Today’s wise words are ALWAYS backup.
Luckily for me only my backup drive died last night and not my laptop. However, all day I have been worrying that if my laptop went so would everything else. Anyone – heaven forbid – who has not got a backup up and losses their computer would just be devasted.
I managed to copy most things over to a memory stick (I wouldn’t like to use this on a daily basis) but it is only now that I have my new ‘External Hard Drive‘ that I feel relief.
I always stress the importance of a backup to my clients, I have heard so many horror stories. I use ‘Time Machine‘, which once it has been set-up just runs by itself. I always thought this would be enough. I haven’t lost anything but the fear of losing everything has made me realise that I need more than one. From now on I will have at least two separate backups.
My ‘Mac Man Who Can’ has just been round. He tried to recover the data on my old Portable Drive but confirmed, what a friend on Twitter had said last night, that it was kaputt. It is still under warranty so it will be swapped for a new one which I will use for a 3rd backup to be kept away from the office.
I really hope that you have a backup and if you have any tips I would love to hear them.
It’s possible to retrieve the data from a ‘kaputt’ disk, but this can be horrendously expensive. Portable disks are cheap enough now to have several, and keeping one at home and another elsewhere is very sensible.
All hard disks will eventually fail — either soon after purchase, or after several years. So, it’s a good idea to plan for this, replacing them before they fail.
Photographers with large archives often have RAID or DROBO set ups as well as separately located back ups.
Thank you for your comment.
Luckily nothing was lost so no need for the very expensive recovery bill. I will however be having 2 or 3 from now on. It just isn’t worth the risk.