Yeah, I didn’t do a backup recently enough.
My MacBook Pro harddrive died a week ago Saturday, and I lost a lot of creative stuff. Most of my work stuff was either easily reproducible or backed up via email (I use Google Apps for Your Domain for most work related emails, and it’s all saved through GMail powering my email!).
The stuff I lost that I can’t get back, until I can pony up $2,000 for data recovery, is hard to be without. The good news is that because it isn’t necessary for work, I can wait until I have the money and recover it later.
The good thing… Apple FINALLY replaced my all too often in the shop macbook pro with the newest model… So I’m typing this on a 2.4 Santa Rosa chip macbook pro with a 160gig hard drive. Small consolation, however, to losing screenplay ideas, edits, and other things I had worked on since my last backup.
Backup is still too difficult for the average user. I run .Mac’s backup. But, to my surprise a few months ago while piddling around one day I realized my backup hadn’t run for five months because my drive had filled up with the incrementals. Apparently, it’s not smart enough to erase them and take a full after a while.
I’m hoping the next version of OS X addresses this better. But, meanwhile, I ordered a drive with my new iMac to match the size of the drive in the iMac so worst case, I can make a mirror image manually.
Sorry to hear about your data loss. Unfortunately, it’s WAY too common though.
brian
August 13th, 2007
I feel your pain. I lost a lot of data in a hard disk crash. Learned two things: back up often, and buy the extended warranty.
We live and learn, don’t we?
Zeke
August 13th, 2007
What a nightmare!
I had a similar thing happen this last January, and since then I’ve been a zealot for both local (hard drive) and remote (server space) backups. You should check out superduper for full bootable backups on OSX.
You might also consider this method for storing critical document data on the excess server space you get with most hosting companies:
http://addisonrd.com/WordPress/2007/03/09/how-to-backup-your-mac-to-a-dreamhost-server-part-1-of-2/
Michael Lee
August 13th, 2007
Totally! I think we’ve all been there man. Always a good reminder to run another backup.
dave
August 17th, 2007