We Fix Macs! MacMedics Can Fix Or Service Any Macintosh Ever Made.

MacMedics can fix Macs. Of course all of the recent Macs are no problem, even the last few generations are no problem for us. If the Apple Store or anyone else has turned you away because they say your Mac is too old to work on, then come see us!

This week we worked on two pretty old Macintosh systems.

Case #1: Replacing the hard drive in a Titanium PowerBook G4. Some people really love old Macs, we sure do. The old Ti-Book had been serving it’s owner’s needs since 2001, but the hard drive died. He saw no reason to retire the machine, so he asked us to replace the hard drive.

No problem. Even though PATA hard drives in the 2.5” form factor are getting harder and harder to find, we still have them. Old hard drive comes out, new hard drive goes in, and we transfer all of the data over to the new hard drive.

See this image large size here.

Case #2: Macintosh Classic (from 1990) that is dead, but it’s owners want the data off it. This one is still a work on progress. We’ve worked on this form factor Mac countless times, but in this case one of the case screws is fused in place, so thus far, we’ve not been able to get the Mac Classic apart. We will drill out the screw on Monday to get to the hard drive. This unit has a SCSI hard drive, something that MacMedics is familiar with. We have to pull data off old SCSI drives on a regular basis, so we’ll hook it up to one of our custom rigs to grab the data.

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 “2012″ for 10% off paid service until 2/1/12)
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 $99!

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 at the holidays are the most cherished and valuable. Make sure the picture you take this holiday make it onto you 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.

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.