We just had full moon, and it seems like it brought a ton of new Data Recovery jobs into the MacMedics offices. Spooky!

Now that it’s Halloween, I offer you the perfect metaphor for your Mac’s (or iPhone’s) Back Up. Don’t play “Trick Or Treat” with your valuable data.

When we have clients show up at our Mac Lab with data we can’t recover it just breaks our hearts. We’ve got a great track record for Recovering AND Rescuing data for folks, but there are cases we we can’t help with. We will refer these jobs off to Clean Room recovery firms, and often they can save your data in exchange for fees as high as $2500. But, not all data can be saved, and about 10% of the cases we refer, there’s not a positive result, and that data is gone forever.

As soon as you buy a new Mac, or get an old Mac’s hard drive repaired, you need to have a back up program running. On any Mac that is running Leopard (10.5) or Snow leopard (10.6), use Time Machine! It’s very, VERY powerful, and has been used to save lots of our client’s data.

The important thing is to PLAN AHEAD. Your back up is not complete if it’s not:

1. Automatic (Use Time Machine and this point is covered)
2. Redundant (Double your back up with a clone of your data and this point is covered)
3. Off-Site (Take your double back up off-site or get Mozy and this point is covered)

See how easy it is to be 100% covered! Now think of how much better you’ll feel knowing this little project has been taken care of and that your back up has been certified! If you need help getting a back up in place, we can help. On-site, In-lab, or even Remote Desktop Support, we’re there, and we’ll help get your back up configured and tested!

While all of us at MacMedics are HUGE fans of Time Machine, it’s not 100% infallible. MacMedics recommends that you ALSO back up your hard drive via a “clone” use Super Duper or Carbon Copy Cloner, as that way you can “test” your back up to insure you have a good, bootable copy. With a “clone” back up AND a Time Machine back up, you’re covered for TWO types of back ups, and you’re DOUBLING your chances for a successful recovery.

This might also be a good time to enhance your back up plan by adding an off-site back up. MacMedics is now a Mozy partner, so click here if you’d like to sign up for that (this like usually has the current Mozy discount coupon codes on it as well). You can get a free account that will back up 2 Gigabytes of data. It’s silly not to take advantage of that. We had a client in with a bad MacBook hard drive just a few days ago, and she was mostly backed up, but she was working a major project for her employer that had huge amount of Excel data in it. All she wanted was that one folder. Sadly we could not get it for her. If she had set up Mozy, even if she did not have a back up drive *a common problem for portable computers), her data would have been “automatically” backed up AND “off-site” thus completing two points of the golden triangle of data protection. Best of all, it would have been 100% free!

We also work with CrashPlan for on-line backups, so if you’d like to check out their current off-site back up plans see this link.

We have tons of posts on Time Machine and we even have a free White Paper on it If you’d like a copy, let us know. If you’re not using an automatic backup, your data is at risk!

Also, don’t forget that hard drives don’t last forever. Our rule of thumb for hard drive retirement is as follows. In Apple laptops the hard drive should be proactively replaced after 2 to 3 years years. In Apple desktops the hard drive should be proactive replaced after 3 years. You can find out more about this on our website http://www.HardDrivesDie.com.

There’s one more thing I would like to mention here. iPhones and iPod touch models also need to be backed up. All you have to do is to sync with you Mac from time to time. People are starting to treat these portable Apple products as stand alone devices, and when you think about it, many people are generating data on their iPhones and iPods just like they do on a computer.

You’ve got photos, e-mails, text documents, bookmarks, files, contacts, calendars, and videos that all can be generated or sent to your mobile device. All you have to do is connect to iTunes, and it will back up your device.

There are not too many ways to get mission critical data off a dead iPhone. We can often do it, but the data is all stored on the logic board of your iPhone or iPod touch. If it gets wet, gets dropped, or gets lost or stolen, then there goes your data. If we can’t get your logic board to fire up, then we don’t have access to your data.

Update: Apple to live stream it’s own media event tomorrow (9/1/10). Tune into www.apple.com at 10 AM PDT. It looks like non-Apple devices won’t be able to watch. See the press release from Apple here.

Apple is holding a media event on 9/1/10 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco, CA

There are several well placed rumors that Apple with be announcing several new items.

Most widely speculated is the Apple TV. A next generation Apple TV based on the same OS as the iPhone, in order to provide support for Apps on your TV. Rumored to be priced at just $99.

This turned out to be true, however it does not run iOS. It appears to pretty much the same as the old Apple TV which has a Front Row type of interface. Apple TV is now available for pre-order from Apple and will ship in about a month. It’s 1/4th the size of the old Apple TV and is based on a streaming data model, as it has no internal hard drive. You can rent movies and TV shows on it from iTunes, or you can stream music, video, and photos from your home computer.

Another pretty hot rumor concerns a redesign of the iPod nano that appears to have some backing from both some photographic and released protective case design evidence. It would appear that the new Nano will be smaller, square shaped designed device with a 3cm x 3cm touch screen.

This also turned out to be true. The new nano has a touch screen that is large enough to show four app style icons at one. It will be shipping from Apple in about a week.

Back to the rumor mill again after leaked photos showing a camera have popped up over the last year or so is the iPod touch. It’s new design looks to include both a back side camera and a front facing camera, microphone, updated footprint, possible 3G and even a Retina display as in the iPhone 4.

Again, also 100% true. The new iPod touch support Face Time and does have now include the Retina LCD, which is the same LCD that is in the iPhone 4. The iPod touch will also be shipping in about a week.

There also has been quite a bit of buzz concerning Apple’s desire to rent TV shows for 99 cents. I’m assuming that this will also include some tweaks to iTunes and the Apple iTunes store.

This also turned out to be true. TV shows can be rented from ABC and FOX for 99 cents and iTunes 10 was released as well to support this. Apple also announced Ping a new music based social networking site inside of iTunes where you can follow popular artists like Lady GaGa, U2, Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry.

You can watch the full event video from Apple’s own website here.

Are You Behind In Your Podcast Subscriptions?

As I prepared to work outside today, I figured I’d grab a few Podcasts I was behind in, and sync them to my iPhone.

It’s been awhile since I’ve listened to a few of them so I had to tell iTunes to download the latest episodes. It took me a second to remember how to tell iTunes to start downloading them again.

In order to trigger iTunes to give you this option, you have to click on the little round “Exclamation Mark” in the “Status Column”.

And Is Your iPhone Playing Your Podcast Too Fast?

So a grabbed the episodes that I wanted to hear and prepared to head outside to work in the yard. I clicked on the first episode, and it was playing a double the speed. I figured there must be a setting for this, and there is. It’s a new feature in iPhone 3.0 and it’s displayed in the “Scrubber Bar” which allows you to skip to any point in your Podcast. The control for the playback speed is all the way to the right and in direct sunlight I could not see it outside.

I looked on the Internet to see if this was a common settings issue or not. I did a quick search and found Apple’s guide for the playback controls on the iPhone website.