Meltdown, Part 3

This has been my year of computer mishaps. Earlier this year, I wrote about that incident where my very substantial iTunes playlist got corrupted. It took several nights to rebuild those considerable libraries.

Then, while installing Tiger, I forgot to back-up my e-mail boxes. I ended up losing four years of correspondence. That one hurt bad. There were a lot of important contacts in that meltdown.

Well, I got hit worse of all last weekend. My PowerBook G4 Titanium died.

Worse, I had been backing up religiously using Apple’s Backup since my earlier problems, but this particular weekend, I had nothing backed up. On Thursday of last week, Apple released Backup 3. But it was giving me problems, so I hadn’t backed up anything. Worse, I trashed my old back up, thinking I’d be okay for a few days.

I repeat, I trashed my backup.

Saturday morning, my laptop died. Oddly enough, I did not have a personal meltdown. I think going through two other meltdowns earlier in the year helped desensitize me to data loss. That afternoon, I went to the Apple Store and bought an interim iBook. I had been holding out until the Intel-based models were to be released next year, but that plan went out the window when my hard drive failed.

In 15 years of using Macs, I’ve never had a computer die on me. Ever. I was not familiar with "the click of death". If I were, I would have heard the warning chimes of death. My Titanium had been clicking on and off for a couple of months. In retrospect, I was lucky it held together as long as it did.

Luckilly, I obsessively backup my work files onto my iPod daily. AND onto an external FireWire drive weekly. I was covered workwise. But once again, I lost all my e-mail boxes. Worse, I lost FIVE YEARS of digital photos; Thanksgivings, Christmases, births, parties… all gone. And once again, all my iTunes playlists were toast.

Two days later, I recovered everything.

God bless DiskWarrior. It couldn’t save the laptop hard drive, but it did rescue the actual data. I hooked up an external drive and copied all the important preferences and photos. I transferred them all to my new iBook and everything worked… every mailbox restored. Every digital photo intact. Every playlist in order. A miracle.

Then I backed it all up using Backup 3. All is right in the world.

Next, I’m going to buy a replacement drive for my dead laptop, either for resale or as a back-up laptop. I keep you in the loop.