We recently helped an employee from one of our MacMedics on-site consulting customers where they had a company-issued and MacMedics managed Apple laptop from a major healthcare company. MacMedics had all the corporate data on the laptop backed up, but the employee was also working on two different books at the same time, and those books were not included in the corporate backups.
Unfortunately, just a few days before the holidays. This customer’s house caught on fire, and it was almost 100% lost in terms of belongings. The fire was severe enough that the computer was damaged to the point it would no longer turn on. The employee did in fact also have an external hard drive serving as a Time Machine backup, but in the fire, the Time Machine backup, because it was made from plastic, was totally melted and was destroyed. We were able to get the dead MacBook Pro to turn on after working on repairing the logic board (which has an embedded hard drive), and we got a full backup of the data via Time Machine.
This was a VERY close call, and if we could not have recovered the data, this could have been a $4000 data recovery at a clean room.
This is why you need to add an off-site backup to your backup plan. I recommend Backblaze (see my affiliate link below).
If you are writing a book, master’s thesis, or working on a PhD, you really need FIVE layers of backups for your important work:
1. Time Machine that is always backing up while you work on your project.
2. iCloud Drive or Dropbox with your work stored there.
3. Backblaze, a true cloud backup for $9 a month.
4. A second Time Machine that is not located at your primary location.
5. A rugged and waterproof USB thumb drive that is password protected that you always keep with you that you copy your project to each day.
BackBlaze: https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-backup.html#af9wuu
