The Mac Died

I’ve written often about the need to make frequent backups. This week I had a chance to “practice what I preach.”

I use several computers, including Windows, Macintosh, and Linux systems. I use a Macintosh desktop system most of the time, but I also use other systems when performing specific tasks, such as reviewing Windows genealogy software.

I went on a business trip this week and visited a number of newsletter readers in their homes. One lady I visited described how a recent hard drive crash had destroyed all her genealogy data as well as scanned photographs and everything else stored on the computer. She had never made a backup copy of anything on her system. She had hard copies of most of the data but was missing many source citations. Those were gone forever. She had her original photographs but now needed to re-scan all of them. Her multimedia scrapbooks and much or her work had disappeared in the hard drive crash. I shook my head in sympathy as I listened to her story.

I returned home Friday evening and used the Macintosh briefly to check e-mail. The e-mail program worked for a while and then stopped. I thought that was strange, but I was tired; so, I shut the computer off and went to bed.

Saturday morning I turned the Mac on and discovered it wouldn’t boot. I experimented with a number of things but could not make it operate. The hard drive was dead. I quickly reviewed my options. I knew I had plenty of backups:

1. I have an external hard drive plugged into the Mac’s USB ports and use OS X Leopard’s excellent backup program, called Time Machine. This program automatically makes full backups of the entire Macintosh hard drive(s) and updates the backups every hour. Not only can I perform a restore of anything and everything on the Macintosh’s hard drive, but I can even restore to any date in the past since I started using “Time Machine.”
2. All my documents, including my genealogy data, have a second backup made every few hours with Mozy, an online backup service. I do not back up the entire hard drive to Mozy’s servers, only my documents. I have written about Mozy several times; see my past articles at http://tinyurl.com/ywzm42 for details.
3. I have a DVD disk sitting in a desk drawer at the office that contains backup copies of my documents. That disk is now three or four weeks old, but it could serve as a “last resort,” if needed.

In short, I wasn’t worried about the loss of data. While the loss of a computer can be inconvenient and perhaps a financial hardship, it isn’t the end of the world for anyone with current backups.

I inserted the original Macintosh operating system DVD disk into my dead Macintosh, booted from the DVD, and told the software to re-install the Macintosh operating system. The installer quickly died: it could not find the Macintosh’s internal hard drive.

I went to a local computer store and purchased a new hard drive. Since hard drives have become relatively cheap in the past few years, I purchased a drive with much more capacity. I returned home and opened the tiny Mac Mini’s case. I used jeweler’s screwdrivers to replace the defective 80-gigabyte drive with a new 250-gigabyte Toshiba hard drive.

I then reassembled everything, booted from the OS X DVD disk, reloaded the software, and performed a full restore of everything from the external hard drive, using Time Machine. Everything worked as expected; my system is now back to normal operation, and it looks like it didn’t lose a single byte. All my documents, e-mail messages, and system settings are exactly the same as before.

Computer experts tell us that it is not a matter of “if your hard drive crashes.” It is a question of “when.” All hard drives will crash eventually. I can vouch for that. The operating system is irrelevant; Windows, Macintosh, and Linux systems alike will eventually suffer hardware problems.

Now, let me ask you a question: when your system dies, what will you do?

If you have a fresh backup, you will suffer some inconvenience. If you do not have a backup or if your only backup is out of date, your losses and inconvenience will be much worse.

There are many different backup programs and methodologies available. The exact choice of backup method is not important. The critical thing is to have some sort of backup system in place and to use it regularly. I used the free Macintosh Time Machine which makes backups hourly. You should use software that performs backups at least daily, if not more often.

Macintosh users running the latest OS X Leopard operating system have the advantage of Time Machine being included at no extra charge. If you are a Windows user and don't know what to use, take a look at Karen's Replicator at http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp. It isn't the most sophisticated tool available but it works well, is easy to use and is free. There are many other Windows backup programs as well.

Again, it is not a matter of “if your hard drive crashes.” It is only a question of “when.”

Comments

[Suddie Bill Mumford]

Amen! I recently lost my Vista OS for the third and last time. Naturally I wasn't worried as I had Vista created System Recovery discs as well as Lenovo's product recovery discs. All my data was backed up to an external hard drive (I thought). Well, Vista's recovery discs wouldn't boot and the product recovery discs would erase the hard drive before reinstalling the system. At this point I had reached the limits of my tolerance with Vista so I loaded a copy of the latest version of Linspire which is based on Ubuntu. I then loaded Win4Lin, a virtual machine, with XP as the guest OS for the few Windows programs I can't live without. Then I discovered I had forgotten to backup the latest article I was writing. I'll be a little more careful in future. :-)

[Lynn Mathers]

Yes, I'm living proof you can't repeat too many times the importance of doing periodic backups. I'm the person mentioned above -- what a treat it was to be able to host Dick and others in my humble abode! Thanks again for a wonderful visit.

As a footnote (pun intended!), my computer had just started making noises, and I assumed it was the cooling fans beginning to fail. So I wanted to take it in for repair BEFORE anything more serious happened. Knowing the repair might take several days, I needed to pull off all my files for work and utilize my laptop as a backup for work in the interim. Work files rescued, personal ones, gone! Where are my PRIORITIES ?!?!?!?!?!!! :)

[Loretta]

Heh, heh. Priorities, indeed. This reminds me that although when I'm working from home on files I need at work, I am always sure to send a copy to my Yahoo! briefcase "just in case" Comcast decides my file is too big to send to myself at work. But I have no idea if I've backed up a presentation I'm working on for church. Guess I'll do that right now! I use an EBook for backups, but I've wondered about the stability of those, too. I have DVDs of my scanned photos in my desk at work, but I'm sure they're out of date. Much to think about.

[Robin Kaspar]

Lynn, I grieve for you. I lost a hard drive in a 5 month old laptop. I was in the laborious (to me) process of moving files manually from my old desktop to the new laptop (Windows machine, wanted the new one to be cleaner and better organized than the old one) and was thinking about backup strategies on the new machine but hadn't put anything in motion. We had been to a family reunion with the new laptop where I discovered my late aunt left a photo album full of precious family photos I had never seen, including pictures of my dad as a young man and in the navy. I ran to Best Buy, bought a scanner and scanned them all in. 3 months later all those pictures and all my other digital photos were gone. I didn't lose my TMG database because I had been religiously backing that up to CDs. We had made copies of pictures of our Germany trip on CDs too, but still I lost a lot. This was in 2002 and we didn't have any data recovery companies here in town. I contacted one in Atlanta and was told hardware failures are harder to recover data from than software failures (ie files deleted). Mine was a hardware problem. They quoted me $800-$1,000 with no guarantee of recovery. I couldn't afford that, so I had to let my photos go. I was surprised at how much I actually grieved for that loss. I am now on a MacBook Pro running Leopard with Time Machine on a 500gb external drive. I am seriously considering getting another one for redundant backups. I do worry about failure to restore from backup. I have heard heartbreaking stories about that, too.

[theKiwi]

Dick I'm curious about the Mini...

How old was it

Had it been on 24/7 for that length of time?

I ask because I'm considering the purchase of one to replace an eMac I've got running 24/7 as a server (running FileMaker Pro 9 Server on it), and since the Mini has a 2.5 inch laptop drive I've wondered about their longevity when used 24/7 with the drive constantly spinning.

Cheers

Roger

[Patty]

My iMac hard disk died on 28 February. While I had a backup it was time consuming to replace a hard disk and then to get everything back just the way I had it before. So disruptive to my life. (Especially since I was preparing our annual tax return.) I started to wonder why, so long after the invent of this technology, that we are still have to have so much redundancy. Even double redundancy. I have so many backups that it is confusing and a big mess. Other utilitarian appliances last far longer and one is not required to back up the operating system for fear of failure. When I was trying to find someone to fix my hard drive all kept saying "just buy a new computer. This is old technology!" I purchased the computer in 2004 and it was new technology. (Apple made it in 2003.) Four years seems a very short time for return on my investment. Why do we consumers continue to accept this from the technology companies?

I did learn that I could live without a computer albeit with a bit of withdrawal symptoms in the beginning of the episode.

[Marilyn]

I use Mozy, and I love it. After trying other systems, disks, CDs, X-drive, and an extra hard drive--none of which would work unless I remembered to do the back up. It was a hastle, because I would always excuse myself from doing it "this time". With Mozy I don't have to even think about backups any more.

However, after reading of your multiple backups, I am wondering if Mozy is enough. I have Mozy backing up just about Everything on my computer! Yes, I have the paid subscription.

Should I worry? Again?

With the last 3 hard drive failures, my computer blessedly gave me early warnings. So I was able to transfer all my data to the new hard drive before it died completely.
I've only used Mozy once to retrieve a lost file and that was when I mistakenly copied a bad copy of a file over a good copy. Easy fix, if I notice what I've done before the next backup.

Marilyn

[Carla]

Not all backups are created equally. After getting a computer upgrade as a recent gift I backed up my files from a 40 GB hard drive to an external drive. With that and about 160GB of other files saved on this external drive I thought I would not have to worry about restoring my files when I reinstalled the programs on my freshly upgraded system. Since there was nearly 200GB of data on the external drive I calculated it would take me roughly 2 weeks to back up that data to about 50 DVD's. The person doing the upgrade figured he could have the upgraded system running long before that. However it turned out to be the upgrade from ____. After more than two months of buying parts, installing parts and finally getting the upgrades parts to play nice together I was finally ready to retrieve my data from the external drive. However the new system wouldn't recognize the external drive. The company said it sounded like the drive was failing. Obviously, it wasn't working right. The files and data were not accessible. Forgoing the $700 to $1700 surgical removal of the data by professionals that could not guarantee one byte of data would be recovered. I bought not one but two recovery programs and after trying to recover the data multiple times I've perhaps recovered 70GB of readable data. The rest of the data looks like it was run through a blender. Ten years of data, genealogical info, thousands of scanned photos and documents are now useless bits of scrambled bytes.

So what is the best way to backup your data? CD's and DVD's disintegrate over time. (So they'll likely share shelve space with the floppy disks, diskettes and zip drive disks that populate my library). Who knows what the lifetime of a Blueray disk is? Obviously external and hard drives don't last all that long either.

And one other thing I found is backup programs aren't always great either. If you backup something with a backup program and then delete from your system in your next backup the program doesn't just add the new files you've created, it also deletes the files you've just deleted from your system. Perhaps the name backup should be changed to current image as the files once deleted are gone forever.

Perhaps the most useful backup is paper and print, or paper and pen. Which I'm seriously thinking of returning to exclusively.

I hope your road is smoother.

Carla

[Martha]

Carla, that sounds like a nightmare! Mozy keeps your deleted files for 30 days after you delete them from your computer. I have never [ptui-ptui] had a Mac fail me and I have been using them since the first little one piece black and white, which still works, by the way. I have, however, had them stolen, which is just as bad if not worse than a disc failure! The Time Machine backup that Eastman describes is really a wonderful development because even if you delete a file, you can go back in time to the point before you did that and retrieve it.

May none of us ever know these terrible data losses!

Martha

[Happy Dae]

As I raise my guilty hand, I'm loading a fresh DVD into the burner to make my backup NOW! Right, personal files FIRST. Thanks for the reminder, Mr. Eastman. May all your hard disk crashes occur AFTER you've made a backup.

Happy Dae.
http://www.ShoeStringGenealogy.com

[Jim Agnew]

I lost my PC computer hard drives last May while away on a two-week vacation. My daughter at home left the computer on, and both hard drives (C: and D:) burned up. I have not tried to get my TMG program going again until recently. The D: drive was my backup for C:, but I did find one older CD-ROM backup of my genealogy data, so at least I don't have to start completely over. Now the problem is that TMG v. 4.3c will not boot up on my new XP operating system; at least I get a fatal error. I may have to buy the latest version...sigh. This is the third time I have lost my computer genealogy files over the years. It's enough to make a grown man cry... from now on, I'll be backing up to a flash drive. They seem to be pretty safe.

[Tim]

Roger the Kiwi,

Are you wanting to use the Mini as a server? I have never heard of anyone doing that. But I believe that even as a server it can be set to spin down the hard drive when not in use.

I think a better choice would be an older tower. You could install as big a hard drive as you want and it would have better cooling. The most popular use for an older tower is as a file server.

Just my opinion,
Tim

[theKiwi]

As I noted I already have an eMac running as the FileMaker Pro server for the databases that are behind this site..

http://data.wmgs.org/

I'm considering something with more oooomph, and making the move to the Intel chip, and a mini seems like the obvious choice to do this as cheaply as possible.

Spinning down the drive means that there's inevitably a delay when it has to spin back up again.

I don't want to do it with an older tower, since an older tower with an Intel chip is some serious money.

Actually the eMac does it pretty well as it is, even if it's only a 700 MHz G4 chip in it.

Roger

[theKiwi]

One of the other benefits of the Time Machine scheme on Mac OS X 10.5 is that you can go back to a time or day and retrieve a changed file too, so as long as your Time Machine backup disk has space on it, the files will still kept being written, no matter what changes you make, so if you do a bad match and merge in your Reunion database it's easy to go back to the file from an hour ago, or 2 hours ago, or 8 hours ago, or yesterday, or the day before. Right now my Time Machine is showing me the previous 24 hourly backups, then daily backups back to 18 February which is the day I got the Mac Pro and started Time Machine running to a 750 GB drive. That is backup up in excess of 300 GB of files, and with all the copies of changed files saved still has 220 GB free.

As Ron Popeil says "Set it and Forget it".

This is not my only backup strategy, but it certainly is the easiest one. The others of copying the files to other computers, and to an external hard drive require intervention from me - not the least of which is to retrieve the external drive from the fireproof safe and then remember to put it back afterwards.

Roger

[Doug]

Dick;
Do I gather that your particular backup program does not care what the size of the new hard drive is? By that I mean you can backup a 60GB HD and then take that backup to a 250GB HD and restore and it will recognize the full 250.
I am aware of some backup programs that will not allow you to change the size of the HD that you are restoring and if you have purchased a larger HD you lose the difference between the original and the new(250-60=190GB lost).
Doug

[Bonnie Lee]

I was so good about backing up my files to an external drive and flashdrive and CD and my husband's PC with Windows XP, but...when my old laptop died, I found I could not buy another without Windows (messy) Vista. I am not particularly computer literate so I called my computer guru...he found out many program files would not translate from XP to Vista...and here I had been so careful:-( My husband has been instructed that he may never upgrade from his XP..that is, as long as his PC lives! And I am grateful I have my file cabinets with many hardcopies...when we don't have electricity anymore or the internet is corrupted, my hardcopies and I will still function!

[Dick Eastman]

---> Do I gather that your particular backup program does not care what the size of the new hard drive is?

Most backup programs do not care about the size of the new hard drive. A few programs (such as older versions of Norton Ghost) do care. However, those are disappearing. Even the later versions of Norton Ghost don't care.

Even if you do use one of the few programs that do care, you can always restore the files and then later create a second partition on that drive or even use one of several tools to resize an existing partition.

- Dick Eastman

[Jay Stein]

Something to keep in mind. If the unthinkable does happen there are ways in most cases to recover data from a hard drive that has crashed. It can cost some money, but in many instances it can be done. Even the data on drives that have been accidentally (or intentionally) reformatted can, contrary to general belief, in some instances be at least partially recovered by someone with the knowhow and the right equipment (as some criminals have learned to their pain), but you will need to have “deep pockets” because it can be costly. I've not checked the last few years, but in the "old days" when "Computer Shopper" still had it's oversize format there were several ads in the back for firms that did data recovery. For most users it will require removing the drive and sending it to the recovery firm as these are highly specialized companies with “clean rooms” and other high costs and are not found in every area or even every large city. Also, usually the service will require a several day turnaround. It is much easier (and much less expensive!) just to make regular backups, but all is not necessarily lost (no pun intended) if it does happen and there are no recent backups.
— Jay

[ClaireK]

Bonnie Lee,

You may not be able to buy Windows machines in the stores without Vista, but you can buy them online, at the websites of the manufacturers (Dell, etc.) or at PCMall.com. So, at least for a while, you should be able to continue with XP. Or buy a Mac with Parallels software and an install disk for XP, and have the installation disks for future calamities...

There is hope!

[Dick Eastman]

---> Dick I'm curious about the Mini...

---> How old was it

Thirteen months old with a twelve-month warranty. (sigh)

---> Had it been on 24/7 for that length of time?

Yes.

- Dick Eastman

[Dick Eastman]

---> And one other thing I found is backup programs aren't always great either. If you backup something with a backup program and then delete from your system in your next backup the program doesn't just add the new files you've created, it also deletes the files you've just deleted from your system.

Not true with Apple's "Time Machine" or with other sophisticated backup programs. The better programs will backup multiple copies of a file. If you change a file every day (such as your e-mail messages), "Time Machine" and a few other programs will make backups of each day's version and will keep all versions. You can restore back to an older version of the file, if you wish.

HOWEVER, most of the simpler backup programs only keep one copy of each file, usually the latest copy.

- Dick Eastman

[Dick Eastman]

---> from now on, I'll be backing up to a flash drive. They seem to be pretty safe.

But they don't last very long.

Nobody will guarantee the life expectancy of a flash drive because they are so new that nobody has that much experience with them. However, most experts agree that flash drives (also called jump drives or thumb drives) cannot be trusted to keep data more than a few months.

I have a 16-gigabyte jump drive in my pocket right now and love it. I use it for short-term backups of many things I wish to keep with me. However, I would never trust it for long-term backups.

- Dick Eastman

[Dick Eastman]

After reading all the above comments, two thoughts pop to mind:

1. One method of backup is not enough! Backups fail as well as computers. Of course, you only discover those failures at the worst possible times! You absolutely, positively must have multiple forms of backups. Use a combination of external disks, CD-ROM disks, online backups, tapes or whatever else works for you but always, always have multiple methods of backups. As you can see in the above comments, those people who only used a single method of backups later regretted their actions.

2. Never worry about how long backups will last. It is unimportant that a CD or a jump drive or anything else only lasts a few months. The important thing is to always have FRESH backups! You need to make new backups every few days or every week or every month or something similar. Then throw the old backups away as you cannot trust them anyway. Never, ever trust a backup that is several months old. The key phrase here is "recent backup." If it isn't recent, it's worthless.

Just a little food for thought...

- Dick Eastman

[Athena]

When I got my new desktop last fall, I recycled the old one as a Windows Home Server. Each of my other machines is automatically backed up every night. I also use another feature of WHS to "mirror" shared files.

HP and other vendors sell ready-made home server solutions or you can do as I did and just recycle an older, less powerful machine.

[JohnR]

Oh yawn! Dick on again about the importance of backups - what's the point. Last time my disk crashed I tried to do a restore and the software I had used would not speak to the later version on my new computer.
On reading this article I had a few spare minutes and downloaded from http://www.karenware.com/powertools/ptreplicator.asp I let it do a full backup and went to bed. Next day .... you guessed it, boot failure. Though I didn't have to do a restore it was a pretty close run thing. Thanks Dick.