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Member
Picture of fpuhan
posted
Just a word of caution to others...

Over the past 43 years or so, I've never had a problem with data loss when having my tech equipment serviced by Apple. Not that I've had much need to have equipment serviced.

So, when I took my 2017 MacBook Pro to the Apple store to have them look at a sticky key, I didn't bother to make a backup of my hard disk. You can tell what's coming...

"We'll need to replace some stuff," I was told. I'd have to leave the computer. Did I have a backup? No, I said, I'd risk it. After all, they're replacing the keyboard, right? How would that affect my hard disk?

I got it back yesterday, and when they opened the lid and we were greeted with the "Welcome to setup" screen, the staffer told me that, unfortunately, my data was lost. You have a backup right?

All is not lost. I have another Mac on which I have pretty much all my apps and data. Not EVERYTHING, mind you, but enough that I should be able to use Migration Assistant to restore most of my stuff. It's going to take a good portion of the weekend to do so, but lesson learned.

Back up your data!!!

I have no one to blame but myself.




You can't truly call yourself "peaceful" unless you are capable of great violence. If you're not capable of great violence, you're not peaceful, you're harmless.

NRA Benefactor/Patriot Member
 
Posts: 2857 | Location: Peoples Republic of North Virginia | Registered: December 04, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
אַרְיֵה
Picture of V-Tail
posted Hide Post
Thanks for the reminder. I'll start a Time Machine backup today when I leave the house to go back to the Toyota dealer (again! Mad).

Now I just have to remember where I put that FireWire cable.



הרחפת שלי מלאה בצלופחים
 
Posts: 30545 | Location: Central Florida, Orlando area | Registered: January 03, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of 71 TRUCK
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Sorry to hear this.
My wife has one of those plug in thingys.
She backs up our computers every few weeks.
Probably should do it more often.




The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State



NRA Life Member
 
Posts: 2553 | Location: Central Florida, south of the mouse | Registered: March 08, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of fpuhan
posted Hide Post
Concomitant with the subject, Dropbox has been informing me that I'm about to run out of space. I upgraded to a paid plan that now gives me 2TB of online storage.

However, Dropbox is a SYNC service, not an online backup service. Who can recommend an online backup and restore service that is Mac-friendly, but also accessible via Windows and Linux?




You can't truly call yourself "peaceful" unless you are capable of great violence. If you're not capable of great violence, you're not peaceful, you're harmless.

NRA Benefactor/Patriot Member
 
Posts: 2857 | Location: Peoples Republic of North Virginia | Registered: December 04, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Baroque Bloke
Picture of Pipe Smoker
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I don’t use active virus protection, which steals CPU cycles. But once a day I disconnect from the Internet and run a Malwarebytes scan (takes less than a minute) to verify that my Mac isn’t infected. Then I run a Time Machine backup before reconnecting to the Internet. I’ve never seen any Malwarebytes reports other than “Congratulations, you are clean”.



Serious about crackers
 
Posts: 8854 | Location: San Diego | Registered: July 26, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
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quote:
Who can recommend an online backup and restore service that is Mac-friendly, but also accessible via Windows and Linux?


IDrive? I have it on my laptop but haven't really used it so can't give any useful info. Works with both Windows and Mac. One price for unlimited computers.



Mongo only pawn in game of life...
 
Posts: 683 | Location: DFW | Registered: August 15, 2014Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of ewills
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I have been using IDrive for a couple of years now to backup my work Win10 laptop. I have a spare machine I don't backup as it is nothing but a internet/email tool. I used to do manual backups over my home network to a server like machine that stored a lot of data. I did not know the automatic backups to that machine were not working properly. When my last work laptop decided to die, I found out I was in trouble. I lost about 8 months of data. All pictures, email history, and accounting records. The worst was trying to recreate everything I put into Quickbooks for all of that time. Not good. Took me weeks to go through tons of paperwork so I could do my taxes. Never again......Online backup now for me. Every weekday. Also checked to be sure it is working regularly.....Never again for this guy
 
Posts: 308 | Location: NOVA | Registered: February 15, 2015Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Go ahead punk, make my day
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One evening about 3 years ago I closed my 1 year old Macbook Pro at dinner time. When I returned, I got the screen of death, the flashing folder signal. I tried all the fixes but my SSD had died out of the bluw

Apple covered it under warranty (they had never seen a SSD die like that) and I did have a backup, but it was several months old, so I lost a decent number of photos, etc.

Now I backup every week and keep important doc backups on the cloud.
 
Posts: 45798 | Registered: July 12, 2008Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of PakRatJR
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LOL I just posted a few days ago about loosing a HDD to weather/electrical issues.

I have no recent enough backup and had to send it out for recovery. Cost me $2k. Wont have it back till next week sometime at the earliest....I hope. I was just about to post for recommendations for backup options. I will just follow this thread Big Grin
 
Posts: 482 | Location: Sussex WI | Registered: April 04, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
His Royal Hiney
Picture of Rey HRH
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by fpuhan:
Concomitant with the subject, Dropbox has been informing me that I'm about to run out of space. I upgraded to a paid plan that now gives me 2TB of online storage.

However, Dropbox is a SYNC service, not an online backup service. Who can recommend an online backup and restore service that is Mac-friendly, but also accessible via Windows and Linux?


I use acronis backup to backup to their cloud and three USB drives. I also use a sync program with 4 tb pcloud that I paid one time for life



"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life – daily and hourly. Our answer must consist not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, 1946.
 
Posts: 19583 | Location: The Free State of Arizona - Ditat Deus | Registered: March 24, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of Blume9mm
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I've been a mac fan since .... ready for it?

1987.... with little to no problems.. up until recently the only real problem I had was the same about 20+ years ago... took 7 mistakes to lose about 2,000 data entries...

that is until last month... lost the last three years of customer records ... all my fault.... but I am old school and still have it all on paper and so am putting it all back in.... one of the advantages to having a heart attack and having the time now.

I'd never trust a computer geek to do what is practical and logical....


My Native American Name:
"Runs with Scissors"
 
Posts: 4441 | Location: Greenville, SC | Registered: January 30, 2017Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Told cops where to go for over 29 years…
Picture of 911Boss
posted Hide Post
One of the (many) reasons I am an Apple fan is for the ease of backup/restore using “Time Machine”.

In all my time with Windows and doing family “tech support” for Windows (3.0, 3.1, 95, 98, XP, Vista, 7) never was there such a wonderfully seamless backup solution.

I have two external hard drives and alternate my backups between them. Not obsessive to the point of daily backups, but at least a few times a month when I get the “Its been X Days since your last backup” message and have time to grab the BU HD and let it do its thing.

Back when I had a desktop, it ran several times a day because I left the extHD hooked up 24/7. Since moving to the MacBook Pro as my only computer I am a tad less zealous, but still make sure it gets done on a somewhat frequent, if irregular, basis.






What part of "...Shall not be infringed" don't you understand???


 
Posts: 10920 | Location: Western WA state for just a few more years... | Registered: February 17, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
thin skin can't win
Picture of Georgeair
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My two layer approach for years now has been Carbonite online and a local WD drive both running constant incremental backups. Both times I had a HD crash was able to restore from local drive, the online version is for a house fire or tornado, or local drive failure. The time to download a 300G backup would be huge, but it's nice to know it's there if ever needed.



You only have integrity once. - imprezaguy02

 
Posts: 12350 | Location: Madison, MS | Registered: December 10, 2007Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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posted Hide Post
What was their explanation for the loss of data?
 
Posts: 5143 | Location: Iowa | Registered: February 24, 2011Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of cparktd
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My MacBook does incremental backups to a 3TB time machine every hour... if connected to mains power. I don't even notice it. I should still probably do a separate disc image of some type occasionally.



If it ain't woke... don't fix it.
 
Posts: 4118 | Location: Middle Tennessee | Registered: February 07, 2013Reply With QuoteReport This Post
quarter MOA visionary
Picture of smschulz
posted Hide Post
Live and learn.
 
Posts: 22858 | Location: Houston, TX | Registered: June 11, 2006Reply With QuoteReport This Post
At Jacob's Well
Picture of jaaron11
posted Hide Post
Unfortunately it's one of those life lessons that often has to be learned the hard way. We lost 6 months worth of my son's baby pictures to a hard drive crash. It still bugs the crap out of me 10 years later. Now I have a NAS that also backs up to Amazon Glacier. If you use technology, you can count on your data being lost at some point.


J


Rak Chazak Amats
 
Posts: 5281 | Location: SW Missouri | Registered: May 08, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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I have a three tier backup strategy:

Tier One: Offline Storage (encrypted)

I use BackBlaze (since 2017) for automatic off-site and encrypted backups. It is a great service that just works and for US$6 per month is a wonderful set it and forget it product. Not only is it encrypted, if I need to restore a file or my entire drive, I have multiple options: 1) download the file or entire drive's data online, 2) pay to have a USB drive shipped to me overnight with my data and they will refund the cost if I return it within 30 days, 3) browse to the files online or from my iOS or Android mobile app.

Tier Two: Time Machine (local)

This is in case something happens and I need options. I do the regular file backup with time machine and also do a monthly (or when I remember to do it after Time Machine bugs me) backup to an SSD drive that I rotate and wipe clean so it creates a fresh image to make it easy to recover from in a single step.

Tier Three: Online 'Cloud' Storage (local copy on my Mac)

I keep information stored in online cloud services like OneDrive from Microsoft, Dropbox and iCloud.

With the above, I have different ways to get to my information back if it is lost. If I could only pick one, I would and do, count most on BackBlaze. The cost is worth the peace of mind, it is secure, they are experts in what they do and are very transparent with how they do things and contribute to the storage community with great information.

My background is working with computers since the PC and Macintosh came out and designing small scale to worldwide computer solutions including backup and recovery architectures.

I hope this helps. Sorry to hear you lost your data. That is always a painful situation.

Good luck,
Kevin
 
Posts: 130 | Location: Colorado | Registered: August 28, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Picture of Kuisis
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I just bought a new MacBook Pro and a Sandisk Extreme portable SSD external hard drive. I just plug it in a few times a day and back up to time machine. The drive isn't much bigger than a Zippo lighter and is 1 TB.
 
Posts: 1129 | Location: Washington PA | Registered: November 23, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
goodheart
Picture of sjtill
posted Hide Post
My system is similar to Kistclair’s:
1. Local HD clone with Carbon Copy Clone
2. iCloud document backup
3. BackBlaze offline
4. When I increase the size of the HD in my Time Capsule I will add Time Capsule backup.
5. Offsite HD in safe deposit box, but rarely updated so best for archived data.


_________________________
“ What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.”— Lord Melbourne
 
Posts: 18017 | Location: One hop from Paradise | Registered: July 27, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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