Backup best practices

so hello and welcome how's it going guys

so this is my first live stream it's

going to be interesting because I've got

to push all the buttons and talk as well

so you might find me looking away from

you from the camera but anyway today's

topic well my name is Kay I'm a

technologist I run Mac junkie I've been

doing this for like 30 odd years and I

help people give their technology mainly

Mac stuff but obviously technology as

well so today's topic is backup and the

best practices and so on so what I want

to do is go through a small history

lesson a story and give you some advice

as well so the history lesson of hard

drives so in your laptop you'll probably

find something like this this is an

original two-and-a-half inch hard drive

now these were put in pretty much all

that tops PCs and Macs as well and it's

a generic hard drive now this is

basically in one of these this is a

standard two and a half inch external

hard drive that you can connect via USB

to your computer so they're basically

the same thing

one is an internal once it makes them

now in your iMac or your desktop

computer you'll have something like this

which is exactly the same as a two and a

half inch but this is a three and a half

inch hard drive basically they're

mechanical hard drives there's a

physical disk in there or platters and

if this gets dropped the platters can or

the head actually

we didn't you could try to get data from

these there are data recovery companies

that take these whole things apart and

recovers data for you now

then came SSDs now solid state disks so

SSDs were in this fourth fun factor so

this is a spinning disk hard drive and

this is a solid-state disk SSD again

they're the same size so this is how it

started with SSDs now there's these been

going around for years but for consumer

laptops computers and stuff they start

putting these in relatively late but

Apple being Apple

so Apple started putting these into

their laptops but Apple being Apple they

wanted to make their computers a lot

smaller so they wanted to make the SSDs

the and the SSDs a lot smaller so what

they did was created or started using

they didn't create this but they started

using something like this which is you

know kind of a chewing-gum

sized SSD and it's basically this

compressed into a couple of chips or

four chips this one isn't that big this

is 128 gig the biggie you go the bigger

the chips up but not physically big but

the size of them and there were three

different versions of this now when

these first were introduced and I had

clients who had issues with their

machines but they needed to get to their

data

I haven't issues with getting any

hardware to be able to read these I

found the place in China all places and

acted by three different ones because

there were three different types and

they weren't cheap so you were able to

get data from these or I was at least

because of the housings that I could get

so you need to the house

to put this in connect it to your

computer to get the data from it now why

am I telling you all this well Apple in

their infinite wisdom in 2017 I believe

they started compressing everything so

so when people when people cut asked me

about like what machine should I get I

would always say get the nowadays get

the as much RAM as you think you need

for the next five years four or five

years and as much hard drive space you

think you need for the next four or five

years because these things are not

replaceable they're like iPhones if you

run out of space you've just got to get

another one it's it's ridiculous but

anyway we have to deal with it so what

do they do now what they did let me show

you what's going on here so what they

did right so this is a 2018 and now why

am I telling you this story actually

back story there was a client of mine

last week who was on holiday he dropped

the laptop from an eighth or ninth floor

smashed we knew that we couldn't

retrieve the machine but he wanted the

data from it so he said to me okay can

you get the data from it so I had to

come up with this story no story

I mean basically I had to tell him

actually know depends on how bad it is

whether we can get the computer running

or not but I couldn't get the SSD out of

the machine and this is the reason so

this is the 2018 machine that he has or

had now this is the logic board now the

kind of this circle kind of areas there

there the fans there two fans and

they're around about that size so you

can see how small this whole logic board

actually is so Apple wanted to make

everything smaller so they couldn't have

you know SSD

and hard drives in these issues because

that's just too big so they had to

integrate everything onto the logic

board

so next slide the yellow chips basically

that's the SSD they're actually soldered

onto the logic board

so it's impossible for anyone to

retrieve data from those SSDs however

Apple does have I've heard Apple does

actually have a device to be able to do

that but they're not making that

available to anybody it's their own

proprietary thing so as a connector on

the logic board that they connect to

that you can try to get the data as long

as the logic board in this is kind of

working and this is the problem we have

nowadays the problem we have is that we

need to make sure that our data is

always backed up because of unfortunate

circumstances there it might fall off a

ninth floor we might fall into a canal

in Amsterdam it might get stolen

even so we need to make sure we

basically need to be proactive and not

reactive so reactive the problem I find

in my business is that people don't

really it sounds horrible for me to say

this they don't really care about the

computers computers are there they're

supposed to work always they're never

supposed to go wrong the problem

nowadays is the computers phones and so

on we are so reliant on them and

especially the information on them that

we need access to that data or computer

at all times it's our business if we

don't have our laptops if we don't have

our computer our phones or whatever we

can't work right so you need a backup

now do you need a backup computer well

you know if you can afford it absolutely

if you can't we need backup data so if

the computer dies you can just

basically go to an Apple store give them

some money get another laptop and login

and carry on working and try to get your

data now I use G suite cloud service so

all my data is online however it is

still backed up locally as well and

we're kind of gonna go through that a

little later on but the point is to have

your data in more than one place so be

proactive and not reactive

don't go batshit crazy because oh my god

I need to work I need to work and then

you give stressed on to people like me

oh yeah I've done this for like 30 35

years so I kind of know how to you know

react to that obviously but if you know

you need to make sure that your data is

always available to you and you're not

reacting to it but we're proactively

making sure that your data is safe so

there are ways of doing this now there

you know the app Apple system has the

Apple I had actually have Apple has a

great system called time machine

now there's two parts to this there's

time machine which is software and time

capsule which is Hardware time machine

is part of the operating system time

capsule the I don't have one here to

show you but they're basically Wi-Fi

boxes with hard drives in them that you

place in your house so whenever you're

at home you connected your laptop to

your Wi-Fi it starts backing up so the

software enables to connect to the time

capsule and backs up every hour on the

hour it's a fantastic idea there are

problems with it though it will only

work when you're at home right the other

problem is that well actually Apple

stopped making time capsules so I'm not

sure how long it will be till they stop

making the time machine which is

we're part of the of this whole system

now let's work with no time capsules

anymore because time machine is a

software still there so time capsule is

basically a it's a hardware that you put

into the closet where your internet

comes into the house effectively where

your Rooter is and you set it up and it

connects now they don't make time

capsules anymore so what do you do there

are several things you can do but the

best thing you can do is get an S which

is a network attached storage device

which is kind of like a mini server

slash hard drive which kind of works

it's kind of the thing in between a time

capsule and a Mac Mini server but it's

got nothing to do with Apple there are

many companies that create NASA device

is the best one or the one I use and I

think is the best one really is the

Synology nests this QNAP and various

other ones I mean Netgear I think do one

I think Seagate do them but the thing is

these companies are not their their

business isn't nests you know see Canaan

and so on so I've had clients where

they've had an ask for many years and

then all of sudden stuff working because

there's no updates with a system and so

on whereas the Synology and QNAP I think

also have that that's their business

they sell to businesses and also

consumers so so knowledge ease is a way

to go so within the Synology operating

system there is actually software for

the Mac to be able to connect to a as

time machine I'm not sure if I'll be

able to show you but you can set it up

like a time machine and then it backs up

so that's one way of doing things now

the other way of doing it is actually

just getting

an external hard drive connecting it via

USB to your laptop or Mac I mean you can

get a desktop hard drive as well and

that and then obviously you don't need

to serve it the problem with this is if

you have a laptop that is is there you

will forget I've had countless of people

tell me you know all the computers dead

but can you get the data from it I know

I've backed up with Time Machine to this

but I haven't backed up for the past

three months well what's the point of a

backup if you haven't backed up so

people just plainly forget and I

understand that because you have to

physically plug in if you have an iMac

for instance a desktop machine then it's

kind of a no-brainer and you just

connect the hard drive you forget about

it you leave it on and just backs up it

over yeah now the problem with time

machine and I had this a couple of weeks

ago with a client is that people think

it is a backup device but people think

it's a backup device in the sense of oh

I've run out of space this is what this

is a story that happened a couple of

weeks ago I ran out of space on my

computer so I backed up my computer

tucked a time machine time capsule and

then deleted it from my computer well

that's not really a backup that's just

getting more storage on the others on

your computer because if your computer

dies then it's on your time capsule

fantastic but what if your time capsule

dies are your hard drives and this is

exactly what happened to this this lady

so her if she actually had her on an

external hard drive so her hard drive

broke but the data there was some data

that wasn't on her computer because she

didn't have enough space as she put it

on there so what I would suggest is

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using time machine as a disaster

recovery that's how I call it in the

olden days and then this was a long time

a hard backup was put stuff on an

external hard drive and that's your

backup that's what it used to be

because they didn't die as much as as

much as they do nowadays because they're

not made fantastically the hard drives

obviously not made for that well

nowadays because they're really

mass-produced in the up in the olden

days I remember having a four four

gigabyte not terabyte four gigabyte hard

drive and it died on me and had all my

music stuff on it however even back then

I had a second four gigabyte hard drive

and this is the thing making sure your

data is on two places so I had a second

one so whenever you buy a hard drive

whether you connect it to your computer

or your or you're using it as an archive

device always get two drives always you

have your data in more than one place

just going back a little bit the the

NASS system actually has two hard drives

in it so you get an S with two drives a

usable space is 4 terabytes because the

way it done the way it works is that it

mirrors each of the drives mirror so if

one drive breaks your data isn't lost

you just plunk in another hard drive and

then carry on so that's effectively two

drives although it's just one device so

if you're working with external hard

drives always get two drives if you have

any questions by all means put it in the

chat then hopefully I can see them and

hopefully I can answer them for you

but the the plan is to make sure that

your data is basically in more than one

place and as long as it's in more than

one place it's going to be safe and

secure don't get into this trap of sorry

my dog is walking on this earth woof

don't get into this trap of having your

data often loaded of your computer don't

get into the trap of being reactive to a

situation

so just be proactive in making sure your

data is backed up in more than one place

and and then hopefully I won't need to

see you you don't need to come to the

mag doctor it's funny for me to say that

anyway I hope that's useful to you you

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chat and hopefully we can help anyway

have a good day I hope this was helpful

to you and I'll see you next week in the

next live stream which will be next

Tuesday I don't know what day it is but

anyway I choose every Tuesday 11 o'clock

in the morning I'll be doing a live

stream of different topics and I'll send

an email out and to let you know that

but it will be there if you have

subscribed anyway have a good day

my name is K talk to you soon and

remember keep it simple

you