got a virus yesterday....

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b0untypure1

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#75355 17-Jan-2011 10:42

hey guys, i got a virus yesterday and it was just as i booted up.
i always have microsoft security essentials up to date and always running.
so im not sure how, but this happened.
all my files slowly got corrupt. then it bluescreened and on reboot, no windows was installed.
i put windows 7 back on, and all my files are in windows.old
however, some are corrupt, i managed to recover some photos luckily !
now, this is my 5th virus in 2 years... microsoft security essentials doesnt seem to be doing its job. (i full scan weekly too)
so.... i guess ill keep it as my anti virus program, but im looking for a backup solution.
i have 2tb of data, and would like to back it up once a week.
i have oops backup, but if you have any other recommendations let me know :D
also, what external should i use? i have a hotswap bay too, would internal drives be better?
also, im looking for fast backup solution

thanks in advance

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#427912 17-Jan-2011 10:53

Bit off topic from your question, but where are you getting these viruses from, and are you sure you're clearing them off your files completely after each incident?

I like the Avira / Antivir product, it's free and has served me well. Just one suggestion for you.

freitasm

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#427913 17-Jan-2011 10:56

Also, what virus, how do you know it was a virus? Could it be corrupted memory, crashed HDD, dying motherboard?

Dratsab

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#427923 17-Jan-2011 11:11

Interesting - MS SE is all I run and I've never had a virus. There's a few things that could be issues here:
1. One or more of the sites you visit
2. External devices
3. Firewall configuration

Start with your firewall configuration and see what that's letting through. You may also want to have a really good look at the process that are running on your machine as a reinstall may not necessarily have removed the "virus" - it could be something with a timed payload.

Take a look with Security Task Manager.

I know I'm not answering your questions, but ensuring you still don't have something lurking is always a good idea - you don't want to be backing up the problem... ;-)

In respect of your backup questions: Without knowing anything about your data - does it change much? Is there a need to back the whole lot up weekly - or would a monthly backup with incremental backups inbetween suffice? Do you need to create backups at all or just mirror your data?

The reason I ask is because if your data is movies, music etc - this stuff doesn't change. It does need backing up but not regularly, you just need to make a copy or two and keep it somewhere safe.

EDIT: Or as freitasm points out, could also be hardware related (slow poster).

b0untypure1

1426 posts

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#428204 17-Jan-2011 20:44

thanks for your replies, all the corrupt files in windows.old, wouldnt copy over or wouldnt open. songs wouldnt play and movies wouldnt work. in an attemp to find need for speed hot pursuit, i noticed everything was back (after work) and now all my music and data is appearing and working, so i copy and pasted all of it over to my desktop.

well, my motherboard is one year old, asus m4a79xtd evo, and my hard drives are raid 0 wd green 1tb x2

so....i wonder what it could be?

pretty much, 15/01/11 , slow pc, opened some files, crash, computer restarts to find no OS on C drive.
16/01/11 angry at pc, reinstall drivers and windows. left and did nothing more, corrupt files
17/01/11 files randomly work again and all is copied to my desktop and installed fine, games play, movies watch and songs listen

another thing was, my system showed 400gb free space on the 16th jan, and today it shows 230gb free space....

this is strange.
if it is my raid that is failing, there is no way i can test?
it copied 200gb of data in under an hour with no lag/errors. also everything is running faster than before (typical reinstall thing tho)

b0untypure1

1426 posts

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#428209 17-Jan-2011 20:50

just doing another file transfer, copy and pasting 190gb and it took 24mins.
if i select, move and paste, 1 second.

thorax

75 posts

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#428237 17-Jan-2011 22:09

b0untypure1: just doing another file transfer, copy and pasting 190gb and it took 24mins.
if i select, move and paste, 1 second.

That makes sense seeing you are reading from two drives and writing back to those two drives at different points on the platters, whereas moving the file will not actually move the data on the platters but will rewrite the master file table (MFT).

Mprezd

119 posts

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#428321 18-Jan-2011 09:24

first and foremost - why would you raid 0 wd green drives?
They aren't designed for speed.

If I was you I would buy a drive to run windows and your programs on it, and then have the 2 green drives running in raid 1.

or simply have 1 of the 1tb drives installed in your machine, and once a week/month plug the other one in to replicate the drive. At least then if you get a virus (unless if it happens to be at the time it is plugged in) that drive is safe. Perhaps consider buying an external enclosure for that drive (vantec nexstar's are good) with e-sata

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b0untypure1

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#428324 18-Jan-2011 09:28

i see, the only way to get out of raid, would be to lose all my stuff again.

i guess ill just re build my pc when i get some money

pando

235 posts

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#428362 18-Jan-2011 11:15

Mprezd: first and foremost - why would you raid 0 wd green drives?
They aren't designed for speed.

If I was you I would buy a drive to run windows and your programs on it, and then have the 2 green drives running in raid 1.

or simply have 1 of the 1tb drives installed in your machine, and once a week/month plug the other one in to replicate the drive. At least then if you get a virus (unless if it happens to be at the time it is plugged in) that drive is safe. Perhaps consider buying an external enclosure for that drive (vantec nexstar's are good) with e-sata

My fileserver is running WD Green drives in raid-0, it's about having a large partition with low power and quiet drives, the speed benefits of it are secondary but handy.

You'd only want raid 1 if you don't want to lose the data and don't back it up.

Mprezd

119 posts

Master Geek

#428390 18-Jan-2011 12:21

pando:

My fileserver is running WD Green drives in raid-0, it's about having a large partition with low power and quiet drives, the speed benefits of it are secondary but handy.

You'd only want raid 1 if you don't want to lose the data and don't back it up.

with the price of decent size drives now, and the problems associated with raid 0 that still makes little sense. He has 2 1tb drives and could easily buy a 2tb for $150. there really is zero reason to need the paltry speed benefit that you get from r0 on a green drive. They are fast enough for 1080p video streaming, and file transfer isn't that slow anyway - unless you are transferring over a slow network. I have 4 2tb drives in a nas and have no issue with speed.

And considering the OP is now looking at a backup solution it makes sense to either raid 1 the 1tb or get a 2tb drive (depending on how much stuff the OP actually has)

OP, you may find that the data you have isn't all important for backup. So figure out what you definitely want to keep and then base a backup solution around that. If you only have say 500gb worth of data that you really want to keep, I would still suggest using the 2 1tb drives in raid 1. But, given that you will lose the data, perhap just buying a 2tb green drive and external enclosure is the easiest solution.

b0untypure1

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#428487 18-Jan-2011 15:55

yea sweet as, thats for the info.
just wondering now, i dont mind a day of reinstalling, but is there a program to back up with, that can save this time?
so like, once i get all my programs installed, ill do a backup and if anything goes wrong, that back up will save me reinstalling in the future?

thanks very much, ps: heard of norton ghost, but havent tried or seen it before

pando

235 posts

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#428500 18-Jan-2011 16:13

Mprezd:
pando:

My fileserver is running WD Green drives in raid-0, it's about having a large partition with low power and quiet drives, the speed benefits of it are secondary but handy.

You'd only want raid 1 if you don't want to lose the data and don't back it up.

with the price of decent size drives now, and the problems associated with raid 0 that still makes little sense. He has 2 1tb drives and could easily buy a 2tb for $150. there really is zero reason to need the paltry speed benefit that you get from r0 on a green drive. They are fast enough for 1080p video streaming, and file transfer isn't that slow anyway - unless you are transferring over a slow network. I have 4 2tb drives in a nas and have no issue with speed.

And considering the OP is now looking at a backup solution it makes sense to either raid 1 the 1tb or get a 2tb drive (depending on how much stuff the OP actually has)

OP, you may find that the data you have isn't all important for backup. So figure out what you definitely want to keep and then base a backup solution around that. If you only have say 500gb worth of data that you really want to keep, I would still suggest using the 2 1tb drives in raid 1. But, given that you will lose the data, perhap just buying a 2tb green drive and external enclosure is the easiest solution.

You completely missed the point about LOW POWER and QUIET. The 2TB green drives are very nice drives and cheap. I said the speed benefits were secondary, that means it's not the reason for going green so you missed that point as well. There are a plethora of raid profiles for a reason - you select the one that best suits your needs.

nakedmolerat

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#428540 18-Jan-2011 18:22

pando:

You completely missed the point about LOW POWER and QUIET. The 2TB green drives are very nice drives and cheap. I said the speed benefits were secondary, that means it's not the reason for going green so you missed that point as well. There are a plethora of raid profiles for a reason - you select the one that best suits your needs.

green drives are known to be very unreliable and high failure rate. it makes no sense to have it on raid 0. if space is what the OP after, just get one single 2TB drive (less power used in comparison to 1TBx2)

sbiddle

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#428542 18-Jan-2011 18:29

+1 on the Green drives. I ran two in a RAID configuration (with backups) despite being warned it would fail... And it did after about 6 months.

nakedmolerat

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#428552 18-Jan-2011 19:13

sbiddle: +1 on the Green drives. I ran two in a RAID configuration (with backups) despite being warned it would fail... And it did after about 6 months.

both failed at the same time? or just one at a time?

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