Don't have a backup....?

benwiggy said:

Apologies if this rant needs moving to another bit of the forum, but:

It's 2013 and people are STILL posting: "I've deleted all my files and I don't have a backup!".

Apple introduced Time Machine in 2007. There are any number of alternative software products to control backing up. External storage is cheap and easy to connect. There's also the whole Cloud thing.

If you lose your data and you have no backup, then I'm finding it increasingly difficult to muster any kind of sympathy. My next reply to such a post is likely to be "Yep, that is to be expected."

FILES WITH NO BACKUP ARE WAITING TO BE LOST.

Get a backup. Get it now. NOW!!!

Click to expand...

I have lost files and was unable to recover them with a Time Machine backup on 2 occasions. Happily Crashplan was able to bring everything back on both of those occasions.

I agree with the principle of your rant but I must insist that 2 or more backups is the right approach, not merely 1 backup upon which all your data must depend!

And yes this belongs in Mac Basics and Help as much as it belongs anywhere on MR...

I'm a lazy one, and I think there is no need to backup. From your conversation, I think I need to make a backup in case of something happened accidentally. If my system crashes, I cannot find my personal information back if there is no backup. I need to backup now!

Thanks!

Yup. I really lucked out in my backup learning experience. I've been in IT for many years, running my own on-site computer repair business. I was using an eMac as the business computer, and *FINALLY* decided to get a drive to be a backup drive.

Started using what was then called .Mac Backup (the umbrella icon one,) to back up the truly vital files to .Mac daily, and do a complete backup to an external hard drive once a week.

At least, that's what I set up. Less than a week later (before the first scheduled full-backup happened,) the internal hard drive on the eMac died. HARD. As in: *CLICK CLICK CLICK* without even spinning up hard.

Luckily, I had done a manual full backup the first day, and the truly vital files (accounting files, customer records, appointment lists, etc,) were backed up to .Mac daily. Only lost a few less important files or versions of files.

Since that day, I back up religiously. I have dual-drive "toaster" style drive dock, set up in OS X software RAID-1. That is my Time Machine target drive. I have four physical drives that I swap in it. Once a week, I take out one drive and put it in my fireproof safe, and swap in the drive that had been in my safe and rebuild the RAID. (I rotate so that no one drive stays permanently in the dock.) Once a month, I take one drive out and store it off site instead of in the on-site fireproof safe, and swap the previous off-site drive in and rebuild the RAID.

By being a software RAID-1, I can plug these drives in to any OS X machine (either internally or via a simple SATA-to-USB adapter,) and it is 100% readable.

Anonymous Freak said:

Yup. I really lucked out in my backup learning experience. I've been in IT for many years, running my own on-site computer repair business. I was using an eMac as the business computer, and *FINALLY* decided to get a drive to be a backup drive.


Since that day, I back up religiously. I have dual-drive "toaster" style drive dock, set up in OS X software RAID-1.

Click to expand...

Well, that seems backup is an important thing, and I need to take it seriously.