enJOY it

an archived personal and craft blog from Elise Blaha Cripe.

PSA : back up your files!

I was online this morning when my MacBook started making a grinding sound. And then everything froze. When I shut it down and restarted, it went to a gray screen with a question mark.

A little bit of at home troubleshooting + a visit to the Apple store later…

Survey says? DEAD HARDDRIVE.

Good news : they are replacing the harddrive for free. The Apple store guy typed in my serial number and somehow found that I'm eligible for a new one.

So I'll be starting from scratch without having to buy a new computer.

Bad news : my last external harddrive back up was May 26th and I have done a lot of work in the past month and a half that I would have loved to have saved.

Not too sad about the photos though. Most of the good ones are uploaded to flickr or the blog. And my honeymoon + wedding photos were backed up.

Moral of the story : BACK UP. RIGHT NOW. And then, continue doing it once a week for the REST OF YOUR LIFE.

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26 responses to “PSA : back up your files!”

  1. Maureen Avatar
    Maureen

    thanks – I have time machine but I am working on something special and I have been meaning to make and extra back up. Sorry for your loss…..

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  2. Leah Eggers Avatar
    Leah Eggers

    do you have time machine? it automatically stores monthly, weekly and hourly backups. total lifesaver in a situation like this! so sorry you have to deal with that, but it’s great you don’t have to buy a new computer!

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  3. Jessica O'Brien Avatar
    Jessica O’Brien

    dare i say it? i have never, ever backed up. ever. must do!
    glad too much wasn’t lost. good luck with the new start.

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  4. desiree Avatar
    desiree

    so sorry… I don’t know how to back up anything. time to ask my computer savy husband.
    glad you have all your wedding and honeymoon photos – I would have burst into tears on that.

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  5. Sage Avatar
    Sage

    i am glad to hear that you made out okay!
    i am starting to get worried something like that may happen to me so i need to remember to back up.
    also, do you have the applecare plan for your mac? i am trying to figure out if i should invest in that or not and am looking for some advice.

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  6. breanne and madelyn Avatar
    breanne and madelyn

    this is something that scares the crap out of me. i would be devastated. i need to start backing up more… sorry for your loss 😦 but glad its not gonna be a huge expense for you!

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  7. elise blaha Avatar
    elise blaha

    No. I never get extended warranties or apple care. My new harddrive was free I think because my batch of macs have shown problems

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  8. Tanya Avatar
    Tanya

    Mozy.com – $4.95/month = peace of mind!

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  9. Krystal Avatar
    Krystal

    that’s crazy.. i am backing up as we speak becuase my computer has been acting funny…

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  10. Rebekah Avatar
    Rebekah

    Dude, sign up for Mozy! It’s the best and you don’t have to do a-ny-thing.

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  11. Jess Avatar
    Jess

    I always get applecare. I have had many things fixed for free (necessary fixes and small bonus fixes) all because of applecare. Without it, I would have been out of a computer or a lot of $. My husband has been a longtime Mac user and got me hooked. He, too, has found it to be really great. It’s seems like a lot of $ at first but when I look back, it has always been worth it.
    Good luck!

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  12. Jess Avatar
    Jess

    The same thing happened to my macbook! And I hadn’t backed up in 2 months. Now I use Dropbox.com (2GB free) in addition to my external drive. It was kind of nice to have a clean slate when I got the new harddrive!

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  13. Jen D. Avatar
    Jen D.

    I don’t have a Macbook but my PC did die on us TWICE this past June! LOST TONS of PHOTOS! And video clips taken in May & June. Luckily, my husband was able to recover my drive with the most important pictures (i.e. 3 years worth PLUS my son’s first year) so once we recovered that I burned everything onto DVDs. I like burning onto hard copy and i’m also uploading everything I take now so I can get them all printed out & placed in albums. Lesson learned.

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  14. Sarah D. Avatar
    Sarah D.

    i was pushing saving far away from me. as soon as i read this today I plugged in my external harddrive. and I am save.
    luckily your weddingpictures were saved!!!

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  15. Diane Avatar
    Diane

    Thank you

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  16. Kal Barteski Avatar
    Kal Barteski

    AND if you are a very diligent backer-upper like I am – DO IT IN TWO PLACES. CDs, multiple hard drives. My Time Capule died. Overheated harddrive. It’s in intensive care right now and it doesn’t look good. BACK UP WEEKLY – x2.

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  17. Kristenhawley Avatar
    Kristenhawley

    I use Mozy. Its only $4.96 a month and it does it for you… backs up every day in the background. I don’t even know when it does it.
    Highly recommend!

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  18. goshery Avatar
    goshery

    Oh Elise, I feel your pain. I have a PC and it crashed a few months ago. I lost everything, which sounds bad at first and then gets worse and worse as you go to do something and realize that picture or file is long gone. I have having to recreate things, and even more I hate that there are things I lost that can’t be recreated (like photos).

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  19. Nadia Avatar
    Nadia

    same thing happened to me elise and I purchased the time machine. I lost a few photos and my i-tunes library was gone, but I did get a free hard drive too. thank goodness about your photos though! ciao!

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  20. Carrie Avatar
    Carrie

    Pretty sure that is my biggest fear. Backing up as I type this.

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  21. Julie Avatar
    Julie

    I had a mac book fail and had not backed up except pictures. I vowed never again. Now I back up to Time Machine and Mozy. My friend has someone break in and steal her computer and backup drive. I decided in the cloud was a good addition to the plan.

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  22. Stephanie Wheeler Avatar
    Stephanie Wheeler

    Yep, that $4.95 a month at Mozy is totally worth it.

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  23. Kristen Fischer Avatar
    Kristen Fischer

    Have you tried Mozy.com?

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  24. Amy Lapi Avatar
    Amy Lapi

    i just blogged about this 🙂

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  25. chris Avatar
    chris

    I so need to do this since I just downloaded a bunch of stuff for a Jessica Sprague class I was doing, and all of my pictures from our two weeks out of state.
    Note to self: get all pics from trip on computer and organized and backed up tomorrow.

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  26. Danielle Avatar
    Danielle

    I’m late to comment on this but just had to say… I have a MacBook Pro and this happened to me, too, a couple months back– question mark and all. Being the idiot that I am, I had NOTHING backed up and lost absolutely everything – including all my pictures from a trip to Europe a couple years back and everything I wrote in college. [Insert 24 hours of bawling my eyes out.] Apparently some batch of MacBooks was sold with defective hard drives. 😛 Glad you didn’t lose too much.

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