A Strong Case For Backups!

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The need for backups has been mentioned so many times on these forums, and for some folks who have no backups, it lead to disaster. Well, I would like to relay a very recent (and somewhat bizarre!) incident that should be beneficial.

Every Saturday, I go through a 4 step process to perform disk cleanup, maintenance, and repairs, and backups, for both of my Macs. The steps are:

1. Run a Microsoft-provided procedure to permanently remove all deleted EMails from Outlook.

2. Run the excellent freeware program for repairing permissions, along with some useful disk checking/cleanup tasks.

3. Run TechTool Pro for more extensive disk cleanup, maintenance, and repairs.

4. Run SuperDuper! to create two backups for each Mac to two separate external drives.

Additionally, I constantly am cleaning stuff off the internal SSDs for both machine. And I keep up with updates for the software I use.

In any event, on Saturday, July 30th, I went through the above process, and as usual, things went smoothly. On Tuesday, August 2nd, my wife and I left Seattle for a trip to California. I took my mid 2013 13" MacBook Air with me (also had a backup on a nice, slim external 1 TB drive that I have), and thus my late 2012 Mac Mini remained idle. We got back on Saturday evening, August 13th, and last Sunday (August 14th) I booted up the Mac MIni, and as expected, things worked fine. The only update I needed to apply on the MIni was a newer version of the excellent program 1Password. As expected, that went smoothly.

Yesterday, I began my disk maintenance/backup processing, and when I got to the point of trying to use one of the features of TechTool on the Mini, a strange problem happened. One of the neat features of TechTool Pro is that one can create an eDrive with it. The eDrive is basically a small partition that contains needed files to start up my Mac, and also has all the useful features of TechTool Pro. Well, for the Mac MIni, the eDrive was "kind of" gone! That is, it could not be found via TechTool Pro. It also could not be found using the Start Up Disk Preference Pane. (It could, though, be "seen" via holding down the Option key while the Mini booted up). It was definitely baffling, considering how little use the Mini had been through between the time we got back and yesterday. (I had no such issues for the MacBook Air, as all processing was normal).

I did re-install TechTool Pro on the Mini, but that did not help. I could not create the eDrive, nor "find" it. So, after saving 5 critical files from the Mini (put inside a folder on one of my external drives), I restarted my Mac Mini from the SuperDuper! backup I had made on July 30th. I then performed the following steps:

1. Use Disk Utility to Erase and Format the internal SSD on the MIni.

2. Performed a clean, "virgin" installation of OS 10.11.4 onto that SSD.

3. Use Migration Assistant to "migrate"/copy all the "needed" stuff from that backup onto the SSD.

4. Restarted the Mini from its internal SSD, and applied the OS 10.11.6 Combo Updated.

5. Ran TechTool Pro, and successfully created the eDrive partition.

6. Took the files from that saved folder on one of my external drives, and "placed" them onto the MIni.

All of that went smoothly, and I was able to do all my normal disk maintenance/backup processing for the MIni yesterday (also for my MacBook Air).

According to Disk Utility and TechTool Pro, there is nothing wrong with the internal 256 gig Samsung 840 Pro SSD drive inside my Mac Mini, so it is certainly strange why the eDrive got "lost" between the time we left and yesterday.

Sorry for the long explanation, but I wanted to provide emphasis as to why a backup is so, so critical. And, with one provided via SuperDuper!, it made the recovery process smooth. It did take some time, and as it is, restarting either of my machines from such an external backup is slow. Both of my external drives are 1 TB Seagate drives, with a rotational speed to 7200 rpm. Also, the connection to either Mac is via Firewire 800. I do plan on purchasing a Samsung 500 or 512 gig SSD soon, and start using it for backups (plus other storage needs). Unfortunately, to keep costs down, I'll need to use a slim, external case that has only a USB 3.0 interface.
 

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