Security & Privacy

As some Apple discussion board threads have revealed, a number of Snow Leopard users have had serious data loss issues. First reports of this date back to the earliest days of Snow Leopard, but the problem seems to have compounded recently. This problem occurs when some users log in with Snow Leopard’s Guest account, then find that their regular user account has been deleted. It seems that this bug occurs only with users whose Guest accounts were activated prior to installing Snow Leopard, and that the problem can be avoided by disabling then re-enabling the Guest account (if a user really needs the Guest account; if not, just leave it off).

Apple yesterday made a brief statement to CNet, saying, “We are aware of the issue, which occurs only in extremely rare cases, and we are working on a fix.” It does seem to be rare, judging from the Apple forum posts, but that doesn’t matter if it happens to you.

This sort of data loss underscores the need for regular backups using efficient backup software such as Intego Personal Backup X5. With Personal Backup, you can clone your startup volume, ensuring that you’ll always have a backup of all of your accounts, and you can save multiple backups of your home folder in case such a mishap affects you. In such cases, restoring your backup is as simple as copying the folders that have been deleted.

Regular backups are the first line of defense to protect your Mac from all kinds of security threats and hardware or software problems. Make sure to back up your data regularly, and problems like this will seem much less serious if they happen to you.