I just lost a month's work when my MacBook died... and it could have been avoided

I love Macs. I’ve used Macs for decades. I remember the days when Mac geeks were all excited about System 7 coming out! I’ve taught on Macs, troubleshooted Macs, wrote on Macs, and have used some of the best laptops for video editing, which were Macs. But sometimes, you closest ally will betray you.

You see, about a week ago, I was writing an article on my trusty 16-inch Intel-based MacBook Pro when, without warning, it died.

Had I been working on battery power without realising it? No: the power cable was attached. Maybe the cable wasn’t connected to the power brick itself? Nope – all good. Just in case, I got my spare charger and waited. Nothing. The welcoming chime at boot up didn’t occur, and never will it again.

To cut a long story short, somehow, for reasons only a mighty deity might know but choses to conceal, my GPU’s RAM fried. Which meant, the CPU itself would have to be replaced, since everything’s integrated these days (and yes, that includes all the shiny new M-chipped MacBooks too). And – you might’ve suspected this – the internal storage would also need to be replaced. Because, integration!

Now of course I hear you scream, “Steve, you work in tech, surely you’ve backed up your work with one of the best external hard drives?!” Of course I did. Except, as I have a business helping people with their tech issues, I like to use bundled software when possible so I can feel confident with the apps my clients would be using themselves.

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So I’ve been using Apple’s own Time Machine for that purpose. Except the backups were slowing down to a ridiculous extent, to the point it took between 12 and 24 hours to complete. Totally unacceptable! I tried everything, even wiping the backup drive and starting from scratch. No difference. So the time between backups lengthened. I was actually considering moving to an alternative like Carbon Copy Cloner… But I hadn’t gone round to it.

Because, as fate would have it, this month was a pretty busy month. So my backup ended up being a month old. And now, the internal SSD being integrated into the CPU and GPU, it couldn’t be accessed lest I contact a data retrieval company, who may have to replace the logic board anyway to gain access to the data, and charge a king’s ransom for the privilege.

As a teacher and video editor, I loved having all my data on my laptop which I could access at any time. It gave me the unparalleled freedom to do what I want, when I want. It was fantastic. Until one issue arose which took down everything, like a flimsy house of cards.

This is an absurd way to build a computer. It’s like your car’s dashboard circuitry fails, so you need to replace the entire engine to fix the problem.

Time Machine is great when you migrate to a new computer, making your new acquisition feel exactly like your old one. But it’s a nightmare of permission blocks if you just need to get to your data from a different machine, as you try and get your life back on track, while you figure out what to do with your now expensive paperweight. Shockingly, I learned it will cost more to repair than its current market value. That’s depressingly insane. So I’m looking at a new one. (Should I set up a GoFundMe?)

So here’s what I’m doing going forward to prevent this from ever happening again: internal storage on an integrated system is for chumps (are modern PC laptops built the same? Leave a comment below.)

Thankfully, high density portable SSD drives are becoming really affordable (I’ve never found spinning hard drives to ever mix well with the rigours of portable computing). And in any case, they're way cheaper than the obscene prices Apple charge for their own internal variant.

So, I grabbed a couple of those, and am using CCC to back up one onto the other – in minutes (why were you so slow, Time Machine? Why did you betray me, costing me a month’s worth of work?!) The advantage of external drives (which you can encrypt, to protect your data from marauders), is if your computer ever lets you down, as this one did me, you can just plug it into another, and carry on working, having lost nothing.

Losing your data forever because one unrelated part of your machine dies is appalling engineering.

But until Apple changes the way it makes laptops, at least we've got quick, affordable external SSD hard drives.