Backup Your Computer!!

[sandy b]

I'm sure most people have an external hard drive but if not please get one. Our 7 month old Mac crashed yesterday and we could not recover any data. Not even a year old and it bombed!!

DH called me yesterday morning and was having problems. Called Mac support and nothing the tech did worked so had to take it to the Apple store yesterday afternoon. Nothing could be recovered. 

Of all the data lost I am mourning the loss of all my photos especially Max's baby pictures. Wish I had put more on DK :-) Granted there were a lot of dupes that could have been deleted but still.

Any preferences on external hard drives? I bought a Seagate suppose to be easy to use.

So please, please if you don't have an external backup get one today!! Save those Doodle pics!!

 

 

 

[Jane, Rooney & Stuart]

Sandy - I am so sorry that this happened to you!  I was just saying two weeks ago to Clark - our resident expert - that I needed to do something.  He made some great suggestions.  I haven't gotten one yet but this reminds me to get my butt in gear!!!

[Tina, Clover, Plus 5 More]

Sandy, sorry to hear you lost all the photos.  I have seen alot of hard drives or other components fail on computers less than a year old.  IMO Seagate is a good hard drive.

[Laurie, Fudge, and Vern]

Thank you, Sandy, for this information. Wow, I just bought a Mac and thought they were virtually indestructible. What did they say went wrong and what are they doing about it? I just had trouble with my old Dell, but luckily he could retrieve my data. Thanks again for the reminder. I am sorry it happened to you!

[sandy b]

Laurie,

According to the tech at the Apple store apparently there was a bad place on the hard drive and Apple will not try to recover the data. I may not be understanding this correctly but what i heard is a PC hard drive has space that allows for recovery of data if the drive becomes corrupt. Apparently that's not the case with Macs. He said they could take the hard drive out and give us names of people who try to recover Mac data but it cost lots of money and no guarantees and could take several weeks. Given what we know about computers I don't know if this true or not. 

Basically they cleaned the drive and reloaded our software so it's like a new computer with no data. They weren't too thrilled with me telling everyone at the Genius bar that we had a lemon!!

I thought I had done something wrong. Just got my iphone Monday and was trying to sync with iTunes and was having problems and ended up getting all DH's contacts!!

[Tina, Clover, Plus 5 More]

Sandy, are you saying they used the same hard drive?  I work on PC's not Mac's but believe your data could have been recovered.  Especially if the hard drive was stilll usuable.

[sandy b]

Tina, I'm pretty sure they used the same hard drive. This is what I couldn't understand. we've had PC's crash before and always could recover the data. My understanding is they won't try to recover the data. So if you don't have backups like us you lose it all.

[Tina, Clover, Plus 5 More]

You just said it "THEY WON'T TRY".  Spending the extra time to recover the data is no longer a customer courtesy.  IMO it should be if it is an easy recovery.

[sandy b]

Megan, glad to hear good reviews on Seagate. I need something that is very user friendly, I'm technically challenged. 

Something else - no bookmarks/favorites!! Had to remember my DK password!! 

Jane, definitely do something soon, don't lose those photos of Rooney and Stuart!!

[Jane, Guinness and Murphy]

I'm so sorry Sandy....the same thing happened to me last Summer with my Mac (but mine was almost two years old).  I was still covered under warranty so it didn't cost me anything.....but I lose everything.  Since then I use a remote hard drive that I got at the Apple Store.  It's an Iomega.  If you have trouble with the IPhone sync, you can bring it in and they'll do it for you.

[Linda and "Toby"]

Oh, noooooo!!!!! I feel your pain!!! I've been there done that (with my PC a few years ago). It's soooo traumatic to lose everything. I hope you had the Apple Care insurance!

I highly recommend getting an Apple Time Capsule. It's a wireless external drive that you can set up with your Mac's Time Machine to do automatic backups. http://www.apple.com/timecapsule/ My 1Terabyte external backup drive went out this week. (groan) Fortunately, I have another external harddrive that I'm not using so I quickly dragged everything on my Mac over to it, but it's old so I don't trust it. Think I'd better pick up a Time Capsule, too.

NOTE TO EVERYONE.... it's not a matter of "WILL my harddrive crash?" It's "WHEN will my harddrive crash?" They ALL crash eventually, some sooner than others. Make sure you have EVERYTHING you value on TWO separate drives. BTW, files backed up on CDs and DVDs become corrupted over time. If you are relying on this method of backup, you'd better check to make sure the image files will still open...

[F, Calla & Luca]

I'm curious. Do files on DVDs or CDs become corrupted if left alone on a shelf? How could that be? Is it something about the media? As a complete aside, How Stuff Works, a great site, has a wonderful explanation of how non-rewritable and rewritable CDs work, Just ignore some of the more technical stuff.  Or is it only if you repeatedly open them? Then this could happen on an external drive too, no?

[sandy b]

A friend also uses Drop Box to backup his photos online. I think I will try this too. From now on i will be overprotected!!