Yeah, that's a real calamity!

As a PC consultant i really try to get my clients to backup thoroughly and often.

I myself always build my own PCs with 2 identical hard drives. Then i make Norton Ghost full drive images (clones the whole drive, but you can't retreive individual files) from the boot drive to the backup drive.

But i also bought a WD "Media Center" external drive that backs up my most important folders/files every night. And i copy my most important projects to CDs as well.

The anti-virus i recommend is Trend Micro's PC-cillin (now "Internet Security 2005"). I've used it for 4 years and had zero infections.

None of my clients has had an infection while using it (correctly) either. One client's college student son never updated the virus patterns when requested to and did get 1 virus.

Sorry to push commercial products here, but might save someone from such a disaster.

Message edited on: 07/01/2005 16:11