A sudden and untimely death and possible resurrection, of my hard drive
OK, if I haven’t alienated everyone with that title, I’ll share the sad tale of my beloved Mac laptop. Sob.
Last Tuesday, Joshua was surfing the web, listening to Youtube videos on my laptop while I was in the kitchen. Suddenly, it froze (this should have been a warning), but then it unfroze. We resumed what we were doing. After a while, I went to take a shower. When I returned, Joshua was on the glacial desktop (where I now type this post, which I inadvertently deleted once already because the desktop is totally and utterly awful).
I looked at Joshua quizzically, and he said: your computer froze up, so I had to force quit, and now it won’t start. Not good. I tried to start it up. I got a gray screen with a file folder with a question mark. Really not good.
I called AppleCare, thanking my stars that I followed good advice and purchased the 3-year extended warranty. I got a real live human within a couple of minutes, and we tried everything he knew, for more than 20 minutes, including trying to re-install the operating software.
At one point, he prompted me: see where it has the icon for a hard drive, click on that. Umm…no….there is no icon. Really, REALLY not good.
AppleCare guy goes away to consult with a supervisor. Ominous. He returns and says “we are authorizing you to have a warranty check and repair; the nearest authorized Apple Warranty Service center is in Augusta.” That is an hour away from here…lotsa gas!
First thing in the morning, I call Abacus Technologies here in Camden, because I know their Apple guru, Jeff, is really good and I had thought they were Apple authorized. They are, but they no longer do warranty repairs. However, Jeff told me that although the hard drive / hardware issues are covered, data recovery is not. Here’s the really awful part:
Due to the assorted crises that have come at me one thing after another for the past 18 months, I haven’t done a back up of my files. Not even putting photos on CD, including of Joshua’s accident, graduation, Eli’s year, the last pictures of dear Yeti, nothing. On my laptop, and now seemingly lost forever are all the photos, all my teaching files, my slide presentation, my address book, my calendar, all my contacts for future teaching gigs, all my documents, all the iTunes library (over a thousand songs amongst us all), you name it it was lost. My life is/was on that laptop, and it appeared to be lost for eternity. SHRIEK!
The only good thing in all this is that I HAD saved my manuscript on a thumb drive…thank heavens! It has been two years of work; at least I know that is safe…..
However, Jeff the Mac Guru says he might be able to save the data, but that should happen before warranty work. All efforts fail, including trying to mount the drive to a PC even…after all if you can drag and drop the files…. SO the only chance to save my stuff is to send it away to the “Doctors of Mega Computer Death”. Jeff said “you know those Clean Rooms you see on TV? all white, guys in Tyvek suits?” That’s your only chance. Cost: $800-2700.
After I got off the phone, I had a total, complete and utter bawling-out-loud meltdown. Fortunately, I was alone in the house except for the cats and dog. I had simply had it… after one family crisis after another, I didn’t need this too.
I only beat myself up a little for being a total idiot and not doing back-ups. After all, I DO have an external hard drive in the house. However, I was using it to back up the PC, and it can be formatted for PC or Mac, but not both. And the bookkeeping was still on the PC. Plus, I would have had to figure out how to erase the external HD (hard drive), re-format it for Mac, etc. Since I find computer stuff frustrating beyond bearing (one misplaced comma and you can spend four hours, whereas someone who knows what they are doing looks at it and says “oh here it is”….), I procrastinated what with all the seemingly endless family crises and demands.
So, upon reflection, I called back and said do it. Getting the photos alone is worth it, and saving 2-3 months of full-time work re-doing all my class stuff is a bonus. And amidst all this, Jeff said there was no point in his having the computer all apart and then sending me somewhere a long drive away, so he’ll ALSO do the warranty work! BLESS HIM! I’ll put the cost on my visa card, ask Mom for a loan if I need one, and just get on with it.
Moral of the story: BACK UP YOUR HARD DRIVE. Do it NOW. Go buy an external hard drive. Even on the PC it was easy to format and do the back ups. A 500 GIG hard drive is now $140 at Staples online…. that’s about the price of developing 10 rolls of film. Cheap at the price.
My Mac (and yes, even with this highly unusual hard drive suicide, I’d still do it all over again and buy a Mac, and working on the PC has reinforced that!) is now in a lab in New Jersey. Please beam “get the data” thoughts in the direction of the mid-coast of the US, please….. I won’t relax until I know for sure they can save it, but since these companies can retrieve data from computers that have been through fires and floods, I am guardedly optimistic, she typed, nervously. They also send it back on a new external hard drive.
Guess what I’m gonna do? Hook that baby up to my laptop and try to back up EVERY DAY! Sheesh I don’t need this!
So that’s why I won’t be able to blog quite as often or with pictures. I’ll do a book review or two and see if I can find pics on the internet to upload for color…. and in the meantime, remember: BEAM GOOD THOUGHTS TOWARDS NEW JERSEY THAT THEY CAN SAVE MY DATA! Thanks, and now I’m off. I WILL believe it will come back….
July 19th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Just talking about this with my computer guru this week. I just got a hard drive and put everything on it. He said, for PC, if you have a partial failure, don’t do the defrag and such before you try to do the recovery or you are out of luck for recovery, except “maybe” for the big bucks recovery.
July 19th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
It’s a love hate thing, technology. I recently got a Macbook, and haven’t been all that happy with it, especially since it couldn’t talk to my network drive (NAS) which is where MY backups are supposed to go… So, I recently partitioned it and loaded Windows XP, so I can now interface with my NAS. Anyhow, there are s/w programs you can set up to auto backup on a schedule, so you don’t have to worry about it. Not that I’ve done that myself, but I should!
Here’s hoping you recover all your data, and that miraculously they end up not charging you a bundle for it!
July 20th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Oooooo, I got a knot in my stomach and wept at the thought of what you must be going through.
I hope it all works out (crossing iFingers for you)
July 20th, 2008 at 1:48 am
oh man, worst nightmare. Computers only fail when you haven’t done backups, I swear. Mum’s mac died a horrible death recently, and she had over a year’s worth of photos that (unusually) hadn’t been loaded onto any of the other computers or saved to cd/dvd. I hope your data recovery goes well … I think I might plug in the external & do a backup myself right now heh.
July 20th, 2008 at 4:47 am
That is awful and it sounds so familiair. I am always months behind in making back up’s of my files. Sending you good vibes.
July 20th, 2008 at 8:27 am
So sorry Sarah, not a fun thing for sure. There are at the very least a few pictures here on your blog to save, right?
Funny how at one moment we don’t trust our computers for the information they can get from you…and the next trust our life to ’em!
July 20th, 2008 at 11:45 am
Good luck – my fingers are crossed. I recently purchased Titan Backup for my PC and have been very happy with the easy of use and automation. Can you find a similar product for your Mac?
Also, I gave you an award today – its posted on my blog.
😀 eirdre
July 20th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Sending all the good electronic vibes I can that way – and will be spending next week backing up …. thanks for the reminder. Sorry it had to come at such a stressful expense to you!
July 21st, 2008 at 6:07 pm
Oh how I feel your pain! I’ve had computer issues recently too. I didn’t lose everything but I thought I did for a brief moment. It called to my attention the fact that I haven’t backed up anything in years. We’ve bought an external hard drive since then and I was going to back up once a week. I think I’d rather figure out how to make it do an automatic backup every day though. I hope miracles are being performed in Jersey and all works out well for you.
July 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 pm
I lost a fan in my mac last month, luckily had the three year plan. They fixed it, but so sorry about your harddrive death! good luck with it.