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back the f up.

fisherking

fisherking

macrumors G4
Original poster
Jul 16, 2010
11,336
5,657
ny somewhere
i try not to rant here (i do argue sometimes), but just feel like saying this:

BACK YOUR MACS UP.

i can't understand how anyone in the modern world would not do this. time machine is so easy, my (dead) grandmother could set it up. a 2TB drive is $50 on amazon... (i use carbon copy cloner myself, and crashplan).

over the years, i've seen: a therapist (not mine!) lose his client list and client NOTES; a friend lose all her family photos; a writer lose her cookbook; a musician who lost everything (he meant to format a new external HD and somehow wiped out his mac).

BACK. UP. don't wait to lose something valuable, and then get a backup going...

end rant. :rolleyes:
 
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Gregg2 said:
If everybody did this, there wouldn't be any more "can I recover my files" threads here. This would reduce the rant opportunities. Membership would fall, and eventually the site would have to shut down. Don't back up your files! --15 minutes can save you 15% on car insurance--
Click to expand...

the site would survive... on a lot of "shouldn't the macbook come in more colors" type posts...
 
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All true, but off-site backup can be important. I had friends who had to race from their house in the N CA fires of last year. They had been backing up via TM, just as they should have been . . . but because they literally grabbed the pets and ran to the car, they left behind their backup disks. So, all lost. Now they use Dropbox for important material. I wasn't able to convince them to also go with Backblaze or its equivalent.
 
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monokakata said:
All true, but off-site backup can be important. I had friends who had to race from their house in the N CA fires of last year. They had been backing up via TM, just as they should have been . . . but because they literally grabbed the pets and ran to the car, they left behind their backup disks. So, all lost. Now they use Dropbox for important material. I wasn't able to convince them to also go with Backblaze or its equivalent.
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i personally use carbon copy cloner AND crashplan on both my macs. so, when i travel, crashplan keeps me backed up (and i don't have to carry an external drive). at home, they're both working.

i always point this out to collaborators & clients; if your house was robbed (or burned down, or was swept up in a tornado), and you lost your mac AND your backup drive... then what?

but still, one backup is better than no backups.
 
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Even as I was reading this thread and nodding my head in agreement, my other machine is in the process of backing up right now. I am a firm believer in backups and definitely more than one! I have off-site storage, too -- I keep external drives in my safe deposit box at the bank and swap out on a regular basis.
 
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Time Machine, BackBlaze, Carbon Copy Cloner & Arq to external hard drives at work & home, OneDrive (work) and iCloud (personal).

Highly recommend BackBlaze (via B2 and Arq or just BackBlaze's $50/year for unlimited backup (I do both)). Love it.

Another point --- your backup plan isn't tested and tried till you ... test and try it. I restored 10GB from BackBlaze in a few hours via a fast internet connection.

How valuable is your data to you?
 
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fisherking said:
uh. what? my crashplan backups are mine, tied to my macs. & flygbuss, check out crashplan, and other services like it if you want an online backup.
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Yeah, your data is "yours", but you need to realize that when you send your data to a remote server, "your" data is processed and stored by multiple third party machines anyhere in the world. You have no control over what they get to see, share and even store. There is this legal wall that makes them tell you what they do and what they don't, but you really have no way to tell. More often than not, when you "delete" some data from a website or online service, it's not really destroyed, it gets hidden from you.

I'm a programmer so I may know one thing or two. There are laws regarding this, and I'm not saying your data is strictly being unlawfully used, my main point is you don't know for sure what is done with your data when it reaches a third party machine. When you back up locally you have 100% control of your data, when you send it to the cloud, you don't.
 
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rafark said:
Yeah, your data is "yours", but you need to realize that when you send your data to a remote server, "your" data is processed and stored by multiple third party machines anyhere in the world. You have no control over what they get to see, share and even store. There is this legal wall that makes them tell you what they do and what they don't, but you really have no way to tell. More often than not, when you "delete" some data from a website or online service, it's not really destroyed, it gets hidden from you.

I'm a programmer so I may know one thing or two. There are laws regarding this, and I'm not saying your data is strictly being unlawfully used, my main point is you don't know for sure what is done with your data when it reaches a third party machine. When you back up locally you have 100% control of your data, when you send it to the cloud, you don't.
Click to expand...

sure, you may know "one thing or two"; equally possible: while i am backing up my files in 'the cloud', someone's hacked into your mac, and is copying your files. or... who knows?

if you're worried, get a second mac. never connect it to the internet. keep all your real files on it, and use the first mac online. then you'll be really safe...
 
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I am so used to this in the web hosting world, server goes down, raid corruption or whatever and yeah, here come all the tickets with "Why are you asking me to restore my backups, I don't have any, now I am loosing $$$$$$ every day"...

A manager I had many years ago told me "If you don't have three copies of your data, it doesn't exist".
 
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There are a variety of backup golden rules. The one I like is 3 backups on 3 different media types in 3 different locations. One location should be very secure, such as a bank safe deposit box.
 
fisherking said:
sure, you may know "one thing or two"; equally possible: while i am backing up my files in 'the cloud', someone's hacked into your mac, and is copying your files. or... who knows?
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Are you kidding? That's not anywhere nearly as possible. It's extremely unlikely. And even in such remote case, you do have the ability to know by monitoring the connections.

There's nothing wrong with sending your data to the cloud, it's extremely useful most of the time. People should be aware what they are doing, though.
 
rafark said:
Are you kidding? That's not anywhere nearly as possible. It's extremely unlikely. And even in such remote case, you do have the ability to know by monitoring the connections.

There's nothing wrong with sending your data to the cloud, it's extremely useful most of the time. People should be aware what they are doing, though.
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"People should be aware what they are doing"; isn't that sort-of a general rule for everything in life? so, perhaps no need to say it. if you go online, or open your email, or visit a new site... everything is a step towards... something. we should always pay attention to what we do.

meanwhile, i love having crashplan for when i'm mobile, and keep my external backup in safe location: 1 mile inside the earth, in a state-of-the art bank safe, in a hidden location, in a neutral country... :D
 
Graphic Artist here, I backup everything like crazy. Any application specific document (i.e. a .PSD file) is sent to a cloud option almost instantly after creation, usually iCloud or Dropbox.

Whenever new photographs are imported the RAWs get saved to external drive that is only turned on when I want to save to it or take something off it.
 
OP has done a great service!

Somewhat crazy here, but it has saved me several times and also makes setting up a new computer a breeze: (1) Time machine (2) CC clone (3) superDuper clone. My photo files, which amount to 2-3 TB are split among 3 separate external drives (current, archive and family) and are backed up to an external drive that then gets synced to another computer at another location. Oh, and all important documents are up on sugarSync.
 
mono wrote in #5 above:
"because they literally grabbed the pets and ran to the car, they left behind their backup disks. So, all lost. Now they use Dropbox for important material. I wasn't able to convince them to also go with Backblaze or its equivalent."

I keep my "offsite" backups IN MY CAR. (used to keep them in my locker at work, but I'm retired now).

The important data resides on an encrypted volume, so if by chance someone stole the car, all they'd get "is a drive" (and no personal data).

There are also backups at home, kept in the basement in a [marginally] fireproof/waterproof box.

Not to mention the OTHER backups sitting right here scattered around the table!

I don't use Time Machine, have never opened it, not once.
I use cloned backups for everything...
 
I would think that unless one lives in a really nice, evenly-balanced climate year-round that extreme heat or extreme cold, not to mention extreme humidity, in terms of weather conditions could adversely affect an external HDD or SSD left in a vehicle all the time..... ?

Where I live, we have hot, humid summers and cold, sometimes extremely cold, winters, with snow being an occasional visitor some years and a disruptive, massive visitor other years. Unpredictable from year to year. I would never leave anything as valuable (to me) as my external drives in my car. I feel better having them secure and protected from weather in my safe deposit box at the bank.
 
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Clix Pix said:
I would think that unless one lives in a really nice, evenly-balanced climate year-round that extreme heat or extreme cold, not to mention extreme humidity, in terms of weather conditions could adversely affect an external HDD or SSD left in a vehicle all the time..... ?

Where I live, we have hot, humid summers and cold, sometimes extremely cold, winters, with snow being an occasional visitor some years and a disruptive, massive visitor other years. Unpredictable from year to year. I would never leave anything as valuable (to me) as my external drives in my car. I feel better having them secure and protected from weather in my safe deposit box at the bank.
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Agreed. My offsite back up is at work. Secure enough for me.
 
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