Be Prepared to Lose Your Data

Monday afternoon I had a rude awakening after returning from helping a client who ironically suffered a hard drive crash.

My hard drive crashed!

Ready for this? Before I left for that client I had another client email me desparately for advice after his hard drive just crashed. About 4 months ago I walked a client through installing all her software onto a new machine and recovering all her data after her drive crashed while she was mixing her score for a major film. Earlier this year I had another one of these total crashes with another client.

What’s the deal, man? Well if there is one thing I have learned in 15 years of computer based audio engineering it is that all drives eventually crash. They are after all mechanical devices, and they wear out.

Thankfully now we have MUCH simpler backup methods than we did in years past. You do have to use them, and thankfully for me and my clients we use Time Machine and only suffered the most minimal aggravation.

I’m not perfect, and don’t plug my MacBook into my backup drive anywhere near often as I should. So my backup took me back to October (ouch!), but with some ingenuity I was able to muscle off what I needed from the old drive. Phew!

It could have been catastrophic, every single one of these. So I advise you: don’t mess around without backups. Be prepared to lose all your data and you won’t!