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oh, I've had worse. lol. An older version of Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite didn't just move files to a vault that can be restored from, no, they outright deleted it! Long story short, the moment I plugged a USB drive into my computer to back up a program I was writing my source code and executable files on both the PC and USB drive were deleted, along with a mass a mass mailer tool and a password recovery tool called "Cain and Abel". When it did this, it displayed the message "Hacking tools are illegal"
Well, I complained about that, because hacking tools are not illegal. They are depended on for legitimate security checks. What is illegal is using those tools to break into a machine without authorization and/or deleting files on someone else's computer without authorization. Like what the AV was doing. They of course denied it, but in the very next update they removed that. My guess is that some idiot added a "feature" not realizing the repercussions. Still, I decided not to renew my license, and ever since then I have been careful to avoid relying too heavily on any mainstream AV always checking to make absolutely sure that heuristics based detection can be disabled before use, and that it isn't able to delete files without permission - which also means disabling automatic updates, except for virus definitions of course, just in case.
Speaking of an NAS though, I was once upon a time stupid enough to use an NAS that didn't have a way to directly access the drive. While I maintained backups, there was over a TB of data I lost access to since the most recent backup when the ethernet port broke - in large part because of just how slow backups were on it. The data is still presumably safe, but if I placed the hard drive in another seagate central chasis the partition would format so I'd have to jump through hoops on a Unix based system to move the files to a new drive, and it's still waiting for me to work on it since it would mean disconnecting the hard drives in current use, installing a new OS onto a new drive, etc. (which hopefully I will make the time to do between semesters) I'd avoid relying on an NAS that cannot be accessed in the event of hardware failure.
Anyway, back on topic, I ended up using XCI cutter to split my files for a few FAT32 tests, and I'm positive that both XCI cutter and XCI explorer are safe.
Well, I complained about that, because hacking tools are not illegal. They are depended on for legitimate security checks. What is illegal is using those tools to break into a machine without authorization and/or deleting files on someone else's computer without authorization. Like what the AV was doing. They of course denied it, but in the very next update they removed that. My guess is that some idiot added a "feature" not realizing the repercussions. Still, I decided not to renew my license, and ever since then I have been careful to avoid relying too heavily on any mainstream AV always checking to make absolutely sure that heuristics based detection can be disabled before use, and that it isn't able to delete files without permission - which also means disabling automatic updates, except for virus definitions of course, just in case.
Speaking of an NAS though, I was once upon a time stupid enough to use an NAS that didn't have a way to directly access the drive. While I maintained backups, there was over a TB of data I lost access to since the most recent backup when the ethernet port broke - in large part because of just how slow backups were on it. The data is still presumably safe, but if I placed the hard drive in another seagate central chasis the partition would format so I'd have to jump through hoops on a Unix based system to move the files to a new drive, and it's still waiting for me to work on it since it would mean disconnecting the hard drives in current use, installing a new OS onto a new drive, etc. (which hopefully I will make the time to do between semesters) I'd avoid relying on an NAS that cannot be accessed in the event of hardware failure.
Anyway, back on topic, I ended up using XCI cutter to split my files for a few FAT32 tests, and I'm positive that both XCI cutter and XCI explorer are safe.