Backup Part I: How to recover from a Mac crash

Let me begin with words to consider for all academiPad readers: It is not a matter of if technology will fail you, but a matter of when. And unless you enjoy rewriting your dissertation or journal submission from scratch, you must have a backup strategy in place.

Sure it is possible that your devices will never have a hard drive failure or be stolen.  For the lucky, you will never leave your phone in a taxi or accidentally drop it in the washing machine.  But for most, you will be faced with at least one type of “crash” in your future.   After recovering from a hard drive crash on my work computer recently, I thought a two part post dealing with the dreaded “crash” was in order.

The goal here is to spend some time thinking about a “crash” so that when one happens, you will be off to races recovering as smoothly as possible.

So as not to overwhelm ourselves thinking about the “crash”, the topic will be split up into two parts:

Part I – Mac crash
Part II – iOS crash [Read more…]