I purchased a new MacBook earlier this year, but was dreading the migration process. I needed to clean up and streamline my old MacBook, but I had grown accustomed to where everything was, and the thought of going through all of my files seemed daunting, which made me even more reluctant to switch over to my new laptop. I finally came to the conclusion that the long Memorial Day weekend would provide the perfect opportunity to do what I had been putting off for months. My old laptop had other plans.
After a productive work week, I shut down my laptop, intending to start the migration later that night. A couple hours later, I set up my desk with both computers and was ready to get to work. However, when I tried logging into my old laptop, it became stuck on the boot screen. I tried to restart, boot in safe mode, followed every recommendation from the online Apple support forums…no luck. Even a call to Apple support could not fix the issue. I ended up having to take my old laptop to the University of Michigan, where they are in the process of getting the data transferred onto a new hard drive (hopefully).
This ordeal taught me a few things:
- Always make sure your computer is up-to-date with the latest software updates. Don’t wait until something stops working to make a change.
- Ensure your computer is backing up your important data frequently, and save to a hard drive just in case.
- Utilize apps that use cloud storage. Thankfully, most of my work is saved using apps like Google Drive and Microsoft365. This makes it seamless to access files and work from anywhere.
- If you lose data, there are companies that work in cleanroom environments to repair, reconstruct, and recover data using advanced technologies. This can cost several thousand dollars, but depending on how valuable the data is to you, it may be the only option to get it back.
I’m finally set up on my new laptop, and perhaps, it’s a blessing in disguise that I didn’t have a chance to migrate from my old one. It’s given me the ability to set up my workspace with only what I need. I’m hopeful my data can be recovered (I’m mostly concerned about recovering my photos), but a majority of everything else is saved in the cloud and only requires me to install the apps I need.
Have you had a computer issue that disrupted your workflow when data was lost? Is anything ever truly lost?