SOS!

[Dave Horsfall]

On Tue, 21 Aug 2018, James wrote:

> Time Machine is actually quite easy to use, so there is no excuse to not 
> use it. <a smile>

It's saved my bacon a few times; I went overboard and bought a Time 
Capsule, and connected its USB port into a passive hub for two printers (I 
don't use the AP on it, but might one day).

> Back in the days of Jethro Tull I did teach sys admin for HP. I taught 
> do backups and TEST them.

<OT>
Ah, Jethro Tull...  "Thick as a Brick" was their finest.  I saw them in 
concert some years back, and yes, Ian can still play the flute one-legged, 
despite his age...
</OT>

> A major customer had a disk crash, but no wurries he had a cupboard full 
> of backup tapes. Turns out they were all blank! We investigated and 
> found they put the completed tapes on the ups transformer while the job 
> completed.

Nothing quite like degaussing your backups as a CLM...

> The customer asked me what to do, my answer annoyed management: Clench 
> your dagga between your teeth, climb to the top of the tower, and … jump 
> off.

:-)

> The meandering answer is to say: If your data is very valuable, do NOT 
> turn your machine on, pay the (and you’ll find them easily enough) 
> recovery experts to do the job. You have no hope of doing it yourself.

And be prepared to pay $$$ as a result, of course, like, how much is your 
data worth to you?  As it happens, I know someone in that trade, but I 
think he retired.  Anyway, he's in Australia...

> If it is precious, then as merit badges for cubs and scouts, you just 
> earned a unix-guru badge ‘bad experience with rm’.

Something that you never want to see:

     # rm * .o
     rm: .o: not found
     # ls -l
     #

> You can get Tb eg Western Digital Passport 5T for under US$200, do get 
> and do use time machine.

Indeed.  There Is No Excuse For Not Doing Backups And Testing Them.

-- Dave