Apple Mac died again. Remember to backup

Wow.. I never really had problems with mac computers in general.

Good luck.

Hmm.. seem to be a manufacturing problem I guess? But you should be able to let it repair right..

Grant,

If your new iMac is just a year old, it should still be under warranty-- isn't the warranty 3 years? So repairs should be free.
Edit:
3 years with purchase of AppleCare.

The day before Thanksgiving, our 4 year old imac G5 died. We took it to the Apple store and learned that after 5 years, Apple won't fix them anymore (though independent repair people might) and after 7 years, they are considered obsolete and parts are no longer even made for them. Repairs would have cost us half the cost of a new one, so we bought a new iMac Intel. And we paid to have them transfer the contents of the old iMac to the new one. Photos, files, bookmarks all recovered.

We learned from this the need to back up! So we bought a WD Smartware large-capacity external drive and we have it plugged in all the time. It backs up, automatically, every hour. I've checked-- the files are on our time machine backup. So take heart, your backup is probably fine. And even if not, the techs could recover the files from the computer hard drive.

Seems like there's almost always a way to get data off of a crashed HD if you want it enough. It might cost you, but it sounds like this stuff is pretty important.

I'm not a pro, but here are some promising tips from a quick Google search (I'm not sure I'd be qualified to do #2, but you might be):


2. Use a LiveCD
Don't have access to a second computer for doing as you please? This method will be ideal, then. You'll need to get temporary access to a computer with Internet and a DVD burner. Download a Linux LiveCD - Damn Small Linux is the smallest, but also has issues mounting hard drives. The most simple for an average computer user would be Puppy Linux. It has a larger file size, but should recognize your drive.

Burn the Live CD ISO to a CD and insert it into your computer (the one with the crashed hard drive). Restart the computer and when it the computer logo appears, press F2 (or whatever key for your system) to enter BIOS. Change the boot sequence to CD first, Save and then Exit.

The Live CD will start, simply follow the directions on the screen--don't worry, nothing is being done to your hard drive. The OS will start, and you should see your hard drive mounted on the desktop--something like "60GB", etc. Plug in a second drive and copy and paste the folders over.

3. Data Recovery Software
Do the above solutions have your head spinning? If you want something a little less complicated, you may want to give recovery software a go. There are a number of different free recovery tools available, and you may be one of the lucky users who have success with the programs.

There are a large number of programs available, but the quality of each varies. A good place to start would be Data Disc Recovery--it's free, easy to use, and works on crashed drives (it can also retrieve deleted files and others). If one doesn't work, try a different one.

4. Freeze It
This method surprises many, but it actually does work (depending on what happened to the drive). The idea is that freezing it will constrict loose parts long enough for the drive to work properly. Make sure you have a computer ready to plug the drive into and an external case. Place the hard drive into a baggy, seal it tightly, and put it in the freezer overnight. The next day, remove it from the baggy and put it in the external drive case. Transfer the data from the drive before it warms too much and crashes again.

5. Get a Pro
If all else fails, you either have to accept that the data is gone or, if the data is really important, take the hard drive to a professional. It will be expensive, but there's a good chance a pro will be able to retrieve some of the data for you.

http://laptoplogic.com/resources/5-w...hed-hard-drive

Good luck!

Apple offers a one year warranty, but I believe you have two years warranty by law in the EU on certain types of products, like electronics...

Deep breaths. It's all going to be okay. I've heard nothing but happy endings related to data retrieval. Painful as it is to pay for, restoration and security are worthwhile expenses.

Very important to blow some compressed air into your computer every few months, especially if you own a laptop. Dust becomes a blanket, trapping heat and stopping cooling fans from turning. Hard drives begin to fail much more frequently at the three year mark, according to a Google study. If your data is important, back up to several different forms of media, such as thumb drives and a second internal hard drive. WD Passport and similar external USB hard drives have a tendency to die more frequently. Don't rely on them.

Really? How long do they last, and what do you use to backup instead?

And I thought that I was obsessive-compulsive for doing a complete backup every day!


Are you suggesting that a hard drive in a separate enclosure somehow magically fails more often than a hard drive in the PC's enclosure? I find that hard to believe, since they are the same hard drive.

LOL!! But when my daughter is doing reports for school or writing her novel (which she won't let us read, by the way) a frequent backup is more likely to safe her lost work.

Oh good!

In my experience they are pretty quick to fix them. Meaning a couple of days, max.

I understand your skepticism, but the drives aren't quite the same and more importantly they're not "abused" in the same manner.

Let's take the popular WD Passport - the $50 - $100 external USB powered drive that you can buy anywhere.

The points of failure are numerous.

1) The Mini USB interface can be cracked by too much force and constant removal and re-pluging in can also wear on the connection.



2) The drive can die as a result of DC power fluctuations coming from the USB power on the computer it is connected to. In addition, the process of plugging in and later detaching the drive is a shock to the internal components, including the drive which is frequently spinning up and spinning back down. Also, people get lazy about not properly removing the drive from the O/S side of things.

3) But the most common killer is the accidental drop to the floor when taking it somewhere. That and carelessly traveling with it in one's bookbag or purse will often jar the drive into becoming a "clicker".

An 3.5" standard internal drive is going to get better ventilation, it'll be less prone to bumps and drops and the power going to it will be more stable.

Good explanatory post, adonis, thanks.

We keep ours plugged in all the time, so it doesn't get dropped or damaged from insertion and removal. And we have a surge suppressor so that shouldn't be a problem--unless lightning strikes.

Firstly, I am so happy to hear Grant's news.

In case you wonder what I'm Queen of … it's not perfume, it's paranoia. I back up day-to-day work on a memory stick until the magazine I'm working on goes to the printer. I have two copies of my software CDs stored in waterproof containers at opposite ends of our building in fire-resistant storage. I also keep film negatives in acid-free boxes inside a defunct refrigerator inside a reinforced storage area. Digital photographs stay on a camera memory card, get filed in the computer, and backed up on CDs once a year. It's the only way I can sleep at night.

You have my sympathy, Grant. I am happy to hear that all may not be lost. But it is, indeed, a shock.
Yours truly had the same thing happen to him today. I went in to the store to either fix a bug (Safari and Mail kept crashing after downloading a software update) or to simply ignore the bug and just load up the new O/S, called Snow Leopard. But my machine, that was otherwise working perfectly at home at noon would not boot at the store at 2 pm. Dead on arrival. The explanation I got was not entirely convincing: hard drives go fast when they go and my HD might have been on the way out for a while. What looked to me like a problem downloading a software update may really have been the appearance of bad sectors on the HD. Anyway, I was 43 days within the warranty period, so I'll be out no money. But what I lost on that HD...well...I don't know for sure. I did a cursory back up shortly before I disconnected the machine to take in. I hope that what I forgot is not critical and that Apple's built-in back-up software, Time Machine, did its job (at least up until I switched it off a few months ago).
I don't think there is a way to protect ourselves from failed hard drives, except by what Quarry and others have said: back-up, back-up, back-up. (How many times to I have to be told?)

Thank you for the explanation. That makes sense, mostly.

1. Even if the connector is damaged, the hard drive inside is still fine. I can take it out of the enclosure and put it in something else.

2. Is the DC power coming from the computer's USB port any dirtier than the DC computer running around inside the computer itself? To me, this would seem to be a wash. I can see the plugging in and unplugging being a problem, but I am not too concerned about that. I have been a *BSD/Linux user since 1998, and I am used to unmounting everything before disconnecting it.

3. Seems to me to be the most likely point of failure, but also the most easily-avoided one. Like 30 Roses, I do not move my backup drive.

In my experience, tape backup is useless. The tapes often fail without the software saying that the backup failed. I only found out that the tape was useless when I desperately needed it. Every one whom I know has used tape backup has suffered this kind of loss.

Backup to CD or DVD is inconvenient. Several discs are necessary, and I would have to babysit the process to change discs. The discs are not re-usable, so every time that I generated a new backup, I had to dispose of the obsolete one.

It is true that a hard drive may fail, as any device may. It may even be true that an external hard drive may have an x% higher likelihood of failure than an internal hard drive. However, what are the chances of two hard drives (the main one in my computer *and* my backup) both catastrophically failing the same day? I am willing to take that chance.

Actually, that is exactly how hard drives fail. I usually waste a lot of time trying to diagnose a virus or spyware problem before it dawns on me that the hard drive is going.

Does misery love company? This is my TV: \t\t\t\t\t\t\t

My old IBM Aptiva bit the dust about 6 years ago. Of course, I had no backup. Lost every trace of everything on the..ahem...'massive' 20MB HD.

This brings up 2 points:

1. I don't know the answer to this, but if the computer hard drive goes, are files actually deleted? Because if they are, then when the external drive does its automatic backup (after which its contents will exactly reflect the contents of the computer's HD), the files would be deleted from the external drive as well. That is, the external drive is a "backup", not an archive. The files on it are only as permanent as the presence of the same files on the computer's HD.

2. A catastrophic loss of the contents of the computer HD and the external HD can occur with theft, fire or lightning strike.

For both reasons, it's a good idea to archive, on DVDs or CDs, your photos and files that you couldn't stand to lose, and store them in a safe place, like a safe deposit box.

Grant, glad you didn't lose those photos. That would be awful.

I bought my iMac back in '06. I get odd lines across the screen randomly and my machine locks up right out of the blue, but otherwise it's OK for surfing the net. I want to run my Logic program, but it's such a powerful program that I know it'll give this iMac a fit-- so I'm thinking of getting a new iMac to run my music production software on. Thinking of the new 27 inch 2.66 Ghz with quad core. I don't know how much better that would be than the 3.06 Ghz core duo, which is cheaper. Anybody have any insight on this?

Back to the subject of backups, I wonder if something like Carbonite would be an effective safety net in the event of a crash. Anybody use it?

The answer is, it depends. It depends on how the work hard drive fails and how the backup software is configured.

As for the hard drive going bad, generally speaking, the whole hard drive doesn't go kerfluey. A sector goes bad here, a sector goes bad there. Things start acting strangely. If a sector goes bad where, say, the boot image of the operating system lives, the drive no longer boots. Yet you can still mount that hard drive on another system and copy the uncorrupted files from it, skipping the bad sectors.

As for whether deleted files are still on the backup disk, most backup software has a switch that controls this. Rsync calls it "delete on destination." The option tells the software whether to delete old files on the backup disk that are no longer to be found on the work disk. Personally, I do have it delete old files, so that my backup is a mirror of the work disk. However, others take the equally valid approach that they do not want anything deleted on the backup. They do this not because of any disk failure worries, but because of human error -- if you delete something and later decide that you shouldn't have deleted it.


That is true. For offices, I like to advise two backup hard drives. You back up Hard Drive A today and take it home. Next day, you take Hard Drive B to the office and back it up and take it home. That way, there are two backups, a maximum of two days old, and two locations. If something catastrophic happens to cause you to lose your home hard drive and your office hard drive, chances are that data loss is the least of your worries.


Some "experts" suggest that CD-Rs and DVD-Rs only last about ten years, though.