I Resolve to Back Up My Files (BONUS: How to Start Up in Recovery Mode)

I recently wrote about how I nearly bricked an iMac while upgrading the operating system, but I was able to save the day by starting up in Safe Mode in macOS and fixing the problem. Well, it's been an adventurous year for me since I had another close call.

Normally I am careful to periodically back up my files, especially my photos and videos. While I often sync my "favorite" photos and videos to Google Photos where I have unlimited storage, I also prefer to back up my original RAW photos (in Canon CR2 file format) and AVCHD videos (in MTS file format) to external hard drives. Since February 2018, my 3TB external hard drives reached capacity, and I had a variety of excuses to delay the purchase of additional external hard drives: busy at work, looking for a good deal on higher capacity drives, etc. So I have copies of all of my photos and videos leading up to February 2018 on 2 external hard drives. From February 2018 to today, I have had only 1 copy of my iMac hard drive, and they could potentially vanish in the event of a hard drive crash.

Sometime in mid- to late-2018, I started getting SMART notifications that my iMac internal hard drive was showing signs of wear and tear. I also noticed that on startup, the progress bar would sometimes pause at about three fourths of the way to completion. Sometimes it would eventually finish the boot process, and at other times it would simply hang, and I would be forced to power off the iMac and reboot. All signs of impending disaster.

Black Friday rolled around, and I decided to finally purchase a pair of shiny new 8 TB external hard drives. They were back ordered but finally arrived the second week of December (i.e., a couple weeks ago). However, the 8 TB drives have been sitting in my office unopened ever since. Enter more excuses for not backing up my files: holiday shopping, family gatherings, catching up on paying bills, etc.

Today I wondered if resetting the PRAM would help fix some of those startup issues that I described above. So I went ahead and restarted my iMac while holding down the command, option, P, and R keys (warning: don't try this unless you know what you are doing). As expected, the iMac restarted once, detected the PRAM reset request, and restarted again. All expected behavior so far. But when it restarted the 2nd time, it booted into my TechTool Pro rescue partition. Hmmm, that was strange. But since I was there, I ran some diagnostics and with the exception of the SMART warnings that I already knew about, everything checked out OK. So I decided to restart my computer normally. However, in the startup volume selection dialog box, my Macintosh HD volume was nowhere to be found. That explains why the machine rebooted into the TechTool Pro rescue partition. I tried warm and cold reboots, but now each restart would arrive at the screen with the Apple logo, stop loading, and simply hang.

I spent the next several minutes in disbelief that I have preached to all my friends and family that they should back up their files and that every hard drive is essentially a ticking time bomb. Well, it looks like my hard drive's time bomb exploded today, with nearly a year's worth of photos and videos (304.28 GB to be exact) not backed up.

After 3 or 4 failed attempts to start my iMac, I tried restarting in Safe Mode (again, described here). No luck. However, restarting in Recovery Mode (restarting while holding the Command and R keys) did give me access to macOS Utilities:



From there I was able to run Disk Utility and run First Aid on my Macintosh HD volume. Among a variety of other usual tasks, I noticed that Disk Utility performed some "deferred repairs" on the volume. I think that did the trick, as I was then able to restart the iMac and get access to the Finder.

WHEW! I am backing up files as I write this post. Fingers crossed that I have not lost any precious moments. Normally I don't make any new year's resolutions, but in 2019 I resolve to regularly back up my files.

Lee Family 2018 Year In Review

Our Lee Family 2018 Year In Review is now available, with prior editions stored here. Depending on the device you are using, you might be prompted by Dropbox to sign in, download the mobile app, or continue to the website—you can simply select the option to continue.

As usual, our home movies are available on Victor's YouTube channel.

Fraud vs. Spendthrift

Apparently our family is doing its part to stimulate the economy this holiday season. A few weeks ago I received a fraud alert from Citi via text message and email just a few seconds after my wife made an online purchase:

It was easy to approve the purchase (I responded via text message as you can see from the first image), and we were back to our merry spending ways.

Thank goodness for this technology, even if it was a false alarm. According to this article, fraud detection is getting better with the application of artificial intelligence. However, keep in mind that fraud detection is a reactive measure and that you can and should take preventive measures to safeguard your financial data. Remember to always practice safe online shopping as summarized here. Happy online spending!

iPhone Performance Management

Today I experienced an unexpected shutdown on my iPhone 6 Plus (iOS 12.0.1). I do not recall the phone warning me that I had 20% battery life left, so it struck me as unusual for the phone to shut down. Rather than immediately charging my phone, I waited a few minutes, pressed the power button, and saw this message:

This reminded me of the Batterygate controversy that arose several months ago. Curious to learn more about the Performance Management feature that had been applied to my phone, I navigated to the Settings > Battery and found this:

Tapping on "Learn more..." took me to the iPhone Battery and Performance page on Apple Support. In my humble opinion, I think it does a good job of explaining how lithium-ion batteries chemically age over time and how iOS can manage performance peaks to prevent unexpected shutdowns.

As you can see, my battery's maximum capacity is at 83%, and I've noticed in recent months that I've had to charge my phone slightly more often than in the past. Also notice that there is a "Disable..." option that turns off Performance Management. According to the Apple Support page, if you disable performance management, you can't turn it back on, but it will be turned on again automatically if another unexpected shutdown occurs.

I'll be leaving Performance Management enabled, and I don't buy into the allegation that Apple has throttled iPhones just to get people to upgrade. Many years ago, my iPhone 5 had experienced frequent unexpected shutdowns as it aged (especially when my battery level dipped below 25-30%), and I even wish that performance management was available back then to improve my user experience.

Force-Refresh Data on iOS Health App

I use the iOS Health app on my iPhone from time to time to review my walking + running distances. I've written in the past about distance tracking accuracy here and about a strange issue here. I also want to highlight that I find it inconvenient at times when I launch the Health app, only to find that it has yet to update walking + running distances from the past several hours. Example:

      

In the screenshot on the left, notice that the time is 5:27 PM and that no walking or running activity has been registered since 7:00 AM. At this time, the total distance is 0.59 miles. Tapping on "Show All Data" yields the screenshot in the middle, and it shows that the total distance for the day is actually 5 miles. Tapping on "Back" takes us back to the original Walking + Running Distance screen which now displays recorded distances from 8:00 AM to 5:27 PM, including the 5 total miles spread throughout the day.

This issue has occurred on my iPhone for the past several months, and only recently did I discover that navigating to the "Show All Data" screen forces a refresh. Maybe this is a bug that can be fixed in a future release.

Inconceivably Regular Activity

The Apple iOS Health app on my phone (iPhone 6 Plus, iOS 12.0.1) suits my simple needs. It tracks my walking + running distance and lets me view my activity data in increments of days, weeks, months, and even years. Since I don't use any GPS-enabled apps to accurately track my distances, I've compared known running distances against Apple Health and have found it to be fairly accurate. However, something strange happened the other day. I noticed that Health was registering just under 0.2 miles/hour for every hour of the day:

      

On October 24 (left image), the Health app correctly logged the distances that I logged at 7 AM and 8 AM as I walked my child to school and walked back home. Then at 4 PM, it began recording distances of just under 0.2 miles/hour for the remainder of the day. This continued for all 24 hours of October 25 (center image) and lasted until 9 AM on October 26 (right image).

Obviously I did not really perform that activity at such a regular pace for 42 straight hours. I also did not place the phone on a vibrating surface or any other surface that was in motion for that time frame. In fact, I had a pretty normal routine where I left the phone on my desk while working and picked it up only to make phone calls, use mobile apps, or when leaving home.

The total distance of 4.5 miles on October 25 is a little on the low side since I walked my child to school (round trip of 1.75 miles) and ran/walked 3.75 miles (my usual route) which adds up to 5.5 miles, so maybe the app was simply not recognizing movement correctly for that 42-hour timespan. That being said, I suppose this could be within the margin of error of distance tracking without a GPS. Thinking about possible data corruption issues, I don't recall my iPhone crashing or being dropped during that time, nor had I experienced an unexpected shutdown due to complete battery drainage.

So I'm not quite sure what happened, but in the last 48+ hours (it's now October 28), the app appears to have returned to normal activity tracking. If you've seen this sort of strangely consistent recorded activity on your iOS Health app or even know why this is happening, let me know.

Selficide

A recent study explores the causes of selfie-related deaths and the distribution of deaths across age, gender, and country. Here are the tables figures:

Selfie-related deaths have become so common that "selficide" has been suggested as a new word to be added to the English dictionary.

While less specifically related to death, the 10th version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) includes Y93.C2 which represents, "Activity, hand held interactive electronic device" and is written about in this blog.



Have fun taking selfies, and remember to be safe.