Minor excitement this weekend: hard drive failure in the Macbook! My Macbook is *easily* the worst computer I've ever owned. But I don't think this problem was the ole 'book's fault. I think I bought a shitty hard drive when I upgraded six months ago. Don't worry: all was well and backed up. I lost like half an afternoon's worth of work, that I already caught up last night.
I have to say ... we started backing up our systems last April. I just had this revelation that if my machine ever bit it, I would lose *years* of work and be set back *months*, in terms of my graduation goal. Hells to the no. Since then, both me and my wife have had HD failures. So the Time Capsule has more than carried its weight.
(Side note on the Macboook: My wife's HD was the *original* that failed. So part of me does sort of want to blame the Macbook for this - like perhaps a power supply issue, which we've both also had issues with. I love my Apple products, but these Macbooks are ass. Ive had a couple other friends have serious issues with theirs, and I've never had so many problems as I've had with this one. It could just be bad luck, but I get the vibe that Apple doesn't do 'cheap' well. Also: Apple's tech support SUCKS. One guy had me about half a step from formatting my Time Capsule when it was acting up. Basically, when plugged right into my machine - the Macbook still could not find the Time Capsule. He thought it was bad data, I thought it was just a network setup issue. I was right. Ass.)
The one annoying thing: my HD is under warranty ... but it takes *fourteen* days to get a new one. I can't wait that long. So I bought a new HD, and I'll send the other one to get replaced. Then I'll just stick it in a case and use it as a second external backup. I use Time Machine/Time Capsule to back up my stuff now. But that's not a "bootable" drive. So, until you get the HD replaced - you can't really access that info. I think I'll go ahead and back up this new external drive with SuperDuper or some such thing, so that way I'll have a bootable clone made every night. Then, if HD failure happens again: I can just swap out the HDs and be back in business in under an hour. And I'll still have the Time Machine back up going backwards for months, and as a secondary backup in case of catastrophic clusterfuck. So it goes. Adventures in computing.
I have to say ... we started backing up our systems last April. I just had this revelation that if my machine ever bit it, I would lose *years* of work and be set back *months*, in terms of my graduation goal. Hells to the no. Since then, both me and my wife have had HD failures. So the Time Capsule has more than carried its weight.
(Side note on the Macboook: My wife's HD was the *original* that failed. So part of me does sort of want to blame the Macbook for this - like perhaps a power supply issue, which we've both also had issues with. I love my Apple products, but these Macbooks are ass. Ive had a couple other friends have serious issues with theirs, and I've never had so many problems as I've had with this one. It could just be bad luck, but I get the vibe that Apple doesn't do 'cheap' well. Also: Apple's tech support SUCKS. One guy had me about half a step from formatting my Time Capsule when it was acting up. Basically, when plugged right into my machine - the Macbook still could not find the Time Capsule. He thought it was bad data, I thought it was just a network setup issue. I was right. Ass.)
The one annoying thing: my HD is under warranty ... but it takes *fourteen* days to get a new one. I can't wait that long. So I bought a new HD, and I'll send the other one to get replaced. Then I'll just stick it in a case and use it as a second external backup. I use Time Machine/Time Capsule to back up my stuff now. But that's not a "bootable" drive. So, until you get the HD replaced - you can't really access that info. I think I'll go ahead and back up this new external drive with SuperDuper or some such thing, so that way I'll have a bootable clone made every night. Then, if HD failure happens again: I can just swap out the HDs and be back in business in under an hour. And I'll still have the Time Machine back up going backwards for months, and as a secondary backup in case of catastrophic clusterfuck. So it goes. Adventures in computing.
VIEW 6 of 6 COMMENTS
sockpuppet:
I agree about Apple; my experience was always that they couldn't do "cheap".
sockpuppet:
My Apple experience is from a long time ago. I always loved the interface, and even the System 7 (yeah, I know...) interface was better than XP - what, twelve years later? But their support was patchy, and their "budget" models were a false economy for the buyer.