[clue-tech] Data recovery recommendations?

[Nate Duehr]

On Aug 7, 2010, at 5:51 PM, Sean LeBlanc wrote:

> I have a co-worker who has a Mac that had (what sounds like) an epic
> failure. Any thoughts on what steps they might take? Any local expertise to
> recommend on where they can take the machine to have the data recovered?
> 
> I thought about trying to help out myself via Knoppix or the like, but I'm
> not sure I want to do that. From what I understand,the drive itself is making
> serious noises, and actually running it normally may cause even more damage?


Data loss on a Mac is almost tragically irresponsible. There's a very nice backup system included on all the latest OS versions.

Other's covered the helpful technical part.  Now the human-issues part...

First question you should ask, is... of course... "Did you have backups?"

Then recommend he use the built in Time Machine backup system as a bare minimum at LEAST... in the future.

And he'd better be bringing at least a case of your favorite beverage if you're really going to attempt to do the recovery -- it always takes hours longer than you think it will... plus, it'll put a value in his head of "What is my data worth to me?" :-)

Not that it's perfect, but I highly recommend a Time Capsule and automated Time Machine backups for most home Mac users.  It's really quite nice as an almost "set and forget" setup for backups of Mac machines.  

In all seriousness, good luck with it.  We've all been there, done that! :-)

--
Nate Duehr
nate at natetech.com