Computer disaster prevention Part 3
Jun. 13th, 2011 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kengrThis part gets into the biggest risk to the computer. The user.
Practice safe computing. Be careful about what you let install stuff on your computer. There are a lot of videos out there that if played in Media Player (and often in other programs) that claim you need to download a codec to play them.
Don't do it. Write down the message, then do some checking on the net. If it's a legit codec, download it *yourself* and let your AV program scan it.
If you let the download happen automatically, you may well be downloading a trojan. And by-by system.
Likewise, be careful about clicking on stuff in emails or webites.
If you get *legit* emails from your bank or the like and they include clicable links to do something instead of telling you where to go on their website, *complain*. That's training people to be stupid.
And then we get to backups.
Sooner or later *something* will happen. If nothing else hard drives wear out.
So, minimal level of protection is to have a second drive, internal or external (most of the time internal will be faster, but it does have drawbacks we'll get to). You'll want software (I use Second Copy) that does scheduled, automatic backups. There are files you won't want backed up. For example, the recycle bin and a lot of stuff in some of the Windows & "documents and settings" directories.
The recycle bin is obvious. And the various temporary files directories in Documents and Setting are equally obvious. The rest are more a matter of the files being *unable* to be backed up because they'll be open most of the time and the OS won't *let* you copy them.
So you either live without those or go for one of the fancy backup programs that pretty much requires putting the system into a "backup mode" where the regular stuff is all shut down.
That drawback I mention with an internal drive for backups (even on in a removable rack) is that you can't change the backup drive without (at a minimum) shutting down the system.
Why would you want to change the drive? Well, there are things (like some viruses) that will nail all the drives in or attached to the system. Which means your backup is toast just when you need it the most.
Likewise, if there's a disaster that's not computer related (fire, flood, etc) the backup is, once again, toast.
So external drives, or the newer sort of removable racks that can be "hot swapped" are necessity if you want a higher level of protection and the ability to have a backup that's at another location which (hopefully) won't get nailed by the same disaster.
If you don't need the whole drive backed up, but just a relatively limited set of files, burning those files to CD, DVD or even Blu-Ray disks may be the way to go. And this tends to encourage having multiple generations of backups as well.
But for "whole drive" backups beyond the most basic, you want two sets. Backup onto set A and remove the drive. Next time back up onto set B.
This means that if (for example) a virus has nailed the computer, you'll have at least one backup that isn't touched )unless the virus is *way* more subtle than most)
Practice safe computing. Be careful about what you let install stuff on your computer. There are a lot of videos out there that if played in Media Player (and often in other programs) that claim you need to download a codec to play them.
Don't do it. Write down the message, then do some checking on the net. If it's a legit codec, download it *yourself* and let your AV program scan it.
If you let the download happen automatically, you may well be downloading a trojan. And by-by system.
Likewise, be careful about clicking on stuff in emails or webites.
If you get *legit* emails from your bank or the like and they include clicable links to do something instead of telling you where to go on their website, *complain*. That's training people to be stupid.
And then we get to backups.
Sooner or later *something* will happen. If nothing else hard drives wear out.
So, minimal level of protection is to have a second drive, internal or external (most of the time internal will be faster, but it does have drawbacks we'll get to). You'll want software (I use Second Copy) that does scheduled, automatic backups. There are files you won't want backed up. For example, the recycle bin and a lot of stuff in some of the Windows & "documents and settings" directories.
The recycle bin is obvious. And the various temporary files directories in Documents and Setting are equally obvious. The rest are more a matter of the files being *unable* to be backed up because they'll be open most of the time and the OS won't *let* you copy them.
So you either live without those or go for one of the fancy backup programs that pretty much requires putting the system into a "backup mode" where the regular stuff is all shut down.
That drawback I mention with an internal drive for backups (even on in a removable rack) is that you can't change the backup drive without (at a minimum) shutting down the system.
Why would you want to change the drive? Well, there are things (like some viruses) that will nail all the drives in or attached to the system. Which means your backup is toast just when you need it the most.
Likewise, if there's a disaster that's not computer related (fire, flood, etc) the backup is, once again, toast.
So external drives, or the newer sort of removable racks that can be "hot swapped" are necessity if you want a higher level of protection and the ability to have a backup that's at another location which (hopefully) won't get nailed by the same disaster.
If you don't need the whole drive backed up, but just a relatively limited set of files, burning those files to CD, DVD or even Blu-Ray disks may be the way to go. And this tends to encourage having multiple generations of backups as well.
But for "whole drive" backups beyond the most basic, you want two sets. Backup onto set A and remove the drive. Next time back up onto set B.
This means that if (for example) a virus has nailed the computer, you'll have at least one backup that isn't touched )unless the virus is *way* more subtle than most)
