Best backup practices and recovering lost data.
Backup and Recovery
Is Amazon Photos Good for Storing Images in the Cloud?
Episode 1717
Al fromAl and his wife have decided to move everything up to the cloud and use a smaller Mac Air instead of his huge 27" iMac. He's uploaded everything up to Amazon. Will that be safe? Leo says it will, but it's a smart idea to have more than one backup option. Make a local backup copy and a second service in the cloud. Leo recommends Google Photos because it's free. If Al has iCloud, then he can turn on Cloud syncing and then sync them all. He can then optimize storage in Apple Photos and it'll eliminate the high res versions until he needs them, but he can still see them in Photos.
How Can I Organize All My Pics & Then Back Them Up?
Episode 1715
Chrissy fromChrissy has years of photos and thousands of digital photos on her phone. She has all her photos on different hard drives. How can she easily merge them into one huge central spot and then create a backup? Leo says he just did a similar project with all his photos and here's what he did:
Is my network safe from ransomware?
Episode 1714
Steve fromSteve's data center got attacked by ransomware. Fortunately, they had two locations and was able to shut one down, clean it, and then reinstall with only 3 hours of downtime. Leo says that's fantastic. But a hot backup can let the ransomware spread to your backup. So the key is to keep the second network only connected every three hours. That will give time to take down the infected network before the next sync connection time.
Why isn't my iDrive backing up all my files?
Episode 1712
Micah fromMicah is getting an error message every night after backing up with iDrive (a sponsor of The Tech Guy radio show) that says that five files have failed. What gives? Leo says to look in the View Logs option by ctrl-clicking on the icon. It could be a permissions issue for that file, or a file you don't want to be backed up anyway. So look to see what files are failing in the View Logs. Odds are, it's a permissions issue.
Why can't I reformat my backup drives?
Episode 1712
Kyle fromKyle has a home theater PC loaded with media and backups on ten different hard drives that he swaps out. Leo calls that a JBOD (just a bunch of discs). But Kyle is having an issue with the drives getting errors while erasing and starting a new backup. Leo says that the flaw could also be in the backups themselves. It also changed to MBR (master boot record) and cut the drive storage in half. He also can't reformat it with GUID using Windows 10. Is there a special utility he can use? Leo says there is an MBR to GUID command in Windows.
Do mesh routers support Time Machine?
Episode 1710
Michael fromMichael says the time has come to let go of his Apple Airport and update to a new router. Leo says new mesh technologies do a better job and Apple hasn't kept the Airport design up to date. But Michael uses Time Machine to back up his Mac. Do any of the mesh systems offer USB support? Leo suggests going with Network Attached Storage or NAS and backup that way. That will work with any router. Leo prefers Synology, and you'll also need to buy the hard drives to put into them. A good two drive model would work great, and it supports Time Machine. It also backs up to the cloud.
Can I sync my data between two computers?
Episode 1706
Judy fromJudy wants to be able to access her data from one computer to another. Leo says that's called synchronization and it's very doable, but it requires internet access. There are third party companies like DropBox and OneDrive that will do this, as will GoogleDrive. But there are other ways.
Are there free backup options to iDrive?
Episode 1706
John fromJohn wants to know if he needs iDrive anymore when he also has Microsoft One Drive. Leo says that the problem with One Drive is that it only syncs whatever you put in the dedicated folder. iDrive, by contrast, backs up everything and has versioning, or multiple versions of the same file. DropBox is starting to do that as well. iDrive also has a snapshot feature, which will take a snapshot of your drive that you can restore to should your drive get compromised.
How Can I Get Data Off an Old External Drive?
Episode 1703
Gustavo fromGustavo has a 20-year-old Powerbook Mac that he hasn't turned on in years. He plugged in an external hard drive, and somehow the Powerbook now views the hard drive as empty. Can he recover it? Leo suspects that the age of the drive caused the drive to fail. Or the cable may have failed. Or even the external box itself. Leo recommends taking it out and connecting it to a more modern computer.
Why can't I connect to my NAS?
Episode 1698
Scott fromScott is having issues with his Synology NAS. He can't access it remotely. Leo says it sounds like a settings issue and he recommends going into the router settings and see if the router can see it. Then reserve the DNS number that's listed for that Synology. If it doesn't, there could be a problem with your router or with a power surge that fried your board. But that's unlikely.
