Best backup practices and recovering lost data.
Backup and Recovery
Why does my system tray have an EXE file in it?
Episode 1291
Nicki saw an .exe file she didn't recognize in her system tray. Leo says that system trays hold icons of programs that are running and if she hovers over them, she should get some information. It could also be an error. It's causing security issues and Windows won't load her antivirus. It could be an infection, so she should update her antivirus or use Microsoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool.
Why does Carbonite keep shutting down during backup?
Episode 1290
Mary has an issue with Carbonite. It stops running during the backup of her iMac. She's uninstalled/reinstalled several times, and she's checked the firewall. Leo says that there's some sort of incompatibility going on and Carbonite should be able to walk her through it.
(Disclaimer: Carbonite is a sponsor)
Why does it take so long to backup with Carbonite?
Episode 1287
Matt has a regular subscription to Carbonite with one computer, and a second account which includes his external drive. It hasn't backed up everything on his 2 TB hard drive after two months. Leo says that's not unusual. Upload speeds are a lot slower than downloads. It can't use the entire speed either, otherwise it would shut down everything else online. It gently backs up, and if he does the math, it would take many months to back up photos. Once it's done with that original backup, then it just backs up the changes. That's why Leo recommends not backing up everything, just data.
Where can I backup my photos online?
Episode 1286
Christa has a bunch of photos that she's backed up to the cloud and to her external hard drive. But now on the cloud, her Picture Life backup has disappeared because the company was sold. What are her alternatives to back up?
Is my data safe in the cloud?
Episode 1284
Chris is worried about storing all his stuff in the cloud. If the cloud goes down, will he lose everything? Leo says that storing in the cloud is practical because we use multiple computers and as such, he'll need to have a central storage area for all of them to contribute to. But the downside is that if he loses access to the cloud, he'll lose access to the data. That's why having a local backup is so important.
What happened to the images and music on my hard drive?
Episode 1281
AJ opened up a laptop he hadn't used in awhile and all of his music and pictures were corrupted. A popup actually said the disk couldn't be read, and must be formatted. He tried to recover it. Why did it become corrupt? Leo says that hard drives die, and that's why you need a 3-2-1 backup strategy. 3 copies, on two different formats, with one off site.
How can I stop iCloud from putting all my photos back on my phone?
Episode 1281
Darlene from
Darlene has over 6,000 images on her phone. She's been backing them up to Google Photos, and when she signed up for iCloud Photos, it put all 6,000 images back on her phone! Leo says she can turn off the iCloud photo library, but at least leave the Photo Stream turned on. That will erase all of them from her phone. Amazon Prime is another good option for storing photos, as is Yahoo's Flickr, which offers 1TB of free storage.
How can I prevent ransomware infecting my backups?
Episode 1278
Greg wants to know if ransomware will infect and encrypt drives in multiple locations. He uses the Transporter to sync his data. Leo says it won't do that. It can't go over the internet to infect it. But if he's backing up encrypted files, those could get backed up replacing the other files. That's why versioning is so important. Carbonite has a great solution and a white paper on versioning.
(Disclaimer: Carbonite is a sponsor)
How can I run a real time imaging backup?
Episode 1278
Chris wants to know if he can have a running backup that will enable him to reboot should the hard drive crash and just pick up right where he left off. Leo says he can do it by setting up a RAID running RAID 1. He can also run SuperDuper which can create bootable backups, but it's Mac only.
Here are a few suggestions from the chatroom:
How can I restore a deleted note on my iPhone?
Episode 1276
Brooke from
Brooke wants to know how she can restore a note that she accidentally deleted from her iPhone. She tried to restore it from her backup, but that deleted everything. Leo says the first thing is to turn off the phone so it doesn't backup. Hopefully it was backed up to iCloud, as it does normally. Chances are, however, that it's probably too late if she's restored from an old backup already. But if backup to iCloud was enabled, that's really her only hope.
