Per Stormin Mormon:
Something got me. And, it did some kind of damage that two techies could not
recover.

What kind of anti-virus were you using?

On my daughter's machine, Avast threw a warning once but my macho
son-in-law just *had* to click the button that said "Ignore this
warning" and the system got hosed beyond recovery.

It wasn't a Trojan, but a bad USB controller that moved me to a backup
scheme where at least a couple of my backup drives are not readily
available - i.e. I have to drive to get to them.

That way, when things go really South, and it hasn't dawned on me yet
that something is hosing my backups as I attach them in an effort to
recover... the non-availability will hopefully save me from myself.

I also have a rule - which I will hopefully have the presence of mind to
follow - that once I am down to a single backup, I will never, *ever*
attach it to the problem PC. Instead, I will make copies on another PC
and use the copies.
--
Pete Cresswell