Day 41 - Blessed is the pessimist...

I know you have heard that old saying, "blessed is the pessimist for he hath made backups". Well, I would like to amend that to read "Blessed is the pessimist for he hath made recent backups." It happened to me again. Last night right after blogging, I decided to clean up my Macbook Pro using Onyx. In the process, Onyx informed me I had some errors on my disk that needed repairing. No problem, I'll start up the Disk Tool and do a verify and repair and let it work while I go to bed. This morning, expecting to see a smiley face telling me my data was safe now and all was well in sector land, I was surprised to see ERROR! How could that be, it's a Mac. Mac's don't have errors. This cant be happening. My mind started racing, what wasn't backed up? My pictures from the Roadshow, OH NO. After a quick restart and some more fumbling with the disk tool it was clear that baby would not be booting again.

So, after one more quick trip to the Apple Company Store to get that jacket I wanted so badly, we left Pacifica (San Francisco suburb) headed to Lakeport for some private training. On the way there I was poised and ready to turn into the first Best Buy for a new drive for my baby. My logic is this, save the old drive and try putting it in an external enclosure and see if I can get my photos back. Until then, its time for a new drive. I found a 640 gig WD drive for $114 and walked out the door. We arrived at our camp site around 7:30 pm and I had the old drive out and the new one installed in about 15 minutes, connected my time machine drive and booted the DVD. Two hours later, my data was restored and I had a working operating system.

Now, the bad news is the last time I did a backup was 4/28 so I am still missing some trip photos. Email and calendar is all through MobileMe so nothing lost there. Bottom line, Mac's Time Machine is awesome, however, you have to use it properly and often. With my baby working again, time for some rest.