Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

The definition of irony...

Mitthrawnuruodo

Mitthrawnuruodo

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Mar 10, 2004
14,846
1,885
Bergen, Norway
Friday morning the worst thin that can happen to a computer happened: The hard drive on my 6 month old MacBook died.

I wasn't doing anything particular, just surfing and playing iTunes over AirTunes. Suddenly a song just cut of and the machine froze up - totally - the only sound was a couple of ominous clicks from the HD. I did a hard reboot and all that gave me was the dreaded "question mark folder" (which was in a new and quite nice design, BTW, compared to older Macs), and additional clicking. Once I booted from another source and opened Disk Utility my worst fears came through: The internal HD was just "gone"!

Now, this could have been a total disaster, just last Sunday/Monday I tried backing up using SuperDuper!, but for some insane reason it seems that the combination 10.4.8 and Intel Macs doesn't go to well together with SuperDuper!, and the program alternated between crashing itself and my MacBook. The guys who make SD blames Apple, who probably couldn't care less. I did, however, find a work-around, after many, many tries (and fails), lots of seaching and several hours: The error has to do with the UI, so if you start SuperDuper! and then hide the progress window, it works. So I got my backup, in the end.

By now you might wonder what the irony is, and here it comes: 6 months ago my iBook's HD was acting up, and I figured a total collapse was imminent. I didn't change that HD, but got my MacBook instead. I even named my MacBook "Serenity" because it gave me a piece of mind. After I got the MacBook I even pulled my RAM upgrade from the iBook to put in my girlfriend's iBook (giving her 512 + 512) and now the iBook is barely running Tiger with it's 256 MB RAM (been meaning to downgrade to Panther). The irony is that until I get my MacBook back, which will take at least a week due to frelling bureaucracy, that iBook is going to be my main machine. I'm actually posting from it right now, with the same HD that apparently was dying all those months ago...

In the end, and this is why I put this in Hardware -> Buying Tips, Advice and Discussion, an advice: Always keep current backup. So I lost a couple of days worth of data (and one large software install), but luckily most of my (important) work is done on-line, on remote servers, and I hadn't added any photos in iPhoto or ripped any CDs into iTunes since last weekend, so all in all I cannot complain. Also having an old backup machine means that I can work while the MacBook is in shop (even if the machine is excruciatingly slow and takes long pauses to access virtual memory all the time).
 
I back up twice a week or so. (I got a firewire 800 box for the purpose)

On the bright side: you'll soon have a refurbished computer...and a lesson learned :)D ).
 
freebooter said:
On the bright side: you'll soon have a refurbished computer...and a lesson learned :)D ).
Click to expand...
Nah... they'll just change the HD. Therein lies the delay: Because it's a warranty case they have to take out the HD, verify it's a goner and then order a new one and install that.

I tried to get an upgrade from the 120 to a 160 GB (for a fee of course) but that was impossible due to the above mentioned bureaucracy... :(

Double irony is that if I'd just bought a new HD I'd gotten the machine back with in hours (or even right away if I would have wanted to installe it myself, which is a walk in the park with the MacBooks), but because it's a replacement under warranty, it's going to take a week (and more I fear).
 
You've just reminded me it's been a while since I ran my backups. At least since 10.4.8 as I've not seen this crash yet! Something for me to do this afternoon perhaps...
 
Retrospect Backup

Retrospect: $89
External drive: $100 to $150
Creating a nightly backup script: five minutes

Mac is backed up every night without any further thought or effort.
 
Hm. I thought irony was rain on your wedding day...

or, say, a free ride... when you've already paid.

or the good advice - ok I'll stop.



:eek:



Sorry to hear about the MacBook though. Stories like this make me feel all the more lucky that my 1 1/2 year old PB G4 is still alive and kickin'. :)
 
Another definition of irony ...

I was backing up to one of my external drives (yes, there is more than one!) a few nights ago and I got this error message in SuperDuper. I opened disk utility, tried to verify etc. but the drive would not unmount. I clicked on it in Finder but no files showed up and it sent Finder into paralytic beach-balling galore mode. :rolleyes:

The next day, I got it to mount and went through the usual Disk Utility steps. Turns out, the drive's dead. :rolleyes: It wouldn't let me erase it or do anything with it, so, it's a goner. While trying to protect my data from hard drive failure with many backups, one of the backups fails!

It's so important to cover all your bases if you have a lot of important data. Don't rely on hard drives alone, get your data onto DVD/CD and store them away somewhere safe.

Hope you get your Macbook back safe and well soon, Mitthrawnuruodo. :)
 

Attachments

  • Picture 2.jpg
    Picture 2.jpg
    82.1 KB · Views: 103
Abstract said:
I only back up after reading HD failure stories like yours.
Click to expand...

There is a decent amount of them, as an example my iBook's HD drive just failed (for the second time in about 2-3 weeks) and I just went to the apple store to get it replaced.

at least you didn't have anything major that was not backed up, Thrawn. Its just a pain to not have a main computer.
 
actually, irony is: my computer is fine, but my external hard drive that has everything backed up died after only a month.
 
EGT said:
I was backing up to one of my external drives (yes, there is more than one!) a few nights ago and I got this error message in SuperDuper. I opened disk utility, tried to verify etc. but the drive would not unmount. I clicked on it in Finder but no files showed up and it sent Finder into paralytic beach-balling galore mode. :rolleyes:

The next day, I got it to mount and went through the usual Disk Utility steps. Turns out, the drive's dead. :rolleyes: It wouldn't let me erase it or do anything with it, so, it's a goner. While trying to protect my data from hard drive failure with many backups, one of the backups fails!

It's so important to cover all your bases if you have a lot of important data. Don't rely on hard drives alone, get your data onto DVD/CD and store them away somewhere safe.

Hope you get your Macbook back safe and well soon, Mitthrawnuruodo. :)
Click to expand...

Offsite backups are really the only way to 99% guarantee safety.

If you can handle the geekiness, you can try syncing to an offsite server. I had an old computer that I loaded up with ubuntu and a couple hard drives and synced with all my business files (many 100's of Gbs) and sent it off to a friend's house about 2 miles away. I then set up a local server the same way and i configured rsync on my mac to sync my files to the local server. I do this nightly. Then, 2 times a week I rsync from the local server to the server at the friend's house and it just runs in the background. This way, only a natural disaster or the hand of God can wipe things out permanently.

It may be over-the-top for casual backups, but it's critical for me and it really gets the job done. Well, the file structure can be annoying going to linux and give some errors, but it generally works.
 
someguy said:
Hm. I thought irony was rain on your wedding day...

or, say, a free ride... when you've already paid.

or the good advice - ok I'll stop.
Click to expand...


How dare you bring up that horrendous song! :D

Wow, what a terrible song, she doesn't even know what irony is.

Well, it must be a black fly in your chardonnay...
 
Got confirmation from the local Apple Service Centre today: The disk was gone, and they had already ordered and gotten the replacement. So I'll get my MacBook back today or, at the latest, tomorrow morning... :)

The technician gave me a tip about restoring my data: Instead of just cloning the data back to the new disk I should use Migration Assistant on my first boot up with the new disk, and get my data back through that, thus getting rid of unnecessary clutter that has been building up on my MacBook in the ~6 months I've had it. I think I might give that a try... especially since SuperDuper! and Mac OS X 10.4.8 for Intel Macs aren't entirely compatible at the moment... ;)

buffalo said:
might be a dumb question, but is there a guide or something that goes through the process of backing up the hard drive?
Click to expand...
I couldn't find a guide after a (very short) search, but the easiest is to use SuperDuper!, Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) or LaCie SilverKeeper to make a full bootable clone of your HD to an external hard drive (if you have a new Intel Mac you should be able to use any USB2 disk, while most older Macs needs Firewire disks if you want to make them bootable).

Another way to go is to back up the most essential data, either with an application, like Backup (part of .Mac) or some 3rd party tool, or manually (remember important files, iTunes and all other data you cannot afford loosing), to an external disk and/or CDs/DVDs.
 
mkrishnan said:
Wow, I remember all the previous pieces to that story when they happened. :( I hope you get your baby back soon. :)
Click to expand...
Posting from it right now, thank you... :)

Followed the advice of the technician and used Migration Assistant to restore my data (from the SuperDuper! cloned USB2 disk), and except for a few minor things (mostly the odd hack ;)) it worked very well...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back