Facing the Music
Early adopters are where it’s at.
While fairly hip to the groove, I got a very nasty shock on dipping my toe in the iTunes pool.
The following lesson may save you from losing your entire music collection.
It also teaches the value of taking extra special care of customers new to what you do.
Apple Virgin
As a former DJ, married to a dancing queen, I had many CDs.
Long a PC advocate (despite their many failings) I was wary of Apple iTunes.
Then Fonnie inexplicably received a free iPod shuffle when buying jeans.
Suddenly there was no barrier to exploring this extraordinary new technology.
Hats off to Apple, I thought.
Learning the Steps
We worked out how to load some of our CDs onto iTunes.
We bought a few new iTune songs for good measure.
Then we transferred 281 tracks to our free aluminium fragment.
Suddenly, we had enough music to drive us interstate. And back.
The Great Declutter
I was sold.
Very soon, so were our CDs.
After months of persuasion, Fonnie agreed to burn all our CDs to her PC, after which I liquidated them on eBay.
I revelled in reclaimed space. Never had I been paid to tech up.
Fonnie was less enthusiastic, fearing for the safety of our 3,173 hits and memories.
The Great Promise
No worries! I cried. We can back up our music to your new iPhone!
If the iPhone goes down, we’ve got the PC.
If the PC goes down, we’ve got the iPhone.
She’ll be right, Mate!
Then the PC went down.
I replaced the hard drive and reinstalled all software.
But I could NOT back up from the iPhone.
The Great Depression
Two lifetimes of music, gone in a heartbeat.
I called my Hardware Guy.
Then my Software Guy.
Neither could help.
My Hardware Guy asked an Apple Store Guy who said:
If you buy songs from iTunes, you can get them back, but if you acquire songs from CDs you lose them. Welcome to the Kingdom of Apple!
I was extremely upset.
And too terrified to tell Fonnie her worst fear had been realised.
Forensic Foray
After two weeks of deep sadness, an IT colleague offered to recover our music files from the damaged hard drive.
I’d read that the only way to secure private data was to smash dead drives with a large hammer.
I’d been keen to do this, but something had stopped me.
The following evening, all our songs were restored – minus the CD artwork I’d painstakingly scanned, cropped and optimised.
Decision
Words can’t describe my relief.
What I can describe is my decision to abort our imminent iPad and MacBook Pro purchases.
I was on the brink of becoming an Apple convert.
But a system, however elegant, which compels newbies to abandon their old worlds is not for me.
It’s like me telling new clients they’re forbidden to use the words ‘expert’ and ‘service’ on their websites.
This saga concerns CDs. Imagine if I’d moved my entire business to a new system, then lost everything because I missed something in the manual.
Early adoption has its place. But from now on I plan to do a bit more looking before I leap. Lest I end up an orphan.
I’ll also be taking much greater care of new customers unfamiliar with my wares.
What say you?
Paul Hassing, Founder & Senior Writer, The Feisty Empire
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Oh dear Paul!
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1751
The above link is for you. Purchase a $99 WD Elements External HD from Dick Smith and do a backup!
Do you have a back up system? I’m just restructuring my backups to include 2 solid backups. You can never be too careful with your favourite albums!
Thank you, Leah.
The files are now safely backed up to a USB stick.
I plan to add a further layer of security soon.
One trip down this garden path was quite enough!
Phew!
We somehow have learned to put 100% faith in these machines which fail all the time. Admittedly Apple fails less but then I’m completely in love!
I’ve only had one Mac fail on me, once. That was enough to get a decent backup system in place.
Reviewing constantly is a must! Do you back your client work on the USB stick too?
When I feel lazy about backups I just think of the sick feeling I would have if I lost it all, that gets me moving
Thanks to our Arthur @CarboniteAU, I have a 3-year Carbonite subscription. My thousands of client files are now securely archived in Boston.
The Empire Uber Komputer also has an internal backup hard drive. To be sure to be sure to be sure, I also do periodic DVD backups of my own. I agree with you. Once bitten …
As Leah above has said – I would suggest the following:
1. Plenty of free utils to grab your album art for you from Amazon/etc. In-fact I wrote my own a while back (it’s a bit hacky to use – I’m sure you can find something GUI related that’s better). http://magnetikonline.com/fetchalbumart/
2. Get TWO hard drives and mirror content between the two – again this can be done with software, meaning only changes on the 1st hard drive are copied to the second each time you ‘mirror’ – much quicker.
3. Alternatively, have a look at ‘cloud’ backup solutions, like Mozy/Carbonite
Cheers
Pete
Fantastic, Peter. Thanks so much for taking the time to add your comments here after your kind Twitter tips. I like your thoughts. Best regards, P.
Well I guess it would be nice
If I could touch your back-up external hard drive
I know not everybody
Has a back-up external hard drive like you
But you’ve got to think twice
Before you give your discs away
And I know all the tunes you play
Because I play them too
Oh but you need some time off from that defunct internal hard drive
Time to pick your defunct internal hard drive off the floor
And when that hammer comes down without emotion
Well it takes a strong man baby
But I’m showing you that Apple Time Machine makes back ups automatically to your external hard drive
Cause you gotta have faith
You kill me, Adam!
Again I’m reminded why you took out all those music awards. Thanks heaps for … playing!
My new system includes an off-site backup. I believe this is just as important! Will be ordering another HD today!
Twitter comments from @rosaliquidink
‘Glad to read the happy ending!
erhh…I was having palpitations just reading it!
Mind you I am a MAC person, hehee… but then again, I back up, burn to disk and double up everywhere!’
Many thanks, Rosa!
I’m currently using http://www.Carbonite.com for all my backups, if the house burns down, I still have a backup offsite.
Photos, video, music, documents, etc. Being an avid photographer I couldn’t handle the idea of losing 60Gb of precious memories.
Thank you kindly, Karen. You make a very convincing case!
I’m looking forward to seeing what Arthur has to say about this story. I’m sure it’ll be worth the wait.
Gosh Paul
I feel the pressure to come up with great words of wisdom. The question is can you trust any technology fully? Yes and No. Best thing to do is take enough precautions. Enough based on the value of the information. If the music is worth the world to you then use your online backup, use your external drive and use the Apple service.
I use both an external drive and Carbonite for pics, work files, everything at home.
The transition is a difficult one when you have hard data, CDs etc. Do you go full steam ahead with the latest and greatest cloud services or do you wait and see, hold on to what you have, just in case.
By nature I am conservative. I trust the cloud but I also like control. For instance most of my email is via GMail, I also back this up locally on my machine. Google can take it away but I can get it back.
My advice is to be in control.
I am a little disappointed though. Having experienced Carbonite for your work files, you didn’t backup your music via Carbontie as well. One licence can do it all.
On another note. The real lesson in this story is about testing your backups. Sounds like you had a great plan, but didn’t test it thoroughly enough to ensure that it worked right. Another trap most businesses fall into. PC dies and they have backup in place but never tested to see that it was actually working. CDs blank, USB stick lost.
Remember that it is your data and your responsibility.
That is probably the biggest lesson in all of this.
BTW, USB sticks are great just don’t carry it with you on the train.
Well, Arthur; you didn’t let us down! Pressure be damned; this is your field, Cobber!
The music files were on Fonnie’s PC. I got Carbonite for my PC. I didn’t know how to copy the files from Fonnie’s PC without trashing the business-related iTunes files (e.g. radio ads) I had on my PC.
Make sense?
Yes, it’s time for another one of SIMON’S ESSAYS ON TECHNOLOGY!
1. If you ripped the CDs to digital files, then sold the CDs and kept the digital files, you are now a copyright infringer potentially liable for (according to the record companies) up to $22500 per song in damages. Welcome to piracy!
2. It’s easy to get songs off your Iphone on to a fresh computer that the Iphone has never seen before. If neither your Hardware Guy nor your Software guy knew this they’re not very good at their jobs. (I actually did this just the other day when $partner’s parents wanted to borrow the Beatles collection on my Iphone. Yes, this makes us all pirates too.)
3. “NO BACKUP – NO SYMPATHY”. Brutal but true
here’s what I tell my friends, family, and clients:
***There are two sorts of hard disks in the world. Those that have failed, and those that are about to fail.***
I’d be heartbroken if my music collection was lost. I try to avoid such heartbreak by managing my data like this:
Primary: music folder on my hard disk. The directory and all the files in it are set READ-ONLY and owned by Administrator.
Secondary: automated backup to external hard disk attached to main computer with auto-archiving of deleted files – i.e. when secondary detects that files have been deleted from primary, secondary moves its copies of those files to a “deleted items” directory rather than nuking them.
Tertiary: automated backup with auto-archiving of deleted files to network storage in the same building.
Quaternary: automated backup with auto-archiving of deleted files to cloud storage out on the Internet.
I assume that anything on my Iphone or Ipod will be lost at any moment so they don’t even come into the equation.
Primary is vulnerable to anything that could affect the main computer and its hard disk – hardware failures or user error (and even then I’d have to have logged in as Administrator to screw anything up).
Primary and secondary are both vulnerable to anything that could affect the main computer and both hard disks, e.g., massive power spike, malicious virus infection.
Primary, secondary, and tertiary are all vulnerable to anything that could affect the entire building, e.g. flood, fire.
All are vulnerable to anything that could affect the entire building AND the copies of my data stored at multiple redundant datacentres in other parts of the world, e.g. nuclear war, asteroid strike. If things reach that stage I figure I have bigger things to worry about.
…
OK, where was I?
Paul I think you’re getting scared of a problem that you don’t have based on a bunch of bad advice to do things that you didn’t need to do.
Stone the crows, Simon!
As I bleed from a whack across the lughole, I see the light that is your tech brilliance.
Seldom have I felt so simultaneously cloth-eared yet blessed.
Thank you for the emotional whiplash. Your essays rock!
G’Day Paul,
“Hip to the Groove!” Dizzy Gillespie eat your heart out. As a self-styled jazz afficionado, I’ve never been tempted to pile everything onto any device of Mr. Jobs. I want to know who’s playing what solo who was leading what band when, recording dates and all, excuse the pun, that jazz.
We back up absolutely everything, especially Essendon premierships and Collingwood Grand Final losses. We have our priorities straight. We’ve been Mac devotees for zonks, but trusting them with Louis and Earl Hines? And be careful where you buy your jeans next time.
How could someone “hjp to the groove” be so unhip? I suppose it’s because grooves went out with albums and vinyl
Swing On Fatha!
Regards
Leon
Hi, Leon. This is a very clever outing from you!
You make painfully sensible points.
I haven’t been able to fit my jeans for five years. Yet it’s too depressing to buy a bigger size.
Today’s post really shows me how much I have to get my life in order!
Thanks for your beaut contribution.
My post above may make me sound paranoid, but my collection includes the complete recordings of Django Reinhardt and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, and the complete recordings of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven.
Some things are worth a bit of paranoia.
I’ll pay that one, Simon!
Fair call on it not being on the same PC. You do need a second license for that.
I don’t have the answer on how to easily take files off the iPhone (I see someone has provided it for you already). Even though I can understand technology and the pace with which it is moving, if this isn’t your game then keep it simple so that you can understand it and control it.
An external hard drive and or online backup is all you need.
Shame you had to learn your lesson by losing George Michael. They just don’t make it like they used to do they.
Thanks, Arthur. As Empire House is rather smaller than its name suggests, I was intoxicated by the prospect of having fewer physical possessions.
My desire, however, far exceeded the technical prowess necessary to pull off the manoeuvre safely.
‘I’m never gonna dance again; guilty feelings, got no rhythm …’
Scary stuff Paul!
itunes freaks me out. I like the simple drag and drop of Windows music files.
Glad you got your music back. Nina and Kraftwerk are hard to come by these days …
You got that right, Malcolm!
I probably would’ve been immune to iTunes’ siren call, were it not for the fact that Windows drops can sometimes be a real drag.
‘I’m ze operator mit mine pocket kalkulator.
Bip bop … Boooooiinggggggg.’
BTW, for future reference, Senuti for Mac and Winamp’s Ipod plugin under Windows are each free and allow easy drag-and-drop of files off an Iphone. Not that I would advise you to ever do that. Because that would be piracy. I mean, you wouldn’t steal a car, would you?
Arr. No, Matey.
As a creator, I’m fanatical about not pinching the work of other creators.
I refuse to burn any CD that I’ve not bought.
I’d rather pay pieces of eight.
If you then sell the CD and keep the digital files, you’re a pirate.
Arr.
My hard-earned ebay PowerSeller rating is about to cop a hammering …
G’Day Paul,
Who is this Simon Garlick bloke? Are there more gentlemen of taste, couth and culture hiding their light under the SBO blog bushel? The great thing about jazz dags, especially Mouldie Figges, is that we’re almost unbearably modest.
For instance I’m much too modest to mention that I have the complete Billie Holiday/ Teddy Wilsons. So permit me to use your good offices to say G’day to Mr. Garlick.
I’m sure that neither you nor Naomi will mind a bit if we use the blog to debate whether or not Louis, Earl and Coleman Hawkins were the foundation instrumental pillars of jazz.
This’ll teach you to back up properly next time Mr.Hassing. The Pirate of Port Phillip Bay indeed!
Go Bombers!
Regards
Leon
Well, if we’re gonna have a rock off, I own a limited-edition 7″ picture disc of David Bowie’s China Girl! so *rasssssppp!*
On a serious note (F-sharp) I’m constantly stunned by the depth and breadth of our readers’ knowledge and sophistication.
Let alone their disconcerting propensity to combine high art with organised thuggery.
Wow this post has struck a cord! This particular function of the Apple devices is no doubt the sorest point for all their users, however it allows them to rule their evil empire with an iron fist.
As an online backup client of mine has told me a number of times, multiple hardware backups aren’t going to save you if your house burns down – and I guess that’s true. Looks like Carbonite has got nearly everyone covered though!
Hi, Dan. It’s funny: the smaller the topic (business cards, cheques, iPhones) the larger the reaction. Can’t wait to do stamps and matchboxes! Many thanks for your thoughts.
Some Twitter comments from our Carol @IroningDiva :
“The reason why I think anyone in business who uses ‘Cloud Computering’ is swimming with the sharks. And will be eaten.
A similar story about Flickr. They deleted a lifetime of images from a photographer’s file. Unable to recover.
Had goosebumps reading your post. My greatest fear realised!”
Thank you kindly, Carol!
Paul
There are services like Backupify that you can use to backup cloud services like flickr and many others. So there is backup for cloud too.
http://www.backupify.com/
This service has a free offer also.
Thank you, Arthur. I’m starting to look forward to your Sunday sermons! Best regards, P.