At about 7:15 this morning PDT this forum suffered a major database problem of unknown origin, the forum was down hard. Fortunately we back up this website every night, and I was able to restore last night's backup with no difficulty.
Any messages that were posted between late last night and 7:15 this morning were lost. If this has affected you please accept our apology.
We go to great lengths here to make as much valid and useful information as possible available to our members and guests, and we have some expertise on preventing attacks from spammers, as is evidenced by the complete lack of spam here, but bad things still happen sometimes. This was potentially a catastrophic problem but because of our automated nightly backups very little, if anything, was lost.
If you have important information on your home computer you are also vulnerable to a sudden, unpredictable partial or total loss of that data. With 30 years experience working full time in the computer industry we know the value of regular backups.
For people using Windows XP or Vista on a home computer we highly recommend
Acronis True Image. Using this software and an external hard drive you can make a total backup of your computer that can be restored in whole or in part at any time.
I have never met anyone that regretted making a backup.
