So my 5 month old iMac has died

jigglybean

Over the weekend, the hate/hate relationship that I have with my iMac continued when what appears to be total hard drive failure.

Unfortunately, the latest updates of my games including those in development didn't back up to the icloud either. All I can do now is pray to any god listening that they can recover my work or I will drown the iMac upon its return from Apple 'care'

MentalDonkeyGames

Ouch... that sucks. Hope you can somehow rescue your files.

MattButlerStudios

Hope you can recover those files. That can be really frustrating. When you get everything back up, try time machine or mediafire to backup your files automatically. I got a year of 1000GB mediafire storage for $50. Can't beat it! Check it out!

Dues

Wow, that sucks man! I agree with @MattButlerStudios Time Machine is great. Hope you can get your files back.

Braydon_SFX

Also, if you lost your GS projects, if you published them (app store or adhoc) I believe you can download the latest published project from the publishing page.

jigglybean

Yeah I can redownload the published stuff but its the other stuff in the works. Its a real kick in the balls tbh. Im having a hernia op (part 2!) next week so once I am out and recovered I should have my Mac back.

I have a media storage I use for my PC and I do everything over my network but for some reason my Mac didnt like it, so I used its silly iCloud. But the last time it synced was over 2 weeks ago and I have done a bit on my projects since then.

Oh well, such is life. I will certainly look in to Time Machine.

jamie_c

Sorry to hear about the crash...

Lovejoy

This sucks, Ill be hoping for the best.

jonmulcahy

not that it helps your right now, but i have my entire development folder crazy backed up:

1. local copy on my macbook pro in a google drive synced folder
2. copy on my google drive
3. synced google drive on a RAID5 drive hooked up to my iMac back at home
4. daily time machine backup of my macbook pro at home
5. crashplan backup of my development folder on my iMac, every change backed up every 15 min

1,2 & 3 don't do anything if I delete a file manually, but both 4 and 5 keep multiple backups of every file.

RossmanBrothersGames

@jonmulcahy you are prepared! I just save a copy to my mac, and save a copy to my dropbox folder after every developing session, however I probably should start doing a third backup just to be safe.

AlchimiaStudios

I am one of the crazy careful people (years of IT has taught me to be this way).

We have:

1. Paid Dropbox account with 1TB and of course the tools they offer for file recovery/revision.

2. 2x External HDD backups done monthly/yearly

3. Partial Google Drive backup

4. Multiple computers with Dropbox syncing (each one will be a local backup).

I've also been looking into getting a NAS at home as well, would be awesome with SSD's in a RAID5/10/Prop. Got 1Gb internet so file transfer would be ultra fast.

Anyway, best of luck with the HDD failure. Hopefully it isn't a complete hardware failure. If they can't recover it, you could try some local IT places or give http://partedmagic.com/ a try if you're tech/linux savvy. They have full support for HFS/HFS+ (mac file table type) and i've used it to some success in the past.

Another good one is: http://www.stellarinfo.com/ they offer mac specific products and an easy to use interface.

As a last resort: http://www.drivesaversdatarecovery.com/ expensive, but can work some real magic on a damaged drive.

jigglybean

Thanks all for your comments. I went to collect my iMac from the Apple store in town as I wanted to ensure everything worked. Thankfully, all of my hard work N stuff was still on there.

Internally, a wire cable appeared to have come loose causing the problem meaning that the HD couldnt talk to the big wide world. That was replaced and everything appears to be in order.

After last year when I had to reformat a hard drive, and despite having my Android Keys, I couldnt use them again so had to start all over again. Had this been the case this time, I probably would have given up.

Once I am back from my operation I will start finishing off my apps, and fingers crossed, Chartboost reward videos will be good to go!

Hopscotch

Good to hear @jigglybean!

Yay for Rewarded Videos!

jamie_c

Great news that your stuff was still there!