Backing up
One of the things that Apple makes very easy to do is backing up, whether it’s a Mac, an iPad or an iPhone, there really is no excuse for not doing it.
With the iPhone and iPad the cost is minimal for iCloud storage, £0.99/month is about the cost of a cup of coffee 4 times a year so why wouldn’t you do it?
Apple even make it simple for you to do it as they will notify you when your free storage is full… Upgrade now!
If your photos don’t mean anything to you or they’re backed up elsewhere then you can delete them and not worry about it.
If we are working on your Mac and needing to transfer data it is part of the process and as such the contents of your drive will be transferred to one of our drives before copying back to a new one, if that is what is being carried out. Once you are happy that you have everything you need our copy of your data will be erased permanently.
With iPads and iPhones you are responsible for your own backups as damaging it can mean the end of the device altogether. As stated above, £0.99/month is a very small price to pay for keeping your data and photos safe.
Just do it.
Unless you SPECIFICALLY INSTRUCT us to back your iPhone or iPad, prior to a repair, we will not do it and only then will it be to YOUR iCloud account, we will not backup anything to our drives as photos, especially, can be VERY personal and we don’t need to be involved with them in any way at all.
Whilst it is rare for secondary failures to occur, in iPads and iPhones, they can and do happen, either at the time of the incident that caused the damage, or afterwards. These are very fragile devices and an impact can damage or loosen components on the logic board that doesn’t necessarily present itself as a fault at the time. Probably the most common of these is an impact that affects the proximity sensor in that the phone screen won’t disengage when making a normal call using the earpiece speaker. Others have been known to affect video and the digitiser, resulting in a blank or unresponsive screen. In those circumstances although your data/photos are still on the device it may be impossible to retrieve it.
It is with this in mind that we strongly advise that you keep your backups current as accidents can happen at any time… very few people plan them!
If it’s a Mac and you don’t have a backup and your drive fails it can be expensive to retrieve data, it is also possible that it can’t be retrieved at all, depending on why the drive is failing. If you want free advice on backup strategies just let us know, we are always happy to help, but your data is your responsibility, not ours.