Back Up Your Mac Today!
We are not trying to make your summer a bummer, but: Your hard drive, which is the part of your computer that stores all of your music, photos, writings, and every other kind of document, is going to die. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow. But it will, someday. And it really could be today or tomorrow. We’ve seen it happen at the worst moments.
And if you’re not backed up when it does give out, or you are the victim of a fire or theft, it will be a painful loss. We don’t want that. We want to help make sure you can breathe easy if disaster strikes.
We’re not trying to scare you without good reason. Prior to 2010, we’d see maybe two dead hard drives a year, tops. But in the last 18 months, we have been seeing them fail like crazy, including our own. We’re all more at risk of drive failure than we used to be.So what do you do?
Do It Yourself
You can very easily set up automatic backups for your Mac. Go to an Apple Store or Best Buy or Staples or J&R or Amazon and buy any external hard drive that holds 500 GB (or more) of storage. Plug it into your Mac. When the Mac asks you if you want to use the drive for Time Machine backups, say yes. Leave the drive attached to your Mac whenever possible, and otherwise forget about it. Time Machine will back up your computer every hour.
We Can Help
If you want an offsite backup to protect you in case of fire or theft (which we recommend), or if you’re a laptop user who moves around a lot, or if you just keep procrastinating, then call us. For a fixed yearly subscription, we can set up the following:
- automatically back up no matter where you are
- notify you when your backups aren’t happening or when other parts of your computer may be failing
- subscription plans available for both home and business Mac users
So get protected!
Also: If you don’t have Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6), go get it now!
If you have an Intel Mac and are still using Mac OS X 10.5.8 or earlier — to check, go to “About This Mac” in the Apple Menu — you should immediately buy a Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” disc ($29), from the Apple Store, Best Buy, Amazon, or anyone else who sells it. You will need it if you ever want to upgrade to Mac OS X 10.7 “Lion,” which could be released as soon as a week or two. Once that happens, Apple will stop selling Snow Leopard, and you won’t be able to officially get Lion without buying a new Mac. So it’s worth the investment if you ever want to bring the Mac you already have up to date.
We don’t recommend installing Snow Leopard or Lion without first backing up with Time Machine. Also, when Lion comes out, it will probably have some issues, so we suggest waiting a month or two before installing it. Keep in mind that with Lion, older applications which haven’t been updated for Intel Macs won’t run (e.g. QuickBooks 2007, AppleWorks).
If you have any questions, give us a call.
(July 2011)