Computer Reformatted - need to restore files-help!

BCEagle91
Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:59:46 +0000

The quantity and potency of malware on Windows is growing and there’s stuff that’s just starting to get by general best practices. Firefox is an improvement but keeping everything updated (Antivirus, Multiple Spyware detectors and cleaners, Windows Defender, Windows Updates, etc.) is getting to be a chore. I have four personal systems with 9 operating systems (8 Windows, 1 Mac OSX) and keeping them clean is starting to become a chore. I do remind the kids to keep their systems updated and to run scans on them from time to time when they are using Windows.

I spend most of my work time on Mac OSX. It’s nice as I’m on a huge corporate network and don’t have to deal with the Windows stuff floating around the network. I know others that have just tossed Windows to go with Mac for the whole household just because a dad was tired of cleaning up all of the computers every other weekend.

I would be just as happy to use Linux if they were up to the level of Mac OSX in terms of usability, manageability and applications availability.

On iTunes, just go to Apple.com and download it and install it. If your music is in mp3 form, just select all of the files and drag it to iTunes. You may be able to do this with native iTunes files too.

For your Word files, create a folder and search for .doc files (or .docx) and drag them to the folder and then sort them out.

We’ve gone to more of a server approach where we save files and information on web pages or documents that are stored on servers on the web. We pay for web hosting and storage in addition to using other services. We can retrieve documents from the web when we need them and use them from any computer that we happen to be using at the time. For videos and pictures, I have a 1 TB MyBook drive that’s on my home network so that others can grab videos or pictures using FTP. Others can store stuff on the MyBook too.

I don’t have a backup drive for the MyBook but I keep copies of our pictures on multiple machines. I should probably look for a backup for the MyBook and keep it in the office or at another residence.