Last week, my beloved MacBook died. In the middle of watching a video, it seized up and gave me the spinning beach ball. (The one that looks so incongruously cheery, for something you’re never happy to see!) It then refused to restart, showing only the white screen of death, with a mysterious flashing folder.

An oh-so-critical hard disk

Yes, I love my mac, but I was disappointed that the hard disk failed after less than a year, and I was worried about lost time and productivity.  Heck, I was worried about whether I could survive Labor Day Weekend without it!!

After an earlier unbacked-up-laptop-crash fiasco, I now had 2 complete backups:

..a) Mac Time Machine hourly backup to external drive.  Effortless, automatic, and quick.
..b) Mozy.com daily backup to their servers.  Effortless and automatic, but slower.  Files are uploaded to their server, and it can take quite awhile if you’ve got photos or videos. But a HUGE advantage is it’s all off-site so in case this building burned down, I’d still have backups. Another advantage is that you can backup your latest work of brilliance from a hotel room!

Results of this year’s crash?

..a) Time machine backup was wonderful. After new disk install & Time machine restore, almost everything looked just like it did before the crash. Same desktop, same toolbar, same preferences. Great!  BUT, it failed to get Aperture working again. I got the software working again, and restored most of my work, but was still missing a few hundred treasured photos!
..b) Mozy.com saved the day. I was able to find the missing files, and re-import into Aperture. It took some time finagling to get everything back again, but I *think* I’ve got it all set now!

Lessons?

I strongly recommend mozy.com backups for everybody (works on mac or PC). At $4.95/month for unlimited storage, it runs automatically on a schedule you set, and gives you the peace of mind of knowing you always have an off-site backup. Now tell me that’s not worth $5/month!

If you’ve got a mac, definitely set up Time Machine! External drives are cheap, compared to the time & angst of restoring a system from scratch. Even if you’ve got the data files on Mozy, restoring after a crash will be easier, faster, and more thorough using Time Machine.

As I discovered, having one backup isn’t always enough. 2 can’t hurt!

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The photos I lost (and recovered) were all my Argentina pictures from our last Patagonia women’s tour.  I’d really hate to lose those…  It’s a long way to go back and get new ones, and I doubt I’d ever get the armadillo to pose so nicely again!