It’s a moment you wouldn’t wish on anyone. That moment is when the realization sinks home that your computer has been attacked by a virus; a virus which has succeeded in slipping through your computer’s defences which, up to that moment, you were convinced were strong enough. Your computer technician is now breaking the sad news that you were over-optimistic of your chosen software’s ability to protect your computer, and the valuable information that it contains, from the ever growing and increasingly sophisticated array of computer viruses that are appearing on a daily basis.

As he shakes his head, your computer technician explains that the only way to give your computer a clean bill of health is to re-format your hard disc, meaning that all the information contained on it will be gone forever. There are many viruses around these days that will save the technician the job of clearing out the hard disc, as the virus will clear out the hard disc during its raid on your computer.

When it comes to protecting the information on a hard disc there are two methods. Preventing virus attacks on your computer means investing in the best virus protection software that you can find and not necessarily in the cheapest. The information that you have online will, for certain, be worth a hundreds times more than it will cost you to invest in the software.

The other method to protect your data also involves an investment, and again one that is very worthwhile. Anyone who wants to protect their information needs to spend some money on an external hard disc to house and back up all the information on their computer. The information can be related to your business and your personal life and many times cannot be replaced.      

So don’t make the mistake of adopting the “false economy” approach. Spend some money on protecting your information. You won’t regret it.

For more information on Protection your PC or laptop visit http://www.mcafee-downloads.co.uk

Tags: Anti Virus, anti-virus protection, Back Up, Computer Viruses, Digital Download Products, Mcafee, PC Back up, Trojan Horses, Viruses

Most computer users have lost count of the times important files are lost when a disk drive fails or back-up disk is mislaid.

Putting a back up strategy in to action is imperative for everyone who stores valuable business and personal data on a computer.

Firstly, any system based on keeping data in one physical place like your home or office will fail.

Data disasters do happen – and it’s not uncommon for two disks to fail simultaneously, like in a power cut, or for your backup system to be stolen or destroyed by flood or fire.

Forget tape back ups. Tapes stretch and distort over time and are not reliable in the long term.
You need to adopt a professional SFG system – SFG stands for son. father and grandfather.

The son is the hard drive on your server. This is the data drive for your network and all users should only access this drive to create, edit or delete files.

The father is another hard drive attached to your network that mirrors the data drive on your server. Backup software on your server is configured to instantly overwrite any changes to files held by the son.

The grandfather is a remote online backup service that holds all your important data at a secure server. The father backs up to your grandfather.

With these fail safes in place, if the son and/or father hard drives are inaccessible for any reason, all you need is a computer connected to the internet to restore your network data.
Specialist back up software on your server and the remote server generally keep backups for 30 days, so if you have accidently edited or erased a vital file, you should be able to catch your error.

SFG backup systems are relatively inexpensive. You can buy a terrabyte hard drive (1000 gigabytes) for a few hundred pounds and the price is steadily reducing.

Hundreds of companies are offering online backup services. Some are free for low personal use but you receive better features and more storage space if you pay. Expect to fork out about £1-£2 per gigabyte of storage.

Home users can back up their entire computer, including operating system, and program files for a few pounds. If the computer is lost, just plug in the new one and download the missing computer’s entire disk drive and start working again exactly where you left off.

Tags: Back Up, Computer, Data, SFG System