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If viruses are in files that are backed up, e.g. during an Emergency System Backup, and then they're removed from the backup files during an anti-virus scan, does this affect a subsequent restore process? I ask because the increasing plague of spam means that the probability is going up that virus-containing attachments will be sitting in directories backed up during a routine operation, and that an antivirus scan will detect them in the .zip files created by AISBackup and remove them.

Hi Hugh

In my experience anti virus software quarantines or removes the whole zip file containing a virus, not just the individual file. It is probably best to keep a real time virus scan of all incoming e-mails to try and reduce the risk of viruses.

If the backup is an on-going backup there is a good chance that the virus only infects latter backup sessions, these can be removed from the backup using the Manage Backup / Undo Backups option.

If a virus scanner does quarantine or remove zip files from a backup run the Manage Backup / Validate (Test) Backup option ASAP so that AISBackup can re-backup files that still exist and have been removed from the backup by the virus checker.

Barry

Thanks, Barry -- I'll do as you suggest. I quite agree that scanning incoming e-mail is the solution; unfortunately, the corporate version of Norton Antivirus doesn't seem to set up a proxy POP server in the way that the consumer version does, and it's only configured for Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes. So I can't use it to scan incoming mail to the POP proxy server that my spam filter sets up. I'm sure there's a solution; I just haven't hit it yet.

Hugh