Each day, 100’s of new viruses are “born” on the Internet. In most cases, these nasty pieces of malware are trapped by anti-virus software before they can infect your computer. But, sometimes viruses wind up on your disk – where they are seen as ordinary data files and are candidates for backup.

If your online backup program attempts to open an infected file, access to this file can be restricted and your backup program may be forcibly terminated or simply “suspended” by the anti-virus (or malware) application. This results in “stalled” or incomplete backups.

Sometimes, suspended backups on unattended PCs can go undetected for days — or even weeks. This leaves you unprotected against a data disaster…on a computer infected by one or more viruses!

Ideally, like Dr.Backup, your online backup service will notify you each time you complete a backup AND notify you if you do NOT backup for any extended amount of time. In this way, you know that your automated backups will be there for you in an emergency.

NextUp: Firewalls can block online backups