Hard Drive Failure is a When, Not an If

I know I’ve harped about backing up your data many times, but it’s something that can’t be stressed enough. Why? Because no one listens. Even people I know with Macs running Time Machine — the most drop dead easy solution I’ve seen — forget to plug in or power on those external hard drives for weeks to months on end. So I’m going to take the Louisville Slugger to the proverbial dead horse, yet again.

I was reminded of all this yet again from one of my favorite writers, John Gruber. He experienced a hard drive failure a few days ago. Thankfully, he was prepared. And he was nice enough to chronicle his data restoration adventure for you. You can read it here. Go read it. Pay particular attention to the seven bullet points at the end. I’ll wait while you read it.

Good. Take all of that to heart. Go buy a hard drive. Or a few.

Now, plug in your external drive and run a backup. Rinse. Repeat.