DonaldG

Had a panic this morning.

Opened up Outlook and downloaded 40 - 50 emails from TSF etc.

Did my usual highlight all of those and then did a shift+delete (to remove from computer without dumping in the trash first) - Pow! gone in a flash!

Trouble was so did several hundred other emails that I stored in my inbox. I had inadvertantly highlighted EVERY email!

I keep many emails for various reasons and have a huge history etc.
(If I mention that I received my first email in 1983 at 300baud, you can realise how much experience I have had and still haven't learned!)

Then I remembered that I had set up Vista Ultimate's backup to do it's thing at 18:00pm EVERY day and backup drive c to drive d. Five minutes later all was restored. Instant happy bunny.

Warning to all - Do you have a safety backup?

Ask yourself - if my hard drive crashed do I have a safe copy of my data?

Food for thought!!!

DumberDrummer

I have about 1.5 terabytes of data, Its not worth another 1.5 terabytes in space just to back it up :P

dai

i never use it always turn it off,i keep a copy of my favourites on another drive and that's it

DonaldG

Its not just a copy of favourites, Dai.

Many folk keep all their photos, music collections, letters, business/financial affairs et al on Drive C.

What is even more frightening, is when I visit companies to help out with their IT problems, I am horrified how many of them don't backup their customer database or their invoicing and billing data.

When I point out that the single copy of the data on their HD is worth many times more that the computer is and what would they do if it went belly up, they become likwise horrified and most of them have implimented a backup regime.

On my own machine apart from loads of other data, I have something like 38,000 photographs - Vista auto backs up to drive D at 18:00 every day and weekly I do a manual backup of D to an external drive. Yes, I have had two internal drives go down due to sudden rapid mutiple power outages!

On my shelf I have 4 other dead drives that I have replaced in other folks machines. Drives are reliable but they can and will die!

Nik00117

I keep copies of all my important stuff in 2-3 different locations.

JohnthePilot

That's a lot of data to lose, DD. The cost of storage is nothing compared with the value of your data and the time to collect it.

DumberDrummer

Yeah, I would be pretty angry if something were to happen to it, but its not critical to my continued happiness or wellbeing or financial status.

I have DVD backups of portions of it that I do value, and all the games/music etc... I mostly have on CDs.

Nik00117

I agree, I got a lot of TV shows and movies, if I lost it i'd be midly upset but would get over it.

However if I lost my music collection i'd be more then midly upset, tis backed up several tiems :)

gistek

Have backups somewhere other than your computer.

My daughter had backups in zip files on her computer's 2nd drive, but her fiance's brother was arrested on child porn, so all computers in the house were seized by the police.

The police then proceeded to completely destroy both hard drives. When she finally got her computer back, it was worthless. Every component had been ruined.

She lost 2 years worth of college classwork, most of her prom photos, all her christmas and vacation photos, and all her music.

The accused doesn't have to live with you for the police to get a warrant for your computer. He or she just has to have the remote possibility of being in the vicinity of your computer. I have heard of a case where a person had a party. Later one of the people who was at that party was suspected of viewing child porn. The party host's computer was taken because there was a possibility that the suspect could have used the computer during the party. It didn't matter that the computer in question was password protected and the room it was in had been locked during the party.

DonaldG

A very good point - Proves that HDs can get destroyed in ways that we may never realise until it is too late.

JohnthePilot

That's dreadful Gistek. Has she no recourse? Obviously it won't replace what she has lost. I know of people in the UK who've had their computers seized, but when they've got them back, all their data has been intact. Why were your daughter's destroyed?

Nik00117

Doesn't make sense IMHO, why destory all the data? Take out the child porn arrest the prep and move on iwth life.

DonaldG

The trouble is that to remove the porn requires mil grade erase programmes that take a long time to securly delete stuff.

With the right software, it is possible to recover data (images et al) even after the sectors have been written over several times.

EnglishPaul

I see a flaw in this logic though. Had the hard drive been backed up on DVDs, then any unwanted child porn (and, incidentally all child porn is unwanted!) would also have been preserved.

I find very little of my data is good enough to back up, which makes me wonder what I waste the rest on!

DonaldG

I would imagine that the police, when exercising the search warrant will have seized ALL computer related stuff, including all data sticks, data cards (SD, CF etc), CDs, DVDs Video tapes et al.

(Can you imagine them only taking a computer and leaving behind a stack of CDs & DVDs on the shelf?)

I should imagine that the seizure would also include any and all cameras, film, digital, still and video, together with a goodly rummage through books & magazines etc...

gistek

I think the problem was they couldn't find anything illegal on her computer - since there wasn't anything illegal on her computer. She had a good password on it so her fiance's brother couldn't use her computer at all.

I guess, since they couldn't find anything they just kept looking. She did give them the password, but who knows if they used it.

She was never compensated in any way for her loss, not even the value of the computer. The police claimed it was already broken before they took it. So it's a case of her word against theirs.

Because of that situation, she will not apply for - or accept any job in that city's school district (she's an education major). Nor will she live there when she can get a place of her own. She doesn't have much choice right now, but once she has a job offer she will move out of that city and never return.

---

Yes, a warrant could include hard media as well as the computer itself, but it's less likely the clowns will screw up cd's then hd's. So at least you have a chance of getting your data back. Plus, what they really need to get is the proof that you are the one accessing the porn. Once something's on a cd, it's hard to prove who put it there.

What I'm afraid of is someone accusing me of illegal activities, seizing someone else's computer because I went to their house once, finding their porn, and thinking I'm the one responsible.

JohnthePilot

This whole area is a minefield. Yes, these perverts should be stopped, but when innocent people get drawn in, it can be very difficult for them to prove their innocence and thus clear their reputations. The trouble is that mud sticks.

DonaldG

That is a crying shame that she is hounded out of town like that! Is there no one she can appeal to? No ombudsman or Sheriff or whoever is the chief?


I know how you must feel:

scathe30

My girlfriend is seriously ill, and this disease is called 'backup maniac'.
I can't stand it anymore! It is becoming impossible to live with her! She's studying to become an accountant and there's always a lot of different info on her Sony Vaio that she needs to keep. Actually, her computer holds the results of her studies for 4 years already - these results are necessary if she wants to write a good diploma-work.
She's always afraid that something may break down in her computer hdd destroying all her important data. She's always working over it and it needs to be re-back-upped almost every day.
Even when I put everything on my USB hdd she starts to be afraid that someone breaks into our flat and steals her data with WD My Book.
Though I'm a bit exaggerating to put it in more comical way, the situation sometimes really drives me mad - she knows nothing about computers and can't even burn a CD. All my endeavor to teach her end with "please, do it for me". What should I do to make her think that computers can be trusted to?!

DonaldG

I suffer from the same ailment!

With all her accounting data on the Vio makes me remember an incident last year...

A pal of mine in Tennessee had a HD go down (die). There was no backup. (It was always something he meant to but never actually got around to! Sounds familiar?)

It contained all the family photos, his daughters High School projects and worse His wife, who was a Tax Expert, had stored several clients IRS returns and data, dating back to 2000!

I suggested that he send it to a specialist data company to recover the data (Costs a load of cash!) or he could send it to me to see if there was anything I could do to recover the data.

I received the HD a few days later and sure enough it was dead. But on investigating, I noticed it was the same make as a couple of HDs that I had junked and taken apart. With the spares I replaced the printed circuit board on it and hey presto – it fired up and worked again. It was the pcb that died, not the mechanices of the drive itself. I managed to get all of his data & files & send ‘em back on DVDs… Boy, were they all pleased!

Moral of the story:
1) Backup.
2) Give any dead HD the good news with a lump hammer!

Don’t think a dead HD will not give up its secrets… Even with my limited resources and knowledge. I was able to get access to the data which was worth $$$$$thousands$$$$$

Imagine what villains can do when they are set up with all the facilities for data recovery for the express purpose of ID theft or getting bank details or both!

Be aware!

Sounds like my wife, bless her...