As noted earlier this summer, my wife’s hard drive failed.
And tonite I read that Guy Kawasaki’s MacBook’s hard disk was “quasi hosed.”
When I worked at an Apple developer in the mid 80’s, Guy was one of those driving forces that made you believe in the platform. I nearly worked for Guy just after he left apple for 4D (“let’s see… database software or a/v entertainment production systems?”) and I still enjoy his books and stories.
“The $64,000 question is, “Why didn’t I have my MacBook completely and currently backed up?” During this weekend of aggravation, I read a book (at the suggestion of my buddy Bill Meade) called Why Smart People Do Dumb Things by Dr. Mortimer Feinberg and John J. Tarrant, and it answered this question.
“Why didn’t I, a seemingly smart person with a computer background with difficult-to-replace files, not back up my hard disk?
Hubris: I no longer feared the hard-disk gods.
Arrogance: I was “entitled” to a trouble-free hard disk. Even if it did fail, I have enough connections for some company to jump through hoops to recover it for me.
Narcissism: Hard disk failure cannot happen to me, Guy Kawasaki. Now let me get back to admiring myself.
Unconscious need to fail. This, honestly, doesn’t apply to me. 🙂 Although, perhaps I had a conscious need for my hard disk to fail so that I wouldn’t have to answer my backlog of 300 emails.”
As he notes in a follow up, the Tao of Backup should be a permalink in your favourites.
Now go back up your drive (if you haven’t set it up to do it automatically). If you don’t have a whole house surge suppressor and an uninterruptible power supply (UPS), get them.
And keep a CD or DVD copy of important files just in case of an errant EMP.
Tags: microsoft, customer satisfaction, Onecare, Guy Kawasaki.