All good advice, Barry. Your backup strategy is directly proportional to the value of the data that you want to save. Any backup is better than none. Every Mac in the last ten years has had at least a CD writer, you can use external drives, flash drives, Internet based storage... But be sure to use something! Once you have a backup, make a backup! You can never have too many copies of your most important data. Put a copy in a safety deposit box or fireproof safe. What good is your backup on an external hard drive if your house burns down and your data goes with it. Or if your computer is stolen - along with your backup drive. One aspect often overlooked is to make sure you know how to recover your data from your backup. This can be a big issue if you have a sophisticated strategy using software like Retrospect. Saving data is one thing but being able to restore it and get up and running again needs to be considered. I am always reminded of our customer that returned from service in Afghanistan and met his newborn daughter for the first time. His wife had taken several thousand pictures of the first nine months of their little girls life and had downloaded all the photos their MacBook. The hard drive failed two weeks before he got home. They had no backup and she had never printed a single photo. All lost. Paul Tucknott Mostly Digital On 2011-10-23, at 11:57 AM, Barry Takayesu <barryt99@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Although it isn't helpful for Gary, this situation is a reminder and warning > for all of us. If you have valuable information or data on your computer - > BACK IT UP! Nowadays, you can copy your music, photos, documents onto USB > drives - for around $20 or less or you can get a huge hard drive for under > $100 and that could back up almost everything. Compare those dollar amounts > to the numbers that are bandied about: $1500, $1700 to retrieve your old > drive data or even the low figure of $200 to maybe reclaim a single document. > I've heard members say that they didn't have anything worthwhile to bother > backing up...only vacation photos and music. In the case of photos, they > could never be replaced! Letters and written documents can often be > recreated, but photos? Never! > > What a super insurance plan an extra hard drive is! But like insurance, > buying it - even 1 second after a disaster - nets you nothing! And remember, > once you back up your valuable data, verify that it is there and retrievable. > Maybe store it away from your computer in case of fire, flood or theft. We've > had posts by a member who went to their backup drive after a catastrophe, > only to find that there wasn't anything there. > > In Gary's case, it is doubly ironic because he was indeed trying to back up > his data when disaster struck. Sorry that it happened. Could Disk Warrior > possibly help in this case? > > Barry > > On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 4:37 PM, Gary Vanniere <recpros@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > ....recovery just as I was about to backup my data with a cloud I have a > total hard drive failure. > > It seems that the arm has either been "disarmed" or not reading the > disk...any recovery experts in the London area that won't cost $1,700 like > the service in Toronto??? > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Barry Takayesu Prestige Print & Graphics > (519) 631-8800 10592 Wellington Rd > barry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx St.Thomas, ON N5P 3T1 >