{"id":43023,"date":"2024-03-27T11:16:24","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T15:16:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/?p=43023"},"modified":"2024-03-27T11:16:47","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T15:16:47","slug":"are-you-really-backed-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2024\/03\/27\/are-you-really-backed-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Are You Really Backed Up?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Is your data safe? Can you still access it? You may want to take a look!<\/p>\n

Early in this century I had bought a pricey CD burner in order to offload data to free up room from my tiny hard drive and as safekeeping for projects and digital photos. When companies were trying to sell consumers expensive CD writers and blank media, they crowed about the advantages of the format claiming that warehouses of paperwork could all fit on a handful of disks and it was as safe as Fort Knox. Well, it ain’t necessarily so.<\/em><\/p>\n

I was curious about some old files that I had done when I got my first Mac back in 1997 so I grabbed my Discgear<\/em> case where I had my CD backups tucked away and threw one into an external optical drive connected to my laptop. It wouldn’t mount. I thought that the optical drive was at fault because it was a bus-powered portable device that got the electricity to run from the computer. I tried an optical drive with an AC adapter that plugged into a typical electric socket. No dice. It wouldn’t mount. I tried a different Mac – a 2020 Mac Mini with the M1 chip. Nope.<\/p>\n

Panic was starting to set in.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I opened up Disk Utility and I could see the CD as a volume, but it was grayed out. There was something there but it wasn’t popping up on my desktop and I couldn’t see the contents. I selected it and forced it to mount. An error came up. I tried another old CD. The same thing happened. I thought these were simple containers for old data sort of like a bucket holding water, but I could not access my files. It was starting to look like I had backed up my data to well over a hundred CD’s for nothing.<\/p>\n

Fortunately for me, I keep and maintain a few antique Macs and they were able to read the disks! I am in the process of backing all of these CD’s to a huge hard drive, and then burning them to DVD’s that are both Mac and Windows compatible! Hopefully I won’t run into the same problem down the road.<\/p>\n

At first I thought Disk Rot<\/a> was the culprit. Disk Rot is what it sounds like in that old optical media like CD’s and DVD’s become unreadable because of chemical deterioration. If they are not stored properly or they were manufactured poorly, the disks become unreadable, but that wasn’t the case with my disks. They are fine and are perfectly readable in a machine that can read them. It was the operating system.<\/p>\n

I chased down answers online but came upon ancient forum posts that went on forever. A solution was never really offered, and I never found a sensible reason why. Not everybody has ancient computers at hand so it’s far from an ideal solution, but I’m wondering if these disks would have worked on a Windows machine. I don’t have one, but everybody else does.<\/p>\n

Backwards compatibility always seemed to be the last thing on Apple’s mind. That has gotten worse since they have become a phone company. They want you to store your data in the “cloud.”<\/em> It’s easy and convenient and they charge you a fee. Not being able to read old CD’s may be a feature in Apple’s mind rather than a bug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is your data safe? Can you still access it? You may want to take a look! Early in this century I had bought a pricey CD burner in order to offload data to free up room from my tiny hard … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[295,4912,5822,5825,296,5823,5824],"class_list":["post-43023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-apple","tag-cd-r","tag-disk-rot","tag-disk-wont-mount","tag-mac","tag-optical-drive","tag-unreadable"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/cd-673227_640.jpg?fit=640%2C426&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1ed1x-bbV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":34528,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2020\/05\/06\/it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":43023,"position":0},"title":"It seemed like a good idea at the time…","author":"Joe","date":"May 6, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Behold...the FUTURE! ...or at least it was about 20 years ago. I forgot about this until I came across it while trying to do some Spring cleaning. I popped it into an optical drive to see what was on it. It only works on tray loading players. You were out\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blast from the Past"","block_context":{"text":"Blast from the Past","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/blast-from-the-past\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Mini CD-R","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/MINI_CDR-BusCard.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/MINI_CDR-BusCard.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/MINI_CDR-BusCard.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":20850,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2016\/07\/11\/swimming-in-the-low-end\/","url_meta":{"origin":43023,"position":1},"title":"Swimming in the Low End","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"July 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I just purchased a used 2009 Mac Pro to use as a replacement for my recently departed dual G5 Mac Pro which I also purchased used. It served me well as a graphic design and digital illustration production machine, and that is what I intend for this new acquisition. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computers"","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/optical-tray.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/optical-tray.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/optical-tray.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":46968,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2026\/01\/27\/party-like-its-2009\/","url_meta":{"origin":43023,"position":2},"title":"Party Like It’s 2009!","author":"Joe","date":"January 27, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Last week I wrote about upgrading a Mac Pro tower with a Solid State Drive or SSD plugged into a Peripheral Component Interconnect express card which I placed into one of the PCIe slots within the Pro's enormous aluminum chassis. It may sound daunting, but it was really straightforward. The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computers"","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2009-mac-mini.jpg?fit=1000%2C750&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2009-mac-mini.jpg?fit=1000%2C750&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2009-mac-mini.jpg?fit=1000%2C750&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2009-mac-mini.jpg?fit=1000%2C750&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5999,"url":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/2012\/01\/02\/tearing-mac-mini\/","url_meta":{"origin":43023,"position":3},"title":"Tearing Apart The Mac Mini","author":"Joe_Williams","date":"January 2, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"We interrupt this program so that I can finally get around to upgrading the 2006 Mac Mini of mine. 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It looked like a trip back to the drawing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Computers"","block_context":{"text":"Computers","link":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/category\/computers\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/corsair-spec01.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/corsair-spec01.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/corsair-spec01.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/willceau.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}