It seems to me as if the majority of Mac users don’t back up their systems (before I start an argument, allow me to say that the majority of Mac users is not equal to the majority of MacUser readers). This is very dangerous, as I’m about to prove—especially if you’re running a laptop, which are far more prone to problems, loss, and damage.
Yesterday I was loading some of my photos from this past weekend into iPhoto. I had created a couple new albums, adjusted and edited some images, and tagged and keyword-ed all the photos. I then proceeded to upload the album via iWeb and I quit iPhoto. Once in iWeb I noticed that my album was gone from the media list. This made me suspicious and I restarted iPhoto, only to find that all of my pictures since July had disappeared from my library, along with their respective albums and slideshows. I went into my the Home > Pictures > iPhoto Library > Originals > 2006 directory to find that all my photos were still there; they had just disappeared from the library.
This was a big problem, as all my edited versions, albums, slideshows, and keywords were lost. It would take me hours to recover from the crash. I then proceeded to research my problem on the Apple Discussions site, finding this thread that basically told me there was nothing I could do except start over.
Luckily for me, I had literally just backed up my entire system two days ago using Backup and an external hard drive. I restored my iPhoto Library and then reimported my most recent photos, bringing my library back to the way it was 15 minutes prior to the crash.
What this experience has taught me (and hopefully taught you) is to back up your system. The amount of effort it takes (which isn’t much, once you get a method down) is well worth the peace of mind and the time/stress it will save you. Random crashes do happen and there’s not much you can do to prevent them. If you’re looking for some backup configurations, check out the comments in Dan’s recent post. There’s some good advice in there.
good to know you have backup. I have quite simillar probs on iTunes, somehow when i start iTUnes does not list all my songs, i have to reimport the whole songs to library. The musics is located in ~/Music folder. Not sure what caused it, perhaps the pref file was corrupted.
What is the best and free bakcup app? I am still looking for the right choice.
The two reasons folks don't back up their systems are pretty obvious.
First, have you ever read any tutorials or books on backing up your system? They are worse than stereo instructions. The first 50% is just horror stories about not backing up. And after you are good and scared, the rest of the tutorial confuses you with all the options. This is very icky. If McDonalds sold Happy Meals with such tactics, they'd go broke.
Second, most backup strategies assume you have one Mac in your house, and one thingy to back it up to. But if you have a family, you probably have several. And nobody in their right mind is going to buy several thingys. One thingy is expensive enough.
I want to buy one thingy. Stick it in the attic or basement. Let it find the Airport and connect all on its own. And once a day all the Macs (and any PCs too) should back their own damn selves up.
The thingy's owners manual should be about one paragraph long, tops.
And please, don't spend all that time scaring me. Just give me something that works.
- Dan
I myself just had my hard drive crash and wasn't so lucky. I hadn't backed up in about 3 months and lost all that data. The stupid thing about it is that I was telling myself the whole week prior that I needed to go home after work and backup my system. This is a stern reminder not only to backup frequently but also not to procrastinate.
My son's 12" AlBook suffered a disk crash 10 days ago. He got a new disk and CPU upgrade but he lost all. I run IT for a small business. I backup critical corporate data weekly. But even that is not good enough. My son's loss verifys the absolute genius of Jobs shipping Leopard with Time Machine.
Dan Ashley is cool for two reasons. 1)He's right 2)He's from my hometown.
I'm not a tech jock and use Apple because it is easier to use, less hassles, yes it just works. I've never seen a description of how to backup that was simple enough for me to set it up. I now have an external HD. My `puter should be asking me "Mac OSX knows you haven't backed up your iBook in the last 31 days. Connect your LaCie 250Gig HD and click the Backup button. The backup will take XX minutes."
Should I have to configure it or remember to it at all?
-Patrick
Backup is easy these days - and not terribly expensive. You only need two things:
1. An external FireWire and/or USB 2.0 hard drive as big as the drive you want to back up. It works best if you can boot from this drive.
2. SuperDuper software, which is under US$30.
If you've partitioned your main drive, partition the external drive to match it. Then use SuperDuper to mirror each partition to the external drive. That will take a long time, but future updates will be much faster as only what's changed will be processed.
Only drawback is that this isn't an archive system, so no going back to a 2-month-old version of something you've edited since then. But for plain, simple, and quick backup, it can't be beat.
And in the worst case, you can even boot from the external drive.
Thanks, Scott, for propelling me to finally buying that hard drive I've had in my shopping cart since my post last week. :) I think I'll be mounting it internal in my desktop until I buy a good enclosure. Any recommendations?
Well Dan, I'm not entirely sure what you're looking for in terms of interface, but I would definitely recommend the brand "Vantec." Their enclosures are high quality, good looking, full of features, come with plenty of accessories and documentation, and have a relatively low price.
If you're looking to possibly go the eSATA route, which I know a lot of people advise against, then Vantec is the way to go. eSATA, despite what many MacUser readers have to say about it, is really not that expensive and I find the benefits to far outweigh the costs. An eSATA enclosure, for example, is pretty much exactly the same price as a USB/FireWire drive--the cost ranges from $10 more expensive to $5 cheaper, depending on the style of drive you choose. The only big price obstacle is the initial one-time investment in the SATA hardware for your machine (an Express or PCI card, for example). After that you'll thank yourself every time you've got a lot of files to move around (at least I do).
If you don't want to put the money & effort into eSATA then I would recommend FireWire, as it's definitely faster than USB 2.0. Check out the link below to newegg.com which lists all of Vantec's encolsures. Find one that suits you and then buy away! Good luck!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.asp?DEPA=0&type=&Description=vantec+enclosure&Submit=ENE&N=0&Ntk=all&Go.x=0&Go.y=0
For Dan Ashley, in Chicago:
It sounds to me that you could benefit from a NAS (Network Attached Storage) external drive. LaCie makes them in 250/300 & 500 mb sizes. Very reasonable for a home-based network server. All OSs handled. I use one and it is a breeze.
And I second the use of 'SuperDuper' as hassle-free backup software just because it works excellently!