Reason #1590

What prompted this was a posting on the macOS Reddit (I now understand why I avoided Reddit for so long) where a guy was bemoaning the fact that he upgraded to macOS Catalina and because he was still using iPhoto (retired from the Apple ecosystem several years ago)  during the conversion to Photos, he apparently lost 20 years of photos and videos that did not translate over.

Okay, I understand that glitches happen, and as I've been more than happy to opine over the past couple months, during my personal beta testing, Catalina was a hot mess that was not ready for prime time. (My own experience after—admittedly against my better judgment—upgrading to the official public release a couple weeks ago has been nothing but positive, and in fact I like it better than macOS Mojave.)

What got me (and apparently everyone else on that thread) was the fact this guy had no backup whatsoever. He had a few things in the cloud, but not everything because, It was too much of a hassle and "it's too expensive." Nor had he backed up his drive prior to upgrading. I mean seriously…

How much are your photos and video memories worth, dude?

So after reading his self-inflicted tale of woe, my initial response was to write, "Sucks to be you!" But instead I didn't respond at all.

C'mon people, BACK UP YOUR SHIT. I cannot stress that enough! I have witnessed too many incidents, both professionally and personally where people have lost years of data (and I suspect in one case, their job) because nothing had been backed up.

I'm pretty sure I've posted this before, but my own backup strategy is a nightly clone using Carbon Copy Cloner onto an external SSD, coupled with a Time Machine backup onto an aging Time Capsule. In addition, Every few months I copy really important stuff (like photos and music) to other external hard drives just in case. The only weak point in my system is that none of the backups are stored offsite, so if the house burns down I'm SOL, but that's an acceptable risk in my opinion.