We had 2 hard drive crashes within days of each other (2 of our 3 home machines), and just received the recovery data from the latest on DVDs. I have several questions, so could use some advice from a PC guru (or two):
1. Can I load the recovered data (from XP) onto our Vista laptop?
2. What should we be doing for maintenance to prevent these problems in the future?
3. The latest crash is from an old PC that's been limping along for many years, replacing parts as they break. By the time we buy a new internal hard drive & get it attached, the next part may fail. At what point does it make sense to buy a new PC?
4. What do you recommend for firewall, security, etc? At what intervals (or automatic)?
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If the PC is 3 or 4 years old, I'd stop investing in it and just buy something new. If the data is important, you'll want to back it up regularly. If you want something simple, look at a facility like Carbonite. It does back-ups automatically over the internet (so you get the safety of off-site storage). You won't have any problem putting data from XP on Vista. You may not be able to load old XP software (I'm not using Vista; I'm assuming that running XP software will be hit or miss).
ReplyDeletethe best thing you can do for a firewall is go to BestBuy and purchase a router. You might want to get a wireless router (I've been very happy with my LinkSys Wireless Router). This gives you a hardware firewall that is virtually impenetrable (unless you decide to open it up) and requires no maintenance.