TMC Blog - How & Why to Back Up Your Mac The MUG Center Way (Part 1)

Apr 24, 2005

Writings, ramblings, proclamations and prognostications from the front lines of the Apple community.


So it can't happen to you, eh? Well, it happened to me. Once last Fall, and again just last week.

In October, my trusty Ti of a few years started making strange noises. Within a day (a day!) the hard drive sounded like a blender full of bolts set on frappé, and was quickly reduced to a rather noisy paperweight.

Last week, after performing like a champ since it was purchased, my PowerBook refused to boot. I mean really refused to boot. No warning, no strange sounds, no nothing. Just that dreaded blinking question mark taunting me. In spite of a strict regular maintenance schedule, it gave up the ghost overnight.

Strangely, I couldn't start from an external drive or even the Mac OS CD. Booting into Target Disk Mode finally gave me access to the PowerBook's drive from my tower, and a trip to Disk Utility revealed a message that you hope to see only in reference to someone else's machine:

Note the S.M.A.R.T. status message, in red letters no less: Failing.

When your hard drive admits to you, in red, that it is failing, it is time for a new hard drive.

S.M.A.R.T.
For those who haven't had to learn about this yet, S.M.A.R.T. stands for "Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology," and is a feature built into most newer hard drives. On-board diagnostics constantly analyze drive performance and can notify the user of existing or impending problems. While admittedly not foolproof, S.M.A.R.T. is supposed to be able to distinguish about 70% of hard disk issues before they become catastrophic.

In my case, S.M.A.R.T. wasn't so smart and didn't give me any advance notice. It did, however, allow me to identify the problem without endless trips to Disk Utility, Disk Warrior and other utilities trying to fix a software problem that didn't exist, and dragging the process out for who knows how long.

So why am I so calm? Why am I writing this instead of spending the next two weeks or two months trying to recover? Simple: I had a backup plan. I followed it. In both cases, I didn't lose more than a couple hours of production time while replacing the hard drive, and didn't lose any data.

Am I bragging? Perhaps. Or maybe I'm just displaying the veteran's self-assurance of having been through a catastrophic loss and learned the lesson. Either way, I've endured two drive failures in two computers in seven months and haven't experienced any pain (other than the cost of replacing the drives) or data loss.

If you have a backup strategy that you really use, terrific! If you don't, then allow me to share mine in this and future blog entries in the hope that it might work for you, or at least give you some idea of how to plan and structure yours.

What is Your Data Worth?
To be serious about this, you need to really believe that a backup regimen is necessary, and the best way to do that is figure out the cost of not backing up.

How much data do you have that would be difficult, if not impossible, to re-create? How much time would it take, if you could? How do you value that time?

How long would it take you to re-install all of your applications, retrieve the serial numbers, download all the updates, re-configure everything to the way you like it and get your Mac back to where it is right now?

The answers might surprise you since it can run into days rather than hours. If you use your Mac as part of your job, be sure to figure in the lost production time, since you will be slaving away on last week's (or last month's) work, rather than making that next million. And throw in a few extra hours to help assign a value to those items that simply cannot be duplicated: your soon-to-be-Top 40 hit composed in GarageBand, your unpublished novel, your new web site design, your graphics masterpiece...the exact nature of these depends on what you do with your Mac, but everyone has them.

Next, consider how much is your time worth, in dollars and cents. $10? $25? $100? Pick a number and do the math. To give you some ideas, consider this table:

	8 hours	12 hours	18 hours	24 hours
$10/hour	$80	$120	$180	$240
$15/hour	$120	$180	$270	$360
$20/hour	$160	$240	$360	$480
$25/hour	$200	$300	$450	$600
$40/hour	$320	$480	$720	$960
$50/hour	$400	$600	$900	$1,200
$100/hour	$800	$1,200	$1,800	$2,400

Now you have a monetized idea of the value of backing up your hard drive. Surprising, isn't it?

Critical Success Factors
To make your strategy a success, it needs to address some key factors:

• First, it has to be convenient. If you don't do it on a regular basis, the rest won't matter, and if it isn't easy to do, you won't do it at all.
  
  
• Next, it must be complete. If you aren't backing up what needs to be backed up, then there isn't much point, because it won't be there when you need it.
  
  
• Related to the last factor, ask yourself, "What is my purpose in backing up?" Are you simply protecting against a hard drive failure or system problem? Or do you need to be able to go back and retrieve earlier versions of files or projects, or even the OS itself? Answering these questions will help you decide how long you want to retain a given backup set.
  
  
• Also to be considered is the type of Mac you are backing up. My primary production machine is, as I mentioned, my PowerBook. Yours may be an iMac or G5. The mobility factor may affect your plan.
  
  
• How much data do you have to back up? The size of both your hard drive and your data files will affect both the method and the media you select for backups.
  
  
• How much new or changed data do you generate in a day? A week? A month? This is a key question, since it potentially represents how much data you can lose if something happened five minutes before your next scheduled backup.
  
  
• Finally, the backup needs to be in a useful format. CDs and DVDs are fine for some aspects of a backup program, but how long will it take you to get your data from them and be back up and running?
  

That should give you some things to think about and a little homework to complete before we move forward. Look for Part 2 of How and Why to Back Up Your System The MUG Center Way soon. Until then, run Disk Utility and hope you don't come up with red letters.

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Do you agree? Disagree? Have something to say? Let me know at [email protected].

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