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.

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! ).

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

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.

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 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”.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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....

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.

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.

What was their explanation for the loss of data?

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.

Live and learn.

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.

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

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.

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.