Bianchigirll 

Thank You Again John For your hard work!


Sadly a little more than a year ago, or maybe two, my desktop was the victim of a ransom ware attack. My brother, who is a wiz with computers, mostly to support his fishing habit, was able to wipe the hard drive clean, you know with more than a rag like Hilary does, and reload a version of Windows 7. the bad part is all my pics and assorted documents and other assorted files and folders were lost. fortunately I think about 90% of which was mirrored on my laptop. The really bad part is, although I haven't really looked in he laptop yet, is 8 or 9 years worth of saved 'favorites' links for various bike, shooting and other sites to obscure stuff is simply gone


While smartass phones and tablets are great for on the go I really missed my desk top and despite the loss of data I am really happy to have it back.


My Brothers admonishment as always, was to keep my virus/malware protection up to date and don't open strange emails. I'll be getting him to set up and auto external backup drive soon.

SJX426 

It is a very sad reality and happens when you least expect. As difficult as it may be, from a self discipline perspective, Making sure backups occur is a challenge.

Sorry for your loss and the huge impact it can and does have. Pictures are one of the most difficult to manage as there are so many and requires so much time to manage. One of the reasons I use an on-line photo service. Plus I have to multi terabyte drives that have the same pictures. Unlike the old days of negatives and slides, once they are gone ...... But then slides and negatives have an analogous management burden!

Bianchigirll 

Thanks but I have great news. After this posted this I went snooping in the folder my brother made of the laptop and found the thought to be lost favorites! There was stuff in there I had no idea I saved like a guide on setting up Delta brakes. I don't have Deltas any longer but you never know when you may need that kind of information LOL


Yeah I tried to set up a briefcase so I could mirror the files on both computers but it only seemed to work one way so stuff created on the laptop wouldn't always transfer back to the desktop.

DMC707

happened to me with a "Locky" virus (ransomware ) --- the hackers wanted $10,000 in bit coins to open , and who can say that they would have?

I'm self employed and it was a computer I used for work purposes, but I had a bunch of personal photos on there

Was heart breaking to let it all go. I just bought a new computer, and will wipe the old one and re-install a new operating system to have as a backup

Bianchigirll 

And now I stumbled upon this while I was looking for a link to something else. It seems Park brought back there easy to use BCD guage CDG-2 Chainring Diameter Gauge | Park Tool


I was looking for a link to this fancy one in my favorites

Bianchigirll 

Oh that's awful all your work records real bummer.



I never bothered to ask I just unplugged it for a while and turned on like 6 months later still there. Lesson learned

tyrion

I use iDrive backup service to keep things backed up. I haven't had to test it yet, but it gets good reviews. I want things backed up "in the cloud" in case of disaster (house burning down, etc.). It took a few days to do the initial backup of around 300 gig, then it just backs up the new/changed files everyday at 3am, takes about 1/2 hour.

Bianchigirll 

I am afraid of the cloud I mean what if it dries up or the Russian suck it up in a giant vacuum? LOL

lostarchitect 

If you have a gmail / google account, you can sync your chrome browser settings across machines. My work machine, my home machine and my Chromebook all have the same bookmarks and settings due to this. It works cross platform, mac, windows, linux, even on your phone. Likewise you can use google drive / photos to sync your photos across all machines. Dropbox is also a good alternative. Every photo I take with my phone is uploaded to both Dropbox (for linking) and Google (for albums, organization, long term storage, etc.) And of course it's also wise to have a backup of your entire hard disk, or at least your user folder. There are options to do this automatically--ask your brother, he will probably know some options there. That's a good solution if you don't think you will remember to do it manually.

Bianchigirll 

That is the next thing I am going to work on, he showed me a little wireless adapter that plugs into a USB port that I can use to make the two talk to each other, but since I don't travel as much as I used to that is sort of secondary to just having a solid backup plan.


I guess one of these days I really should try and get my Gmail account up and running and switch but I've been using my 'personal' yahoo for almost 20 years now and Bianchigirll for like 8 or 9.

SJX426 

If you are nervous about the cloud, you should be nervous about Google!

non-fixie 

Maybe we could do a "Favorite Links" sticky? I'm sure I have a 99.3% overlap with some members here. And this seems to be a fairly safe corner of ** insert Jaws theme** The Cloud.

lostarchitect 

You wouldn't even necessarily need to use the email account, if you have a google account you can still sync up your browser and other stuff.

qcpmsame 

BG, perhaps you should check Wikileaks latest docs release, maybe the CIA swept up all your secret C&V bicycle stuff amassed over the years.

Bill

Bianchigirll 

I blame the Rooskies or some 400lb guy living in his mothers basement in Illinois

BigChief 

Windows 7 has a handy backup utility that makes it easy to backup to an external hard drive. You can see instructions on how to set it up here:
https://www.backblaze.com/pc-backup.html

Trueblood

Windows?

Control Panel>System>Advanced System Settings>System Protection Tab>System Restore - this allows you to undo system settings by reverting your computer to a previous restore point.

qcpmsame 

@Bianchigirll, my wife went to a back up system for her business computers, the type she chose is integrated with a battery back-up also. One of her business networking buddies set everything up and has one desktop as the main frame, and the other units can sync up through it. She can better explain what she has going on with the brain boxes.

Not sure if you are going this elaborate, she had to go to that level due to requirements of some of the software she uses and having in interactive website that allows clients to access individual accounts securely. I wouldn't be leery of cloud storage, as long as you use a reputable service. I agree with going to some solid malware and firewall stuff 100%. Even if you aren't worried about the sites you visit being secure/safe, as you found out the email can bite you in the ass also.

Glad that you got things back to abnormal with your favorite station, best wishes on perhaps being able to retrieve thise pictures and articles that are MIA.

Bill