Stop Reading This and Go Back Up Your Data

The continued heartache I've been dealing with over the catastrophic loss of my laptop hard drive is the final kick in the pants I really needed to get a back up system in place and underway.

I've been somewhat lucky so far. I've gotten the first six months of 2007's photos back but have lost (so far) the last two months of photos. I hope Disk Warrior is able to pull that data but I don't know yet.

So, really, stop reading this and go back up your data. Burn it to DVD and put it in a safe place. Heck maybe burn an extra one and send it to your parents for safe keeping.

I'm using iBackup right now. I'll let you all know how it works for me.

Also, I read a good tip on Wired's Wiki about how to pull music off an iPod so I'll be able to repopulate my iTunes without too much trouble.

But I'm pretty sure there are a large number of files that are lost forever and that totally sucks. I still Apple should be more proactive in notifying users about potential drive trouble and pending failures. What use is a silent reporting mechanism that you have to go and check to see what's going on?

The Epitome of Frustration

You want to know what sucks serious balls? Trying to figure out how to recover my data from the dead hard drive I pulled out the other night. Disk Utility, the free and mostly useless program that came with the computer, is powerless.

I found a way to copy the hard disk using the Terminal and Unix but the goddamned info is so obtuse and annoying that it is more trouble than its worth. The language is incredibly aggravating to read and just not something I'm picking up despite numerous attempts to figure it out. I know there are Unix folks out there who could whip this crap out like nothing but that isn't me.

And I'm deeply annoyed at the lack of warning. OS X could very easily have notified me that the drive was having trouble but it doesn't unless you set it up yourself. So what's the point of having a S.M.A.R.T. enabled drive if you have to go and run Disk Utility to find out the health of your drive? That is just stupid and wrong. Apple (and other computer makers but I can't speak to them) should be more proactive, the system should alert users so that we aren't put in this incredibly difficult position.

Yes, I do back up but my last back up was a little while ago, before I'd done quite alot of new stuff. And all of that stuff is locked up in a 2.5 inch brick.

After much research and weighing of options, I opted to buy Disk Warrior 4.0 to get my shit back quickly. Of course that didn't work out quite as planned. The auto-download screwed up and the file won't unstuff. So I went through the email delivery of the software and have been waiting for a fucking hell of a lot more than a few minutes for the email now. Sure, the CD will be in the mail tomorrow but I don't want to wait, I just want my info, my apps, my music, my photos and my bookmarks back NOW. Right fucking now. Not tomorrow, not next week, NOW!

So I'm frustrated, tired and feel like half my life is temporarily lost. I think I'm going to go to bed and hope that tomorrow is a better day, computer-wise.

But I really do think Apple should be more proactive in warning of problems. Or, at least, the default should be warnings that can be turned off or down. That would have saved me an amazing amount of time and aggravation.

Faster Than Faster and Quicker Than Quick

That's how I am going to describe the service on my laptop. I dropped it off on Monday afternoon around 2 to have the motherboard replaced, which meant that it had to get sent to an Apple repair house.

They called me today to come and pick it up.

That's under three days for a shipped out repair. No, it wasn't cheap but it was worth it to have my speedy little baby back.

Now I can start to really get some steam behind my photography site.

We also had a nice trip to one of the parks in Santa Cruz, this one overlooks the Boardwalk and has some interesting equipment to play on but also has a bunch of slides.

There was also a trip to CostCo in there as well but it was a trip for necessities, nothing too fun this time around.

I'm just thrilled to have my machine back and with a screen I can actually see, that makes all the difference. And Apple didn't even wipe my hard drive in the repair process. They did, however, declare my third party RAM was a problem and took it out to send it back, the repair shop put it back in for me.

Overall, I'm very, very happy tonight!

Bipolar Laptop

There's an old saying Vermont (and I am sure its used other places as well but I first heard it in Vermont when I was growing up) that goes something like this, "If you don't like the weather, just wait five minutes and it'll change."

Somehow that thought's been indoctrinated into my laptop. One moment it will be hunky dory and chugging along properly and then the next it'll gurp and the screen will get covered with scrambled gobbledegook (not a technical term).

Makes me kind of loathe to fire it up at all so as to not get my hopes up only to be dashed again by gobbledegook all over my screen.

And I'm resigned to having to go without it for a little while when it goes in for repairs. I think I'll drop it off before we leave and I'll just mooch computer time off my mom and step-dad.

But for now I'll limp along with partial usage of this machine and alot more usage of my wife's PC and pokey ol' Pismo.