We had a new MacMedics client call us on the phone and then come by the office with their sick iMac. The complaint was the unit was super slow. Right away I’m thinking a bad hard drive. The client tended to agree with me. The iMac fits our profile for hard drive “retirement” anyways since it’s right at the three years old mark. This is a fine time to “upgrade” and “retire” a desktop hard drive. (MacMedics recommends desktop hard drives be retired after 3 years and 2 years in laptops)

In this case the client was in a hurry, so in trying to find the fastest solution we looked for the “sniper shot” hard drive fix to see if we could put her back in shape without replacing her hard drive. She had a presentation to work on tonight, and she felt most comfortable with the idea of getting her unit back on-line. We offered a low cost rental, since she had her Time Machine data, but she really wanted her iMac back.

We felt comfortable trying some “fixes” on her hard drive, because she had an up-to-date Time Machine back up. Well, when it really came down to it, those fixes and even a new install of her operating system failed to solve the problem. This told us that it was in fact the hard drive that was the cause of the problem.

The client opted for a new hard drive, AND an upgrade to a 1 TB hard drive (from a 500 MB. Read more about iMac hard drive service and upgrades here.), since her hard drive was dying. Because of what we had learned about her drive being super slow, we decided to multi-task and run utilities on her Western Digital TIme Machine volume while the new OS was also installing. As we started looking at it carefully, we learned that the Time Machine drive was also failing.

We’re not big fans of this brand of hard drive, and when we told the client it was failing, she was shocked to hear it. We learned that the drive was less than a year old (don’t forget hard drives can die at anytime. See our website http://www.HardDrivesDie.com for more info.) When I told her that Western Digital was not my first choice for storing data, she was again shocked as she bought it from the Apple Store.

Here’s the facts folks. Any hard drive can die at any time, and just because it was purchased at the Apple Store does not give you an extra layer of protection. The other thing to remember is that the process of TIme Machine running every hour is rough on hard drives. The other item everybody needs to know, is there’s no such thing as set-and-forget-it the world of hard drive back ups.

All hard drive back up systems need to be tested and monitored on a regular basis. Time Machine is no exception. It does a great job of providing extremely easy to use back ups, but it should not be the only back up you trust your data with. (See my previous post about Time Machine here.) We recommend a double back up. TIme Machine for your first layer of back up, and a “clone” back up for your second layer of protection. Ideally, you should also have some sort of off-site back up as well.

As we store more and more of our digital identity and life on hard drives, it’s akin to more “eggs in one basket”. When you have more data stored in one place, you increase your risk, if that single hard drive fails, you could stand to lose all of the data stored on it. The other thing to keep in mind is as the amount of data you have active and live on your computer grows and grows, TIme Machine loses some if it’s ability to keep a longer record of you past data. The larger your Time Machine hard drive volume is in ratio to your main hard drive, the longer Time Machine will keep you data backed up. Of course having any back up is better than no back up, but Time Machine’s real advantage is in it’s ability to to keep months and months (even a year) of data for you to look back on if you should need a file that you accidentally erased 6 months ago (or longer).

As was the case today with our new client, she came very close to losing her data as, both her primary and her TIme Machine back-up drives were both failing in different ways. That could have proved disastrous.

What can you do to prevent this? Make a clone of your drive. For as little as $99 you can by a portable USB hard drive and either clone your whole hard drive, or just copy your user folder to it. You can also start burning some of your data to DVDs or CDs and storing that data off site.

No matter what you need in terms of a back up, MacMedics can help. Call any of our offices, and we’ll be glad to help you add your first, second, or third layer of back up. It’s important, so don’t delay.

Tip: If you bought a Time Machine drive when you purchased your new Macintosh, it needs to be installed in order to protect you. Don’t start generating data you care about AND can’t stand to lose if you’re NOT backed up. If you’re reading this, and you need help checking you back up or getting it configured, call us we can help. It does not matter if you’re local to MacMedics here in Baltimore, Washington DC, or Philadelphia. We can come on-site, or we can visit your computer via our Desktop Support Software. A back up coaching session over the phone can be set up and running in about 15 minutes. PLEASE, don’t wait!

You can read some of my other posts on Time Machine here:

Congratulations your hard drive made it through another Friday the 13th!

Back up and secure your data! (Then test your back up system!)

Do you use Time Machine as your only back up? Double it!

Installing a second hard drive into a MacBook Pro = Very Cool. Having a mobile bootable backup anywhere = PRICELESS.

Leopard’s Time Machine might not be a powerful enough back up for you.

The Apple Store won’t upgrade your hard drive for you. But, MacMedics can, and we can do so either in or out of Apple warranty.

Here’s a common hard drive scenario that we help MacMedics clients with every day.

Your hard drive has failed, but you’d like to replace with a larger hard drive.

This makes perfect sense. Your MacBook with a 120 GB hard drive kicks the bucket, and in the process of replacing it, you’d like to upgrade it. MacMedics can help!

In Warranty: If your Mac is under warranty AND it’s hard drive fails, we can upgrade you to a larger capacity hard drive “under warranty”. All you do is pay for a new hard drive in the capacity of your choice.

Here’s how it happens:

1. We diagnose your computer’s hard drive as failed.
2. We order a new hard drive from Apple.
3. We install a new third party hard drive in the capacity of your choice.
4. We will install a new operating system on your new hard drive. (good time to upgrade your OS if you wish!)
5. You pay MacMedics for the cost of the new hard drive.
6. We send your old hard drive back to Apple.
7. We give you the Apple replacement hard drive to keep.

Your total cost: Just the price of a new hard drive, assuming we don’t also have to worry about or recover any of your data.

The free “original” size hard drive is yours to keep and you can sell it, keep it as a spare part, or use it to upgrade one of your other Macintosh computers.

Installing a new, large, faster, and more robust hard drive in your Macintosh does not void your AppleCare warranty. The only caveat that you have to keep in mind is that the Apple warranty WILL NOT cover the third party hard drive under Apple’s warranty. But if it should fail it is covered by a 1-year MacMedics warranty.

Out Of Warranty: If your Mac is out of warranty, we can also replace your hard drive with any size hard you would like. Most hard drive “upgrades” or “retirements” are done for our flat fee of $150 plus the cost of the hard drive. (Black or White original MacBooks are done for $99)

Obviously, if we have to recover your data from a failing hard drive, and provide other services in order to get your computer back in shape other charges may apply.

Here’s how it happens:

1. We diagnose your computer’s hard drive as failed.
2. You choose a new hard drive size and speed.
3. We install that new hard drive for you.
4. We clone your data from old hard drive to new hard drive
5. We test and run updates on your computer.

MacMedics keeps all popular hard drive sizes and speeds in stock at all times, so we can get you back on-line as quickly as possible.

This is just one more reason that MacMedics is often a better choice than trekking to your local Apple Store and dragging your iMac or Mac Pro through the mall.

If you’re a creative professional working for an ad agency, graphic design or photography studio with Apple Macintosh computers in the Philadelphia Metro, South New Jersey, or Wilmington, Delaware areas, we’d love to help you.

We’re MacMedics Philadelphia, and as Apple Authorized Service Providers and Apple Authorized Value Added Resellers, MacMedics Philadelphia has what it takes to solve your Mac IT problems. We’ve been providing Macintosh Solution to Creative Professionals since 1989.

We’re here to provide the very best Macintosh Service and Consulting available, and we don’t require contracts or any other type of future commitments in order to receive very efficient and fast Macintosh service.

MacMedics brings the kind of technical and management capabilities that you would expect from a full-time IT professional — without the expense of a full-time professional. We don’t take sick days and we’re always just a phone call or e-mail away. We also offer remote desktop and telephone technical support.

If you’re not 100% happy with your current Mac Tech or Consultant, 2010 might be a great time to make the switch to MacMedics. Please call MacMedics for your free on-site Environmental Assessment. We would be delighted to give you a free second opinion on your Mac network or server installation. Please see our previous Blog post on topic.

Time Machine is an excellent way to back up your files! It's only cool and powerful if you actually turn it on and USE it!

Friday the 13th can be an un-lucky day, but you CAN take control of your back up and ensure your data is always protected by following a few simple steps.

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 or use an off-site back up and this point is covered)

3. Off-Site (Take your double back up off-site or get Mozy or CrashPlan Pro and this point is covered)

If you’d like to sign up for Mozy or CrashPlan Pro, we have links to those services, including the hard to find free 2GB Mozy account. We also strongly recommend LoJack for Laptops.

http://www.macmedics.com/mozy (Use code “MOZY4ALL″ for 10% off paid service until 5/1/12)
http://www.macmedics.com/crashplan
http://www.macmedics.com/lojack

We’ve been over this before, but here on the front lines of data loss we see this just about everyday. It’s senseless the number of pictures, school papers, financial and business documents, and music get lost when a back up system can be had for as little as $129!

You need to make your back up system automatic, or use a program like Time Machine. That’s the first step. Nobody, and I mean NOBODY can keep up with a “manual” drag-n-drop back up! To boot, quite a bit of the data loss we see here at MacMedics happens when someone copies over important data during a drag-n-drop Finder copy. Sometime, folks think they have the data copied, but something goes wrong and they just end up with an alias, then they go and delete the original data, because they think they just copied it.

The second step is to regularly test that back up to ensure your files are there and you’re able to grab them anytime you need them. There’s no such thing as a “Set-It-And-Forget-It” back up system.

If you need help getting your back up set up, our advice is free, and we have external portable and desktop hard drives in stock!

If you have data you care about it needs to be backed up! Just because your computer is new or you just replaced the hard drive offers you very little protection. Hard drives can die at any time, and in fact there’s an increased risk of that occurring in the first 30 to 60 days of a hard drives’ life.

See our website http://www.HardDrivesDie.com for more info on “retiring” older drives and ensuring you have a safe back up.

The pictures we take are the most cherished and valuable items on most computers. Make sure the pictures you take this year make it onto your back up system as soon as you import them onto your computer. Also, as an added tip: Don’t have iPhoto delete your pictures off you camera. Leave them in two places, in iPhoto AND on your camera until you have them BACKED UP. You ALWAYS want to have your valuable data in TWO PLACES at all times.

Be sure to read the Blog clipping we link to titles “The 9 things we wish we did before our house burned down” You can fin that here.

Before you make an appointment, drive to the mall, find a parking spot, and then lug your Mac through The Mall In Columbia to get to the Apple Store, please consider supporting your local neighborhood Mac shop! Visit MacMedics in Millersville (near BWI airport) or Lanham, Maryland (near RT 50 & I-495) the next time you need Mac sales or service.

See our Blog post with all the details on why to come see MacMedics instead of trekking to the Apple Store. Clients that come to see us, often tell us they will never go back to the Apple Store for Macintosh sales OR service!

Or review this quick top 11 reasons here:

1. No appointment is needed: No need to call ahead when you’re ready to come visit MacMedics! Just walk in and our Apple Certified Techs will take great care of you.

11. The Apple Store Can’t Upgrade Your Hard Drive: MacMedics Can! See our new blog post from 1/30/10 to get all of the details. A common issue we help clients with here at MacMedics is “upgrading” or “retiring” a failed (or perfectly good) hard drive. What many people don’t know is that we can “upgrade” your computer to a larger size hard drive, even if your hard drive has failed under Apple warranty.

Before you make an appointment, drive to the mall, find a parking spot, and then lug your Mac through the Towson Town Center to get to the Towson Apple Store, please consider supporting your local neighborhood Mac shop! Visit MacMedics in Millersville (near BWI airport) the next time you need Apple Authorized Mac sales or service.

See our Blog post with all the details on why to come see MacMedics instead of trekking to the Apple Store. Clients that come to see us, often tell us they will never go back to the Apple Store for Macintosh sales OR service!

Or review this quick top 11 reasons here:

1. No appointment is needed: No need to call ahead when you’re ready to come visit MacMedics! Just walk in and our Apple Certified Techs will take great care of you.

11. The Apple Store Can’t Upgrade Your Hard Drive: MacMedics Can! See our new blog post from 1/30/10 to get all of the details. A common issue we help clients with here at MacMedics is “upgrading” or “retiring” a failed (or perfectly good) hard drive. What many people don’t know is that we can “upgrade” your computer to a larger size hard drive, even if your hard drive has failed under Apple warranty.

MacMedics saves data off dead Mac IIci and upgrades client to PowerMac 5200/120.

Now there’s something you don’t hear everyday or at least not since 1997. Funny thing is, we did that all today in just a few hours here in our Mac Lab in Millersville, Maryland.

Normally we spend our days in the field and in the lab supporting and servicing Macs with either Tiger or Leopard on them. Every so often an older version of the Apple OS like Panther or Jaguar shows up, but that’s becoming more and more infrequent as we get ready for Snow Leopard. We do still work on OS 9 from time to time, but that too is slowing down. We got a call from a testing laboratory a few days ago, and they apparently have a few OS 9 Macs that they use to run some scientific testing equipment. We told them that we could most likely replace anything that needed fixing. We have a pretty good supply of old Macs that we like to keep around for data recovery and testing. I did also help Johns Hopkins with some old Apple gear hooked up to some special equipment for data collection at The Wilmer Eye Institute like 10 years ago.

G3 iMacs are still in pretty good supply, so we provide those to clients that need to stick to some old and outdated application that won’t work on anything newer. It always seems to be genealogy software, I don’t know why.

Today a client drove two hours to see us with his Macintosh IIci. He thought his monitor was going bad, but that turned out not to be the case. His Mac’s logic board was dying, and putting strange patterns on the display. Turns out, he too had old software that he HAD to have running in System 7.0.1 and the software was never upgraded from the version he had. We first backed up his data by putting his hard drive into one of our museum’s Macintosh IIsi computers (We have one with all original boxes, manuals, and software w/ the Apple M0401 RGB monitor.) We moved the data over to an old stand by SCSI hard drive that we keep around for booting machines that need a kick start from System 7. I think the drive might be 150 megs in size (we’ve sure come a long way in that department!).

We ended up giving the client two choices:

1. We could put his hard drive into one of our IIsi’s and send him on his way.

Or

2. We could upgrade him to a PowerMac 5200 running System 7.5.5.

He picked the PowerMac, so after installing a new clock battery from macbattery.com, on the 5200’s logic board (that’s a Rayovac 4.5 volt for those keeping track), we moved his data over, and made sure all of his programs would work. We had to also copy some fonts over to ensure he could print labels out of Mac Write. He also asked us to look for his copy of After Dark (famous old time screen saver), but it was no longer there. The last firm that had worked on the Mac IIci had erased it. We had an original copy of After Dark (on floppy no less) somewhere, but we could not lay our hands on that quickly enough to install it, while he waited for the unit to be be complete. We were able to complete the unusual data back up and upgrade to the new PowerMac in less than 2 hours. I guess keeping that old stuff around pays off every so often!

We have his data on our back up drive (he has no back up of it), and we’re going to find a way to get it on the network somehow, so we can burn it to a CD-ROM and send it to him. Here’s a tip: Don’t wait 20 years to make a back up. He had 2.2 megs of data to back up, so he really needs a Zip drive or something. I think we might have an extra one hanging around somewhere. You are REALLY pushing your luck by running a hard drive for 20 years with no back up! MacMedics recommends hard drive early retirement after 3 years in a desktop and after 2 years in a laptop. See our website http://www.HardDrivesDie.com for more info on this topic!

Thanks to cultofmac.com for blogging about this post!

Update 7/1/09 Here’s what our client had to say after the service we performed for him:

Dana,

Pete

We get little thank you notes, coffee, Starbucks gift cards, and other tokens of our client’s appreciation for a job well done every so often. I’ve even received tips in cash. I always try to refuse them, but clients either stuff it in my shirt pocket or hide it in my computer/tool bag for me to find several weeks later when I dig deep for the USB hard drive power cable or that iPod plastic pry tool that went all the way to the bottom of the bag. I don’t think we’ve ever been given 48 cans of energy drinks. I guess that will perk things up here in the office, not that it’s ever dull in here!

Enjoy the video I shot on my new iPhone 3G S of the situation. Long live BEIGE or not.