How much stuff is there on your computer that you would be heartbroken to loose? How long would it take you to get your computer going again if the hard drive stopped working? Can you afford to loose that stuff and spend that long with no functioning computer?
Leopard’s new Time Machine program is great for keeping copies of all the different versions of files as they change. If you delete that vital file and don’t realise until after you’ve emptied the Trash, Time Machine will have a copy. If you accidentally deleted everything from your important document then saved it, Time Machine will have the previous version there to save you from yourself.
You can’t run your computer from the Time Machine hard drive though – you need to first have a working hard drive and an install DVD, then you install the operating system and your applications, then you restore your data files from the Time Machine drive. It’s a lengthy process and for most of it you may have to do without your assistive technology programs, depending what they are. If you can’t afford to be without your computer for the time that would take, there’s another option: get an extra hard drive and use software which will make an exact copy of your main hard drive.
An exact copy won’t save the file you deleted from the trash yesterday, or the document you deleted the text from – so you still need Time Machine for those. But for users who can’t do without their machine for the hours or days it takes to rebuild it from the Time Machine backups, you need an exact copy type of backup too.
I’m writing about this now because yesterday the main hard drive in my computer went belly-up. Thankfully I was prepared: I have another hard drive in the computer specifically for backup and the backup program SuperDuper! automatically copies all changes to the backup drive each morning. So I was able to boot the computer by holding down the option key and selecting the backup drive to boot off, and I was only missing the results of about 2 hours work. The few files I’d changed in those 2 hours I was able to retrieve from my Time Machine backups.
The Apple technician came this morning and swapped out the bad hard drive for a new one. I made copied all my files to the new drive and now everything is back to normal. I even have my backups again!
In an ideal world, everybody would have both types of backups – they’re both good for different things. Hard drives are relatively cheap and for those who have laptops there are USB drives that you can plug in when you’re at home and Apple’s wireless TimeCapsule backup drive. The few hundred dollars it will cost to buy a large hard drive for backups is a good investment because at some point your hard drive will fail. Unfortunately, you can count on it. But you can also be prepared for it.
- Ricky Buchanan
Can’t tell you how much I agree. I wish I could convince others that the time spent backing up, by hand or setting up an automated system, is worth it. I contract for a company and they just don’t get it. I almost sent an email once telling them I wanted to burn the building down to show them just how important their backups were, but didn’t have the guts to hit send.
Hey Ricky… you are SOOOO RIGHT! My first experience was when I was editing what became an 800 page curriculum document back in 1992 or 3. We had a backup drive. There was a problem with the scsi chain and the printer blew, taking the main drive and backup drive out simultaneously. All the data for a $200k project up in smoke. By dumb luck, I’d copied a version on my school’s computer that was 95% accurate, and a week out of date. SAVED. Over the years I’ve had to save data from drives and floppies for so many people who didn’t have multiple backups.
Now I have all my documents on cloud computing in 3 locations, time machine, AND full image backups. My email is all mirrored on gmail.com. That’s all a minimum! Unfortunately, few people believe you until something bad happens.
Good Call Ricky!
@Scott: Probably a good thing you didn’t hit send, I’m pretty sure “arson threat” doesn’t look good on one’s employment record. I sure know the feeling, though.
@Jason: Wow, that’s a lucky save you had there! We don’t think often of loosing backups at the same time as main drives. My Time Machine drive is intentionally at the other end of the house on a different electrical circuit, but after this week’s awful bushfires down here this week I’ve instituted off-site backups for my digital photo library (280gb – I’m the family archivist
) and other vital local documents. My aunt and uncle lost everything they owned, and were lucky to get away with their lives, so that’s been another wake-up call.
@Samuel: Thanks. I’m feeling very lucky just now!
Technibble.com have an interesting post about the dangers of using just online backups: Online Backup as Your Only Backup? Think Twice.
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This comment was originally posted on Assistive Technology Blog Carnival