Best backup practices and recovering lost data.
Backup and Recovery
Will my new computer use my old hard drives?
Episode 1371
Dave from
Dave wants to know if his old RAID hard drives can be read by his computer. Leo says it depends. If mirrored, maybe. They're identical. But maybe not. He shouldn't make any assumptions. Dave should copy the data off it and then he can take each of them and put them in their own enclosed drives, or use a new array like Synology. Synology also does a disk check periodically to keep it healthy. When he puts them in, they'll check the hard drives as they are building the raid.
How can I get out of ransomeware?
Episode 1368
Scott got bit by ransomware on all his work computers. Since the data is backed up, the course of action is to wipe the drives, reinstall the OS, and restore from the backup. Always keep yourself backed up and updated to prevent things like this from happening.
Here's what you can do to protect yourself:
1. Keep all software and OS updated on your machine.
2. Run as a limited user. NEVER an Admin.
3. Do not click on links from strangers. Do not accept unexpected attachments.
Is Carbonite good for backing up music?
Episode 1364
Vince from
Vince wants to do digital music recording through GarageBand on his iMac. But he wants to know if he can do it with Carbonite backing up in the background. Leo says that music files can be quite big and if he doesn't have a lot of upstream bandwidth, it could take awhile to upload it. Carbonite will only use half his upload bandwidth, though. So there are some files that Carbonite is not ideal for.
(Disclaimer: Carbonite is a sponsor)
How can I access my hard drive?
Episode 1364
Terri from
Terri's computer is crashing multiple times and trying to reboot. Leo says it could be a myriad of issues including a flakey hard drive. That's the most likely culprit. It could also be a bad memory chip that is corrupted and causing it to load and stall. Maybe the stick has worked its way lose.
The problem is, if she brings it in, it'll get wiped and sometimes they can make it worse. She can try and run a recovery with Windows. She can also download Windows 10, put it on a USB key, and then select "Repair" when she runs the recovery. Then backup her data immediately.
How can I recover deleted text messages?
Episode 1364
Scott from
Scott has a Samsung Galaxy S6 and he's deleted some text messages on Verizon and then tried to recover them, but they haven't showed up yet. Leo says that Verizon keeps copies of his text messages, so if anyone has them, they do.
Is it possible to reverse ransomware encryption?
Episode 1363
Richard from
Richard got bit by ransomware. He got an email from FedEx saying they couldn't deliver a package and then when he clicked a link, 10 minutes later he got a message saying all his files had been encrypted. They wanted Bitcoin or his data would be lost.
How can I recover data from a damaged hard drive?
Episode 1361
Adam from
Adam's laptop hard drive became unreadable when a battery failure happened and he needs to get the pictures off it. Leo says that since the hard drive can still be accessed, he may be able to get them back with a recovery software utility. Piriform Recuva is the one that Leo recommends. The key thing, though, is to never write to the drive again until he manages to get the data he needs off of it.
Can I install an old hard drive into a new computer?
Episode 1360
Scott from
Scott wants to know if he can take the hard drive out of an old computer and then put it into a new one. Leo says yes, but he should only use it as a data drive. He could probably put it in an external USB enclosure so he can plug it in when he needs to. He could install it as a secondary hard drive as well. If he wants to use software from that hard drive, that's a lot more problematic due to registry issues. He may be able to dual boot from the older driver, but the device drivers won't work. So he'll have to work around that and use a boot manager.
What's the difference between online and offline backups?
Episode 1359
Tristen from
Tristen wants to know how to backup his computer so that he has a copy locally. Leo says in the old days, we would divide backup into online, nearline, and offline backups. Online backup would be a hard drive connected to the computer that is synchronizing with data directories. So he'd have a copy on the computer and on the external drive. Nearline backup would be if the drive were put up on a shelf, and disconnected from the computer. Offline backup would be off in the cloud or at a different location entirely. It's best to use all three methods and keep multiple copies.
What happened to my hard drive?
Episode 1359
Martinio from
Martinio can't see his external hard drive on his computer when he boots up. What software can he use to fix it? Leo says first he'll have to be able to see the drive to fix it. If he can't see it, then there's a hardware issue. It's a very expensive proposition to get the data off. DriveSavers will be able to do it, but it's very expensive.
