{"id":19824,"date":"2018-08-13T08:32:46","date_gmt":"2018-08-13T15:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nicolesy.com\/?p=19824"},"modified":"2018-08-24T11:54:16","modified_gmt":"2018-08-24T18:54:16","slug":"hard-drive-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicolesy.com\/2018\/08\/13\/hard-drive-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"Learn From My Mistake: Back Up Your Computer"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few years ago my iMac’s internal hard drive crashed. I should have seen it coming, as my computer had been sluggish while working on files in Indesign, but eventually started acting normal again. I chalked it up to the file being much larger than usual. But\u00a0then, a few weeks later, it happened. The “beach ball of death” would not quit spinning, and once I realized the drive was doomed I was unable to even copy and paste files from one computer to another. It was dying, and I was helpless.<\/p>\n

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What I lost<\/h2>\n

Thankfully I didn’t lose anything I could not replace.\u00a0Nearly all of my photographs and important\u00a0files were on an external drive, backed up every day to a second external Drobo. And all of my working files (in-progress videos, Indesign documents, etc.) were in cloud storage.\u00a0However the one thing I failed to do for this computer was set up a backup for my main iMac hard drive. Whoops.<\/p>\n

The biggest thing I lost\u2014aside from the time it took to get everything back in order\u2014was my entire Lightroom catalog. I didn’t lose any images, only the organizational metadata (picks, etc.) and collections. (Thankfully I have my catalog set to store metadata on sidecar files, so no edits or embedded metadata was lost.) Even a few years after this hard drive failure I am still feeling the pains of having to start over with a new Lightroom catalog. I tend to use the “pick” flags to rate and organize my images, however that system has the disadvantage of not being embedded into the metadata. And because of that, I lost the majority of the important organizational structure I had seen up in my catalog, going back nearly fifteen years. I still find myself rummaging through old folders looking for images to use in tutorials or blog posts, and I expect this will be something I will continue to do for several years.<\/p>\n

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My backup strategy<\/h2>\n

After this incident I have been much more diligent about my computer backups. I purchased another external hard-drive that is used solely for my iMac, and make sure that it gets backed up every day.\u00a0Here is how I have my computer, external drives, and backup software\u00a0set in my home office:<\/p>\n

Computer<\/strong>: iMac<\/h3>\n