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Virus is a computer program that able to spread from one computer to another computer.
They are designed specifically to gain access into parts of your computer system and they have the ability to duplicate and infecting another computer.

Below is some of the most common methods for a computer virus to spread.

Boot Information

Every disk (hard disk, floppy disk, CD, DVD) contains a boot sector even if it is a bootable disk or not.
When you turn on your computer, then it will search for boot information.
If the computer finds a disk containing boot information, it reads the boot information and uses it to start the computer in normal procedure.
For an example if you accidentally boot your computer from a bootable CD that contains a computer virus, that way the computer virus are being triggered and it is possible to be transferred into the computer’s hard drive.

After the boot information on the hard drive has been infected with the virus, it will be loaded into your computer’s memory every time you start your computer. From that memory (RAM) the computer virus infecting every disk that attached with your computer. This is how the infection spreads.

Most boot viruses could stay on a computer system for a long time without generating problems, it was designed only to stay there and spread themselves.
Such computer viruses are designed to activate their bad behaviour on a specific date depends on the creator.
But there are some nasty boot viruses that can destroy the boot information or forcing a complete format of a hard drive right after they are transferred into a computer.

Application Infections

When a computer program that has been infected with a virus is running, the virus is loaded into the RAM.
While the virus is in the RAM, if you are running another application that application can become infected.
It means that more applications on your system are possible to be infected.
Multiple infections are very common and it will definitely generate system problems.

For some time the program files may operates normally without any problems but eventually they will have problems or the infections causes the whole computer system down.

Generally, when an application is infected with a virus, the first sign of an infection is when you are saving files it is saved without a proper names or the data that you save is incomplete.
This type of viruses are often designed to search for a programs that are used to share information between users/computers such as email applications, screen savers, office document Macros, and self-extracting compressed files.

E-Mail Attachments

Most of dangerous viruses are spreading through an e-mail attachments.
In such cases, the user does not realize that they are attaching infected file/s to an email message and send it to a friend/s or colleague/s.
By the time that email is received, the virus is triggered when the attachment file is opened then infecting a new computer.

These days mass mailing email contains worms or viruses are being released.
These kind of attacks AUTOMATICALLY scans your computer’s files and search for any email address it can find and uses your email application to AUTOMATICALLY send infected messages to every email address that it has found in your computer.

It is very important to be aware over the emails that you open. Make sure that it does not contain dangerous viruses.
Even if that email comes from your family or friends, it may contain a virus.
This is the moment where an anti-virus program would be really helpful to detect your incoming messages and to make sure that the messages you receive does not contain a virus.

Have you ever loss your important data ? Well, i have.
At that moment I really agree on what people say that prevention is always a better cure.
Here are some steps that I want to share with you in order to prevent data loss.

1. Use an updated Anti Virus software and always keep it up to date
Antivirus is a special software developed to protect your computer against malicious computer virus.
Some virus can remove or modify your data without you ever realize it and some virus can cause your computer to crash.
So make sure to keep your Antivirus software uptodate with the latest patch and signature files for maximum security.

2. Protect your computer against power surges with UPS
UPS is an Uninterruptible Power Supply. It protects your computer and data during a power surge or failure.
UPS is equiped with a spare battery that provides you some time to save your documents and shutting down Windows properly so that you don’t lose any files and avoiding your computer hardware components from the possibility of damages.

3. Make sure your machine is dry and keept in dust-free area
Place your computer far away from places that can be directly exposed to rain, sun or humidity.
These places have the tendency to cause rusting and can damage your hardware components.

4. Don’t try to repair or open up your computer without any assistance
If you have no experience in repairing computer hardware, you may accidentally damage the circuit boards,
hardware components or even worst, get an electric shock! Always consult with an expert.

5. Don’t over-tweak your system
Avoid modifying your windows registry or perform an overclock to your hardware in order to boost the performance unless if you are definitely sure on what you’re doing. I’m sure you don’t want to fry your computer.

6. Make a backup copy and keep them at an off-site location
This helps protecting your backup copy from damage, just in case if there is a natural disaster such as flood, fire or any kind of disaster.

7. Don’t move your computer while it still running/operating
I’m sure that you don’t want your power cord falling off and generates a data corruption or a physical damage to your hard disk such as a head crash while you still working on a project.

8. Avoid sharing access to your computer with strangers on the network
Your data can be stolen or modified if anyone on the network can have access to your files.

9. Perform hard disk maintenance
Delete temporary files, unnecessary files and defragment your hard disk regularly.
This can help you keeping up your hard disk on good condition.

10. Aware of failure symptoms
When you hard disk starts making noises and your systems are getting cranky, it is time to start making backups on all of your data files.

I hope this steps can help you to prevent from loosing your data files.

Doing a computer maintenance is something that is often overlooked by computer users. One of the easiest ways of doing computer maintenance is to perform defragmentation. This is one of the basic thing that not known by the owner of the computer.

Defragmentating your hard drive is one important thing if you don’t want your computer’s performance decrease along together with the increasing of your data on hard drive.
Windows operating system users should not be worry about this matter. As windows has been package with this handy features.
It’s as simple as clicking buttons because this feature is very user-friendly. This tools can present the exact evaluation for user whether the hard drive needs to be defragmented or not.

Eventhough the user interface is different between each windows versions, they all have the same function. You can simply click on the Start menu, choose Accessories, System Tools then click on Disk Defragmenter.
Once the interface is open, you may choose to analyze the hard drive that connects to your computer.
The analyzer will soon present an evaluation whether you need to perform disk defragmenting or not. If the analyzer recommend you to perform defragmentation, all you need to do is select the hard drive from the list and press Defragment button then this tool will do the rest.

Over time computers scattered data across the whole length of hard drive, this makes accessing data become slower and takes more time to accomplish.Disk defragmenter tool does an important task.
It’s “regrouping” all files that are scattered across your hard drive into one “block” of the hard drive which makes it easier to read and write on your hard drive.

Defragmenting a hard drive usually takes a long time depends on the size of your hard drive. The speed of your processor and the amount of RAM you have also plays a role. When performing disk defragment, it could take up almost all of the resource of your computer, so you won’t be able to do any operations until disk defragment process is completed.
So, i suggest you to do this operation while you are not using the computer.

An external hard drive is a hard disk drive (much like that on your computer) is placed on appearance, in the case outside. You can buy them pre-made or buy a hard drive and enclosure, and make your own.
They come in many sizes, that is relatively cheap, and is very suitable for implementation of the various role.

In this article, I will mention three specific advantages of an external hard drive. For one reason or another, you may choose the storage capacity for your computers data that have grown faster than your computers capability. It may be contain large capacity of documents and programs, and you need more space. So the first advantage is to use your external hard drive to increase the scalable of your computer. This is true, if all of your PC ’s hard drive bay is full, and, especially if you have only one hard drive bay of a laptop computer.

The second advantage is to use your external drive as a shared storage drive. You can attach it to a personal computer and set it to be accessible and share the capacity. Then, start saving and sharing a wide range of documents. As an example, you can share and save images, musics and video files.
Therefor, you ‘ll be able to free large space in your computer local hard disk and you ‘ll be able to share files on your home network.

Your external hard drive can be use to save important documents as for another advantage.
For example, you can scan your insurance information, leases, bank accounts and credit investigation, and store them into your external hard drive. You can keep pictures of your valuable things on your external hard drive and keep these safe for your future needs. Then, you can store the external hard drive in a safe place such as a fire-resistant safety box or security box. This will safe you from the possibility of theft or even worse, nature disaster.

There you have it. That’s is three advantages of your external hard drive. This kind of hard drives have been produced in various tipes and come in various capacity that you may choose for your needs. If you have saved a lot of files, then you can get a 500 GB hard drive or greater, if you wish. If you only have a number of important documents, then a 15 GB hard disk is likely to be enough. The important thing is that you may have be able to select the size you want. And, if you want, you can get more than one external hard drive. That’s what makes it so ideal.