Better born lucky than rich

Back in May a friend of mine was hit with the AFP ransomware virus/trojan.  Nothing he could do would allow him to remove it or use the laptop (apparently) without paying the ransom.
I took an image of the infected hard drive and then after extensive googling I happened across a solution which involved creating a new user and used that account to remove the infection.
But Fred wasn't so lucky.
Fred got the AFP attack a week or so ago, he called in a friend who quickly realised it was all too hard, his friend recommended a mutual friend who fixes PC's.  In due course the PC was picked up and it was made abundantly clear that nothing on the PC was backed up, there were 7 years of irreplaceable photos and there were vital emails and contact details which must not be lost.
Fred got his PC back - and it was empty.
The "expert" had upgraded windows from Vista to 7 in the belief that all the personal files would be preserved, but somewhere along the line the wrong selection was made and the hard disk was formatted.  As if matters couldn't get worse, the PC would now not boot most of the time and offered a phantom choice of 2 operating systems.
My job was to recreate a reliable PC that would boot quickly, not offer a choice of operating systems and connect to the internet without issue.  Before I started I couldn't help but look at what might be retrievable after a format and new operating system was installed - I was amazed (after the software spent 8 hours analysing the hard disk) to find a significant number of photos.
Three days later 1200 photos had been manually recovered, a number of docs and a significant number of emails and contact details.
Fred has his PC back now and seems rather pleased, the PC starts quickly and reliably, and accessing the internet just works.  Apparently most of the irreplaceable photos have been restored, and there seems to be enough emails and contact details to overcome future problems.
This trauma could have been avoided.
Never install, update or repair an operating system without first taking steps to recover in case of catastrophy.
I always take an image, but at the very least all personal files should always be copied to another hard disk. Even if it's just the removal of a nasty, sometimes these steps could save your bacon.

This time Fred was lucky, and to keep himself lucky he has just ordered a couple of external hard disks so he can manage and maintain his own backups in future.