Customer: “Damaged iPhone X – Please let me know if you guys can fix it.
MacMedics: “Sure, What’s wrong with it?”
Customer: “I was driving and recording at the same time, and I put my hand out of the sunroof, and my iPhone X 256 GB flew away from my hand because I was driving so fast and it was so windy. I found my iPhone, but it’s not turning on, I don’t care about iPhone, but I never backed up my data; all I need is to recover all the data. I don’t know if you guys can do it. Thanks.”
This is a prime example of where Apple’s iCloud backup would have been beneficial. We are huge fans of the Apple iPhone backup as it backs up the entire phone. Especially if you’re doing something that’s a once-in-a-lifetime adventure on a vacation or a honeymoon, you take pictures you’ll never take again; once you return to your hotel, you can force a backup to iCloud (if you have cell service where you are you can even push a backup over cellular data now.). Especially important if you’re traveling out of the country, as your phone could be confiscated, stolen, or lost. Those adventures that you took photos of would be lost with it. Starting at a dollar a month for 50 GB, it’s one of Apple’s best deals. We see customers in the shop who haven’t taken advantage of Apple’s iCloud backup for iPhones and lost all their data.
Data recovery may be possible, but we’ve seen quotes as high as $10,000 to recover data. It’s usually less than that, but a dollar a month versus $1000-$1500 iPhone data recovery (which is never guaranteed!) is a bet I’ll take any day. Also, don’t forget that the Apple iCloud backup for iPhones is different from iCloud Drive for Macs! iCloud Drive for Macs is a syncing service, and it’s not the same as an entire backup.
Also, don’t forget that since 2018 the hard drives in Mac computers are now embedded in the logic board just like they are on Apple’s iPhone. Having a removable hard drive over the years gave us tremendous flexibility if the unit should die! We’ve often removed the hard drive from a Mac and rescued data from a Mac with a dead logic board from damage like a bad drop, liquid damage, or a sudden failure. Now that hard drives can’t be removed from Mac computers; it is more important than ever to keep them backed up!
In either case of iPhones or Mac computers, we no longer consider one backup to be enough! You can back up your iPhone to your Mac, and then that iPhone backup can be backed up to Time Machine, and the whole Mac can also be backed up to something like Backblaze.
For iPhones, you can share any backup plan with your family, which isn’t the same as family sharing, which is something else, but it is free to share your storage. You can’t see their data, and they can’t see your data or ever access it.
