Well, sometimes you have to learn the hard way - even if you were close to being good.
I have wonderful instincts. The day my virus subscription ran out, they went off. I should have talked to Jeff sooner, or even my dad, but no, I just tried to figure out how to get the money for a virus subscription in my budget. I thought I could make it a month.
I started looking at backup storage. Again, it had to wait about a month for the budget to have an opening... but I was looking.
Well, the viruses don't wait a month. I got one that ate my hard drive. It's now on it's way to a forensic data recovery guy, but from our discussion up til today, it doesn't look like he's going to get anything off it. He's going to look though, just so I can know, and not have to live with not knowing if one last thing could have been done.
In the meantime, friends are starting to come through with links to pictures I lost and some they took at events I was at. Friends at work are bringing my CD's so my iTunes can be interesting again. And I now have another hard drive, so backup will be done good and proper.
It's been liberating in some ways too, though. My book list got eaten, and the one here is very old. So, I'm free from tracking that, at least for this year. My garden designs got lost, which is fine, because I get to look at it with fresh eyes. And so on. The computer processes tons faster too.
Posted by Liz at August 26, 2006 12:51 PMSorry you had to suffer through that. I think we all learn a computer lesson the hard way at least once. My lesson was "just because your friend sent it to you, don't assume it's not a virus".
As for forensic recovery... I don't buy "doesn't look like he's going to get anything". From what I understand, virtually anything is recoverable if you're willing to pay enough. Of course, if you were scraping to get money for anti-virus software, then you probably can't afford to pay for top notch data recovery, either.
Lastly, I just want to say "consider having some helpful geek at Penguicon show you how good and user friendly some Linux distros are getting to be." Seriously... very few viruses, and you can get the anti-virus software for free (as well as darn near anything else). Can't wait for Penguicon? I'm sure somebody from one of the many LUGs would be willing to help out.
Posted by: Wolfger at August 26, 2006 6:01 PMI have an unconvertable husband - so the main laptop won't get linux. But, we have an old thing we call the craptop, and if he doesn't do his little make-the-old-laptop-into-a-digital-photoalbum-frame-thing before Penguicon, I'm probably going to bring it, strip it, and get it loaded up so I can start learning on it.
Posted by: LizT at August 29, 2006 8:22 PM