Pen drives these days has become some major mediums behind spreading viruses which cause various troubles on your computer. Many of friends often got their pen drives infected by virus and they have crucial data on their virus infected pen drive.

Now the question arises here is how can you back up data from a virus infected pen drive. If you insert you pen drive on your computer it may infect your computer also. Some times you may not be able to open the virus infected pen drive in that case it becomes more difficult as the pen drive does not open on double click.

Today we will tell you how can you back up data from your virus infected pen drive. Let’s discuss two most simple methods to backup data from your virus infected pen drive.

Fix:

These are the two methods which you can use to back up data from pen drive.

Note: Before backing up data form your virus infected pen drive make sure to disable autorun before connecting your pen drive to your computer and don’t double click on the pen drive icon in my computer to open it.

Method 1: Simple Windows Procedure To Backup Data From Pen Drive

1. Right click on the Removable pen drive in My Computer 

2. Select Properties >Tools.

3. Click the Back Up >> Choose the file to back up from your removable pen drive

4. Choose the Destination path where you want to store the back up files.

for detailed steps see : Backup your important data in 9 easy steps

Method 2: Backup Using Free Commander ( Alternative Windows Explorer )

1. Download Free Commander from here and install it.

2. Launch Free Commander and click on your removable pen drive letter to explore it contents

3. Now right click and copy your crucial files from your virus infected pen drive before formatting it.

Note: You can also see the hidden virus files which you may not be able to see in windows explorer, so you can even delete those virus files on your pen drive to make your pen drive free from viruses.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.

One of our readers Yugal asked me a question that had been sub-consciously running around in

my mind for a while.

The question was:

How do I take regular backup of my important data on regular basis?

This question has been running in my mind too for sometime. Just a thought of loss of important data gives me a scary chill. I was thinking of finding a reliable and easy way of regular data backup. I had a clue of how to do it efficiently and fast, but I hadn’t actually tried it. The idea is to create a replica of your important files on an external disk having same files and directory structure. And from time to time, synchronize the two with each other so that the replica becomes same as the latest copies of your files. This serves the purpose of regular data backup.

So I decided to try some folder synchronization utilities. I came across many, I tried two of them : Microsoft SyncToy and SyncBack. I personally found SyncToy easier to use and simple to configure.

In this post I will share with you how you can use Microsoft SyncToy to backup your important data to an external drive on a regular basis.

Fix:

First of all, you need to download and install SyncToy from here.

Note: You need to have .Net Framework installed to make it work. If that is missing on your computer, download .Net Framework here.

Now Launch the application, the screen looks like the one above.

Click on “Create New Folder Pair” button. It will open a screen like one below:

1. Select the local source folder and remote destination folder. The destination can be a removable drive or a network drive, whichever you prefer .

See the sample below, in this u take the user data backup from my windows vista folder to a removable drive as seen below.

2. Now one more really important part. You need to select the Action from “Synchronize” , “Echo” or “Contribute”. You will find the information of each mode by the side.

In short, use synchronize if you want to keep only the latest files and don’t worry about older versions (Not recommended).

Echo – this mode is safer than synchronize, but does delete files on other side if the file is removed from source (which may cause problem sometime – Not Recommended mode)

Contribute – this mode will copy new files . deletion on one side does not affect other side. (recommended). This mode may consume some more space, but is safest.

3. After you create a pair, you can see it in screen below, one with the name “document-backup” in my example. Click on change options if you want to exclude certain type of files or any sub-folders.

Here u find the options to select sub-folders. Click and u see another window as below this one.

Here un-check the folders which you don’t need, for example I removed the “Saved Games” folder as I don’t want to take its backup.

Press Ok and click “Run” button. It will first study and check the files and folders on both sides and will then start copying and creating folders as needed.

Copying in progress as seen below:

This is all you need to do at the beginning.

After a week or day or whatever time, when you want to sync the two folders again for backup, you just need to open the SyncToy, select the folder pair, and click “Run”.  On this, it will analyze the changes, and copy the changed files to the destination.

There maybe certain errors for system files, as in my case, you can see the errors by clicking the red link, it will look something like ones below:

One more thing is, when you create a pair, SyncToy will create a file at both the folders, like one shown below, don’t remove this file, as it uses this file for synchronization.

Hope you find this method useful.

The second tool I found, SyncBack also does the same, SyncBack a freeware, you can download SyncBack here. The user interface is bit complicated, but you got some extra options if you need in this tool.

This content is just a summary, read the full article at ©2009 TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles. All Rights Reserved.