To back up or not to back up...

[Trippyhippy]

So I had a virus and had to reformat my hard drive for the 2nd time in 3 months.

The first time, I had to reformat because I didn't make a restore point.
However...
This time I had to reformat because I did make a resore point and the particular virus I had infected the restore file or some bullshit like that.

The viri in question just flooded me with IE pop ups, automaticlly downlaed anti spy ware, disabled Task Manager, and slowed my Comp to a crawl. It was unusable.

Granted, I know dick about computers when it comes to screwin around with things like the registry and all that mess, but I couldn't find any trace of it in safe mode, and there was no way to even use it in normal mode because there were 100+ IE windows by the time everything loaded.

So my question is... Do you back up your files on your hard drive, or do you store the info on CD/DVD? Or do you ust say "Fuck it, at least I get 3 more months to try out all my "Trial Software" again when I restore."

Edit:
on a side note, how do you edit the poll question if you screw up and use the grammer of a 3 year old on accident?

 

[Sculli]

I don't back my home computer up at all. My work computer has a nightly incremental backup.

I honestly do not remember the last time I had a virus on my home or work computer, and I honestly couldn't tell whether I ever had one. Between the best anti-virus program money can't buy (my brain), and Norton AntiVirus (not Norton Internet Security, which is crap!!!!), I am fully covered.

Edit: It's not possible for users to edit poll questions after the poll has been created. Fixed it for you, I think.

 

[KuroSan]

Save your stuff to disc. I do that all the time. And for your virus problems.

Get AVG Free. http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1 It's better then being naked.

Download Adaware. http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edition/3000-8022_4-10399602.html?tag=lst-0-1
This program will check for unwanted shit on your harddrive.

And finally, get Spybot. http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10401314.html?tag=lst-0-1
Will fix up what screws up your computer.

And do this also. Go into start, then click on run. Type in prefetch and delete all the files in the folder. Do this at least once a week.

 

[Uzor]

there are three different ways to backup, the first one is full back up, where you back up everything every day, takes the longest to restore in case you need to restore as everything is backed up, but also the eaisest to restore.

then there's incremential back up, the one Sculli uses at work, where you back up everything that changes each day. It's the fastest method to use when backing up, but it's the most complicated to restore as you have to use several different disks to restore.

And then there's diferential back up, where you do a full back up ech week, and then only back up whatever changes during the week each day on the same disk.

In all honesty, I prefer diferential bakc up as it has both moderate back up time and moderate restore time while it gives safety. Incremential back up is just too complicated XD

Although, those three are mainly used at companies, as I doubt people back up everythign on their home computer each day, heh XD

I back up all of my important files as often as I can, but I don't bother backing up my entire HD as I can just easily reinstall it all in case I need to reformat my computer because of an evil virus =/

 

[GhostinmyShell]

You don't really have to backup that often. If you get a borked windows just format the primary disk and store stuff you might cry about losing on another physical drive. I have about 400 gigs of stuff and burning all that to DVDR is a pain so every 6 months I ghost image my second drive onto another drive that sits in my closet.

Primary Drive = Windows, Applications installed
Second Drive = mp3s, warez, porn, naked mistaya/nasya/miya/cubswoo pictures, ffxi hacks

Anything that would cause me to decide chopping my nuts off to avoid losing is on the second drive and on a DVDR... like my bank records.

 

[Trippyhippy]

Save your stuff to disc. I do that all the time. And for your virus problems.

Get AVG Free. http://www.grisoft.com/doc/1 It's better then being naked..

I used to use AVG, then I got infected several times, so I switched to norton. Like... I paid for it. The virus I had pwned it.

Download Adaware. http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Personal-Edition/3000-8022_4-10399602.html?tag=lst-0-1
This program will check for unwanted shit on your harddrive..

I used to have it, but now I don't even bother. I just don't use activeX AT ALL and there is no need for it.

And finally, get Spybot. http://www.download.com/Spybot-Search-Destroy/3000-8022_4-10401314.html?tag=lst-0-1
Will fix up what screws up your computer..

This program was put on my computer by one of the auto downloaders in the virus. The program started auto running, then my background became a picture of the homepage for this program. I've never seen anything like that before.

And do this also. Go into start, then click on run. Type in prefetch and delete all the files in the folder. Do this at least once a week.

ok, but why? What does that do? What are those files?

 

[Sculli]

I used to use AVG, then I got infected several times, so I switched to norton. Like... I paid for it. The virus I had pwned it.

Still remember the name of that virus? In my experience NAV is exceptionally good at catching things, then again, I do run the Corporate Edition, but I don't think the defs are different. The only thing I can imagine is that your anti virus definitions were out of date.

 

[Rones]

After doing 7 reformats in a month due to hard ware issues (hard drives died) and losing most everything, I now back up regularly. I tried burning stuff to dvds, but that became a nuisance. I found the easiest way is to buy an external hard drive, then its a simple matter of copy, pasting all my important stuff onto that hard drive and then putting it back in my closet. It makes updating and changing past data easy instead of burning a whole new disk, plus I can store rarely used large files (game cd/dvd images and movies) on the backup and not have them slowing down my main hard drive. It is just so easy to pick up an external hard drive, copy what you want on there and don't worry about it.

You should still use ad aware even without activex. I don't use activex either and a few things still slip in that adaware picks up. Don't rely on windows restore to get rid of viruses. That's not what it was ever designed for, and it does not work well at it either. Windows restore just undoes any installations/uninstalls/windows settings changes you have made since the last restore points. Other files and such remain unchanged, such as viruses. The restore will only temporarily fix some of the programs damaged by the virus, but the virus will still be there usually.

If you come away with nothing else, remember hard drives have a life span and they all will die one day. It may be 2 years, it maybe 7, but someday each will die.

 

[KuroSan]

ok, but why? What does that do? What are those files?

Makes your computer run faster. All that stuff in the folder is pure shit. Like computer excretion.

 

[Rones]

Prefetching. Edit: Contains bad information. Do not follow that advice. Follow this article instead.

If you have an excess of ram, you don't need to worry about cleaning or disabling prefetching. If you have very little ram, then this is a way to optimize.

 

[Kat]

Thanks guys, this helped me out also.

Rones, I have 1 gig of ram. Should I do that prefetch thingy?

 

[Tymon]

If you have some money, I would buy an external hard drive, and backup your partition(what your OS and it's files are stored on, you can have a max of 5 on your pc, 4 for OS's and one for booting your pc) to it, so if you get infected all you have to do is plug up the external and format the partition onto your real pc.

 

[Tymon]

Thanks guys, this helped me out also.

Rones, I have 1 gig of ram. Should I do that prefetch thingy?

1GB is double the average, definitely not.

Under 512MBS you would want to do that.

RAM goes from 256, to 512, to 1,024, to 2,016. Numbers in the thousands are MBs, 1,000 MBs is a GB, so 1,024 would be 1.2GB. 2,016 would be a base 2GB.

You can buy sticks of 512MB, 1GB, and 2GB for your computer, they're quite expensive though and with 2GB sticks you have to buy pressure controlled packages to install for your pc in order to install them because they're so large and fragile.

 

[Kat]

Thanks Tymon. I won't download that link then. Much appreciated.

 

[Rones]

Well the link isn't something you download. It's just an explanation as to what prefetching is. In your case, you can leave prefetching on as 1 gig of ram is plenty and unless you are playing some games like battlefield 2, you won't be using all of it.

 

[Kat]

Ohhhh, well dummy me^^.

I have a friend who's an Electronics Engineer and he builds all my comps. He puts all the stuff on it and builds me a new one about every 2 years or so. Anyway, I pretty much don't touch it after Matt brings it to me. If something goes wrong I give him a call and he comes over and fixes it.

Needless to say I'm pretty naive in all this stuff. If I'm running slow I call him, he fixes it or buys me what I need to get it fixed. He knows I'm a gamer so he set me up with a lot of ram and kickass sound and a great video card.

I downloaded the ad aware thingy and the spybot thingy. Then I saw your link for the prefetch thingy and asked if I needed it. Thought it was a download hence why I said that.

 

[Darkdante]

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx

Don't use your computer in administrator mode. Spywear can't install if you don't.

 

[Rones]

Upon further examination on the subject, do not delete the contents of your prefetching folder.

 

[Darkdante]

Actually if you don't have too much hard disk space cleaning out the prefetch might help you a little. Especially if your swap file is not set static.

The prefetch only helps you retrieve files that you retrieve often. Its like a cache to frequently used files.

Either way it shouldn't cause you major problems, maybe just slow you down for a little bit in the begining, till windows prefetches the filles you deleted again.

 

[Rones]

From what I have read, prefetch is more like an page file indexing, not copies of the actual programs. It's not actually preloading the programs, just keeping a record of where they are stored, and those records are tiny. Contents of my prefetch folder didn't even reach 1 mg. Read through that link in my last post.