If you’re reading this and you haven’t backed up your computer system(s), do it today. I have a backup system, and I’m glad I do.

Yesterday during a curriculum meeting at USC, I used my MacBook Pro to refer to some documents and websites for the meeting, as well as keep an eye on email related to the one-act fest I’m producing there. Everything was fine. Two hours later during a break from my class, I discovered that the computer wouldn’t boot:  It opened to the much-feared white screen (meaning a hard disk problem), and then the widely lamented flashing folder with a question mark. Given that all my data is backed up, I decided I could afford not to be unnerved and checked all my email from home later.

Today at my office I ran some diagnostics and they confirmed my fears. (As did a phone conference with Mac tech consulting ace Alan Potashnick, who was good enough to call me back immediately even though he’s at the hospital with his wife, who is having a baby. It’s good to work with people who have the right priorities.) No amount of software wizardry was going to correct what is a hard drive problem (evidenced by the spinning clackety-clack sound).

I pulled out another laptop — a 12″ G4 that I still love — dropped the MacBook Pro off at Melrose Mac where it’ll be fixed under warranty, and went home and restored necessary files onto this other laptop. I have a 340GB Maxtor backup drive at home. My thinking:  If the house burns down or blows away, everything is on a computer. If the office burns down or blows away, everything is backed up at home. It’s good to have two separate storage locations. And I have a third:  my most important files (documents, including Quickbooks backups) are also backed up to the internet via .Mac.

If Melrose Mac returns my MacBook Pro fixed, and with all its data restored, hooray. If it comes back fixed but without the data, it’ll be a bit of an inconvenience but at least I’ll have my data and I can restore it. If I didn’t already have the data — all my plays, all my other writing, all my photos and songs and movies, etc. — I would be having a real conniption.

Last year a very good friend had his laptop stolen. He had thought his laptop was getting backed up at work through the office system, but somehow or other that wasn’t working. On New Year’s Eve he told us how horrible losing all his data was. I was just glad he hadn’t lost his plays.

Again, some friendly advice:  If you haven’t backed up your data, do it today.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.