A couple of days ago I told you Cryptolocker Strikes, The Price Has Gone Up. The bad part about Cryptolocker and its variants is that they will encrypt every attached drive on your system. Therefore if you want a backup to be truly safe in case of disaster, the backup drive must be disconnected.

The safest method is to back up your data and immediately disconnect the drive. If you want to risk it a bit, you could wait to disconnect when you realize you’ve been infected. But if you don’t do it soon enough, you’ll lose the bet and your backup will get encrypted.

If you read the horror story I told about a loyal reader who got infected, you saw it cost over $1200 to get the data back. That doesn’t count the time and stress involved. It also doesn’t factor in that some of his data had errors when decrypted.

Therefore I’d suggest you buy an “insurance policy” in the form of a detachable drive. The WD My Passport Ultra 1 TB drive pictured here currently sells for under $70 at Amazon. I would also suggest you get a copy of the GoodSync utility as it makes scheduled backups really easy. The total cost of this insurance is under $100 and it is something all users should strongly consider as no one is immune from getting a nasty virus like Cryptolocker!