Attention fellow builders ... A life lesson learned the hard way

[kkrell]

Originally Posted by Tim McKnight

Great idea and certainly worth a try ... Except ... The techs wiped and formatted all of our drives.

Ah, sorry, bad techs. The drives should have been replaced, not wiped. In my 36 years as a tech - not something you do. Absolutely never overwrite originals until you've grabbed every last bit back.

[westman]

Data Rescue (3 - now 4) did it for me Tim


https://www.prosofteng.com/data-resc...very-software/

worth a try

[CFW]

Originally Posted by kkrell

Ah, sorry, bad techs. The drives should have been replaced, not wiped. In my 36 years as a tech - not something you do. Absolutely never overwrite originals until you've grabbed every last bit back.

Yup. Like cryogenics, there may be a cure in the future. Never overwrite your old drives... start fresh.

[redir]

So sorry to hear this, what an incredible bummer. If smart criminals would just put their time and energy into doing something useful instead of screwing people over the world would be a better place.

I know you already got some solid advice but for others reading this thinking about their own data security I'll just +1 the advice of having the business machines offline. That and good old paper.

Good luck on the recovery.

[jaylynch@yahoo.]

I use a virtual private network as an attempt to guard against external hacks/attacks. Not sure if it would have helped for this, but does anyone else use this type of service?

[rogthefrog]

Originally Posted by jaylynch@yahoo.

I use a virtual private network as an attempt to guard against external hacks/attacks. Not sure if it would have helped for this, but does anyone else use this type of service?

A VPN may or may not help for this kind of problem. A VPN is just a proxy between you and the public internet. It hides your computer's IP address from the sites you visit (they see your VPN's IP address). Unless your VPN is doing some kind of filtering, a VPN per se won't protect you from malicious payloads. Many (most) self-managed VPNs are just pass-throughs and do no filtering, so they don't protect you. Company-provided VPNs that let you dial into your office often do have some filtering in place, includign malware protection, but you'd have to ask your IT admin to find out how much protection you get.

Your computer --> your router --> your modem --> your ISP --> VPN --> internet --> website