Case History - How Disk Imaging Software Saved My Butt Many Times
2001 VIRUS - had anti-virus disabled (can’t remember why), clicked on a file that I knew I should have deleted, my hard drive started working then MS Outlook opens up (I don’t use Outlook for email) I knew it was a virus, I immediately powered down the computer. After I re-booted with a anti-virus disk in the floppy, cleaned the virus off my system I noticed that approx 11,000 photos for work were renamed and destroyed. I restored an disk image, after scanning all drives for that damn virus and was back up and running in a bout 2 hours. That included virus scanning time.
2002 Hard Drive Failure Home System - C: drive decided to die. A trip to the computer store to buy a new drive, installed the new drive, ran Drive Image and in about 2 hours I was back up and running. That included installing the new drive and a trip to the computer store.
2005 Hard Drive Failure Notebook - C: hard drive started to make some awful sounds, ran a Dell diagnostics disk and C: failed the test. Backed up critical data to a 1 GB USB drive, turned the computer off and took it to a computer repair shop. On a priority service, they installed a new drive and my old C: still had enough life in it that all the data was transferred over using Norton Ghost. ONLY 4 Hours turn around time.
Late 90's to Present - Installing new software Anytime I install a piece of software that I an not sure I want to keep, I take an image of my hard drive and then install the software, if I don’t want it, I’ll restore an image and my computer is back to it was before that software was installed.
People, uninstalling software does not remove all traces of a program and sometimes installing a program can damage Windows and the only way to fix it is to reinstall Windows. I have been there and seen it happen first hand.
Sorry for the long post, if you use a computer long enough, you will experience data loss from all sorts of scenarios. Please learn from us and develop a back up plan for your data.
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My back up system
1. Installed a second large removable hard drive. (So it can be turned off)
2. DVD discs and USB Drive for critical data
3. I also use the removable hard drive for critical data.
4. Keeping the removable hard drive OFF at all times unless I need to back up or restore data
5. Back up data regularity, this is the most important part of a back up plan. |
