My daughter managed to corrupt my Time Machine backup drive by flicking the power strip switch it and my Mac were connected to on and off and I currently have Disk Utility repairing the disc. What do I do now? Here's what I was thinking:
1. Run disc utility on my Mac's HD and verify it.
2. Verify my backup drive to make sure the repair worked.
What should I do next? Would it be a good idea to erase my backup drive and start a Time Machine backup from scratch so that I don't have any nasty surprises the next time I restore from Time Machine?
Any input is greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
I'm no expert on this, but I'll give it a try.
From your signature line I see you're running ML; for starters, that's a good thing because Mountain Lion allows for
Multiple Back-ups allowing you to have back-ups of all your files, on multiple hard drives, in multiple locations. Your Time Machine takes 'snapshots' of all the changes that have occurred on your computer, and remembers which 'Time Capsule' needs which updates, so that a secondary TC which you might have at work or any other location, will get all the missed changes, that have happened since it was last connected, the moment you plug in that drive.
Since you're unsure if your TC is corrupted, I would not use that drive for now, but do a brand new back-up on a different (or new) TM compatible HDD, so that you'll still have that old TC if something were to go wrong. Once you have completed this 'new' back-up, and are satisfied that everything is cool, you can then erase the original TC, and do a new back-up to that drive as well using 'Multiple Back-ups', leaving you now with
two back-ups for extra peace of mind. Here's some info on ML multiple back-ups:
http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_backup_time_machine_multiple_locations.
Google it; there's a ton more info on it out there.
There is a small chance the HDD in your computer could also have become corrupted, however that is much less likely, but if that turns out to be the case, I would talk to Applecare, or you may need a data recovery expert. They can do amazing things.
Without knowing how old your daughter is, I'd say keep her away from that power strip switch, and if you haven't already done this, invest in a UPS; they can be had for as little as $49-$79, and can 'save the day' during a power outage. Cheers.