MattDiamond
2007.04.04, 08:32 AM
I was at work yesterday when my wife reported to me that the Mac suddenly wasn't working. Apps wouldn't launch. Reboot it didn't help. I knew that it had been working just that morning. When I got home I found that it wouldn't even boot on my first attempt, but the second attempt with extensions off worked. Disk Utility reported some catalog problems and then actually printed some garbage before aborting the Verify. So although most of the files appeared to be accessible, something was badly wrong.
At the beginning of each month I manually clone the HD to an external drive, and halfway through the month I manually clone to an internal (used to use Carbon Copy Cloner, but recently switched to an unregisterd copy of SuperDuper.) Thankfully it was April 3 and I had just cloned to the external the night prior. So I booted to the internal backup, itself only a couple weeks old, erased the main HD w/zeroing to catch if any physical damage had occurred. This took 45 minutes so I watched some tv. Then I plugged in my external backup drive, started to clone it to the main HD and went to bed.
This morning I verified the main HD looked ok, made it the startup, and rebooted. I had lost less than half a day's work (basically a few emails.)
The first thing I did then was register SuperDuper- it suddenly seems awfully inexpensive. :-) This unlocks it's scheduling features so that I can set up the backup to the internal to occur automatically every few days. I will still backup to the external manually once a month though. (I don't want to do it more often for fear of an unnoticed problem corrupting both my backups.)
I still don't know what corrupted my disk so badly. In my 20+ years of using a Mac, I've only every lost a disk when hardware failed. This drive seems to be operating normally now.
A good disk utility might have been able to repair the damage, but I don't own one.
I was very lucky not to lose at least a week's work, but in every other respect my precautions worked like a charm. And most of the evening was spent relaxing while the data was being restored, not frantically trying to repair and recover.
I am patting myself on the back a little here, but I'm also posting this because we've all seen the horror stories here of developers who lost precious weeks or months of work when something went wrong. I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to happen. Don't be too cheap with your bucks or your time to give yourself a safety net, and make it one that will usually get you up and running in a day or two, rather than requiring lots of effort.
I'm also thinking about having at least one offsite backup, somehow. Once or twice a year I should make a backup that I can store in my safe deposit box, or just bring to work. Not sure if this would be DVD's, a flash drive with only the most crucial data or what. Suggestions welcome.
Once my children get their own computers I'll have to worry about setting up a network backup of some kind.
I'd love to hear about other people's thoughts about backup procedures. There are lots of ways to do it, with varying degrees of expense and convenience.
At the beginning of each month I manually clone the HD to an external drive, and halfway through the month I manually clone to an internal (used to use Carbon Copy Cloner, but recently switched to an unregisterd copy of SuperDuper.) Thankfully it was April 3 and I had just cloned to the external the night prior. So I booted to the internal backup, itself only a couple weeks old, erased the main HD w/zeroing to catch if any physical damage had occurred. This took 45 minutes so I watched some tv. Then I plugged in my external backup drive, started to clone it to the main HD and went to bed.
This morning I verified the main HD looked ok, made it the startup, and rebooted. I had lost less than half a day's work (basically a few emails.)
The first thing I did then was register SuperDuper- it suddenly seems awfully inexpensive. :-) This unlocks it's scheduling features so that I can set up the backup to the internal to occur automatically every few days. I will still backup to the external manually once a month though. (I don't want to do it more often for fear of an unnoticed problem corrupting both my backups.)
I still don't know what corrupted my disk so badly. In my 20+ years of using a Mac, I've only every lost a disk when hardware failed. This drive seems to be operating normally now.
A good disk utility might have been able to repair the damage, but I don't own one.
I was very lucky not to lose at least a week's work, but in every other respect my precautions worked like a charm. And most of the evening was spent relaxing while the data was being restored, not frantically trying to repair and recover.
I am patting myself on the back a little here, but I'm also posting this because we've all seen the horror stories here of developers who lost precious weeks or months of work when something went wrong. I'm here to tell you that it doesn't have to happen. Don't be too cheap with your bucks or your time to give yourself a safety net, and make it one that will usually get you up and running in a day or two, rather than requiring lots of effort.
I'm also thinking about having at least one offsite backup, somehow. Once or twice a year I should make a backup that I can store in my safe deposit box, or just bring to work. Not sure if this would be DVD's, a flash drive with only the most crucial data or what. Suggestions welcome.
Once my children get their own computers I'll have to worry about setting up a network backup of some kind.
I'd love to hear about other people's thoughts about backup procedures. There are lots of ways to do it, with varying degrees of expense and convenience.