My computer collapsed last night. It was horrible. After performing a series of routine Windows updates, I restarted my WXP system and everything crashed. I’m running WXP on an iMac using virtualization software called VMware Fusion. There was no way to repair the virtual file and I finally had to throw it to the trash. The good news is that I had a backup copy of the set and could use it instead. The bad news is that the backup is 2 months old. Apparently, I was not diligent enough to make backups to protect myself. I lost a lot of work files that will take a long time to recreate.
On a Mac operating system, you have time to make regular backups of the changed files. Everything is very neat and seamless. But since virtual operating systems are huge files (mine is 40 GB), your system would not really slow down to be able to perform this backup every time you did something. The common rule is to exclude the entire virtual system from your usual backups and to do it manually. I guess I did not do it manually enough.
Here is something else that I learned. When I copied the backup file from the virtual machine, I suspended the file instead of closing it completely. When I copied a file considered open, he really pained. The whole Mac has stopped and will not restart at all. I was panicked thinking that the world was ending for my computer, but the next morning (after a good rest of the machine), everything is back to normal. At least, it seems to be going. Now, I’m going to copy right now and close everything first. I hope it takes care of it and things get normal again. At least normal from 2 months. Then I start to rebuild 2 months of lost work. Here’s my advice: save everything you can not do without. Recovery is sometimes impossible and there are no reminders.