was wiped out by the last virus attack I thought I had every angle covered but, unfortunatly, it was not to be. My hard drive failed on Thursday night while I was backing up to a Zip disk. I now have a Zip disk containing a lot of important info that is unreadable and a Kapput main drive. I've fitted a new drive and reloaded all the software but I have lost a lot of data.

I noticed that BTinternet is advertising a backup service to a remote site for less than £4 a month. If your system dies you can just restore your essential data from the remote site. Has anybody used this service or have any other ideas because it's starting to get tedious.

Back Up...

Many people have different methods of backing up their data, but here is how I do it,

1. Fit a second Hard Drive for backup of documents and ghost image of OS and applications.

2. Software used for this is Ghost: Which will create a complete image of your complete hard drive. I use that everytime before adding any software. It takes on average 5 minute to create this image, then if your hard drive fails you can be up and running in a few minutes.

3. Back up data, ie docs, letters etc everyday using a piece of freeware called UpDate2, its a relatively easy to set up and is good at backing up, you can specify what you want to back up, I use it to keep backups of all my documents, my outlook PST files etc.

To that end if my hard drive was to fail now I can be up and running again with in an hour, which would include fitting new drive, restoring my OS / applications and docs.

Finally a good virus protection, which will auto update with out you having to remember to do it. In this case I use Norton.

As I mentioned earlier there are other methods which this forum will mention. As to using the internet for backup, not sure I would be happy with storing personnal data there. I use Yahoo Briefcase for the other engineers in my company to access TIB's, but that is all I would use it for.

Mick

i used to use drive image 7 to back up my main hard drive partition to a second drive*. it's a really easy to use program that works in windows unlike ghost. sadly, when i needed it to work, it wouldn't


i now use ghost (as yet not fully tested)

*samsung spinpoint 160GB. 7200rpm, 8mb cache, 3 year warranty for OEM units & loads of room. £99 delivered.

I see my name mentioned; blimey this forum is as alien to me as the GPS mumbo jumbo, i've only just learned to user a pen

Paragon said:

Cookie

Where from? - I am getter a dos message on boot up - saying something like

Click to expand...

Samsung SP1614N 160GB 8MB Cache - OEM (HD-009-SA) and they're only £76.38 + postage now

a word of caution: i have heard some dell PCs have custom BIOS features that prevent adding non dell supplied bits. this is s/h info, not first hand experience.

Computer virus

I hate to say this as I am sure there will be loads of flack from fellow members but one way of avoiding PC virus is run a Mac!
Micks back up method seems sound.
I just have a 120gb external HD mirroring my internal drive. I can just take it anywhere.
Barrie.

Paragon said:

Got two - a biege G3 and an iMac - if anyone is interested in buying them - I'll look up the spec - also full of decent software
Maybe the iMac is three years old - I upgraded the memory at the time - slot loading CD - Graphite - need a new "battery" to run the internal clock
G3 is the "famous" beige box - still as fast as some PC's
etc etc - no screen with the G3 - using it with a PC

Heavy - so wouldn't want to post them

I'm near Winchester PM me


Cheers


Para

Click to expand...

Why are you going from mac to pc? Planning or retiring and spending hours and hours untying operating systems and chasing viruses?
Never heard it done that way before!

Para,

Running an iMac myself. May , and its a slight may, be interested in buying yours for my stepson.

How much do you want?

Ian