Has anyone lost any of their info or ANYTHING while upgrading to Lion?

Question

I'm really interested in upgrading, but im afraid to lose anything on my computer.
i.e.: my music, documents, and pictures.
I know they say to back up the computer, but i dont have the extra $70-$100 to spare and get a external hard drive.
I also know it is worth it because in case something does get lost.... but i'm just wondering if there are any cases at all that someone lost stuff so maybe i can do it not worry about losing anything.
Any bugs in the new operating system??
thanks :-)

Answer 1

agrande wrote:
I know they say to back up the computer, but i dont have the extra $70-$100 to spare and get a external hard drive.
Any bugs in the new operating system??
Ouch that's bad! 
There are only two kinds of hard drives in the world.  (1) Those that have failed, and (2) those that are about to fail.  There is no category #3.  If you really value your data, you'll back it up.
I did not lose any "data" during my upgrade, but I did find a few apps that didn't work so well.  I also take precautions prior to a backup.
#1 - I go through each of my apps (anything that I'd use) and check to make sure I'm running the latest version. Anything that needs an update gets it... especially because many of these updates are designed to fix Lion compatibility problems (it's possible that some apps wont work anymore or wont work correctly and this step minimizes that possibility.)
#2 - I run Disk Utility (it's in your "Utilities" folder), select your internal hard drive, and have it do a "Repair Permissions" as well as a "Verify Disk".  Repair Permissions will find some errors (it will take a while to run... possibly 10-15 minutes depending on the speed of your hard drive and your mac).  "Verify Disk" should not find ANY errors.  If it does, it means the filesystem is damaged and needs to be repaired.  It is so unusual for a "Verify Disk" to find errors, as well as the nature of the HFS+ filesystem (with "Journaling") to not self-detect and repair it's own errors, that the presence of errors is a very bad sign... and may be a warning sign to something more ominous (it is often the forewarning that the whole drive is about to fail.)  If "Verify Disk" detects any problems, do NOT attempt to upgrade to Lion.  The filesystem must be repaired before you go any further.
#3 - I run a backup... actually I run two backups.  I tell Time Machine to run one final backup and I also use a utility named "Super Duper!" which makes a bootable clone of my internal hard drive (meaning, if the Lion upgrade were to go horribly wrong for some reason... I could always just boot off the hard drive which still contains Snow Leopard and operate that way if I needed to.)
I have now upgraded 4 of my 6 macs (the last two have not yet been upgraded yet, but eventually I'll do them as well.)
The 'Roaring Apps' website contains a very very long list of apps and indicates whether or not they are working correctly under Lion.  If you haven't yet found this site and/or checked it out, you should do that BEFORE you upgrade.  Just check to see if any of the apps you currently rely on are on that list and whether the list indicates that the app works with no problems, has issues, or doesn't work at all.  I was not able to find a single app that I use that was not already on the list (it's a fairly comprehensive list).  Of the apps I use, two of them had issues. Both products recently received updates that fixed the remaining issues and I was able to upgrade the Mac I use for my job (I wouldn't upgrade until everything was reported as working AND still insisted on two reliable backups so that I could revert back to Snow Leopard "just in case".)
You can find the list here:  http://roaringapps.com/