innonate

Exploring the social side of innovation, technology, business, and public policy

← ValleyWag spoils fun for no reason AppEngine is GOOG’s Web 3.0, Takes Aim at Facebook, not Amazon →

Sad MacBook - What to do?

April 7th, 2008 · 6 Comments

So it happened.

Two nights ago, after trying to install the latest version of iTunes, my computer hard-drive crapped out on me.

  1. After trying to restart — the thing just hangs with the Apple logo and a grey background.
  2. Trying to start it up as an external hard-drive (hold down “T” when you startup) alerts that disk is unreadable (first sign of major issues)
  3. Trying to reinstall the OS from disks fails
  4. Trying to repair the disk from disk utility fails
  5. My friends at Tekserve ask me “How much is your data worth to you?”, in reference to their expensive ($800) data recovery services

Of course I should have seen it coming — and I should have been better at backing-up. Duh.

Now I’m left trying to figure out what to do next.

On the data recovery issue, the question is complicated. I last backed up a year ago, so I’m looking at a year of data loss with everything except my company files, which I backed up in December. This means I still have my old college papers, photos from before last year, and music from that time frame as well. I just don’t have any files from the last year.

That being said, I’ve been living more and more in the cloud — so all is not really lost.

  • Important photos are on Flickr
  • Important thoughts are blogged
  • Important files may have been mailed via Gmail
  • Other docs were drafted in Google Docs
  • My musical thumb-print can be listened to on Last.fm
  • My contacts and calendar are on my iPhone (as well as my latest two months of music, due to the way I set up my play-lists)

Anyway, I don’t know why I’m considering the $800 it will cost to try and recover my data. “I just want my life back” is the justification I keep coming up with… but on one hand that sounds pathetic and on the other hand I may not have lost as much of my life as I imagine.

Of course there’s also the potential of the “clean break.” What would I do with a new computer and no record of my past? For one, I’d be more organized with my folders. Is this a chance at organizational rebirth?

It’s certainly a chance for a backup service to convince me to use them. I’ll certainly be using my DropBox and JungleDisk a lot more.

Watch this space for future updates.

Tags: Lifestyle

6 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Michael Turro // Apr 7, 2008 at 10:40 am

    Have you tried Disk Warrior yet? I’ve had it save more than one drive that seemed totally fried. Might be worth the $100 investment: http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

  • 2 Ben Bloom // Apr 7, 2008 at 10:53 am

    I am going to hug my MacBook Pro when I get home tonight and then back it up.

    That said, if I had to pick a year to drop out of my life to not have backed up on disk, 2007 is one to pick- my life moved more online too.

  • 3 tricky // Apr 7, 2008 at 11:31 am

    this might sound kind of obvious… but have you tried to extract the HD and plug it on another computer (to see if HDD controller is not the problem) or put it on an enclosure and try to rescue the data on another computer?

  • 4 e.p.c. // Apr 7, 2008 at 11:40 am

    I just sort of assume drives are going to go bad, especially drives in laptops, and back up my home directory (My Documents on windows) on a regular basis using rsync to multiple external drives.

    Disk is cheap, recovery is not. You could buy 2Tb of external drives for under $800.

    Where it could be an issue for you if you don’t do the recovery is if you ever get any litigation over ventbox or bricabox, and the relevant documents were solely on that system.

  • 5 Dick // Apr 7, 2008 at 11:57 am

    My condolences. Even if the above suggestions help, what a pain. I am backed up in 17 places — owing to a fatal file error back in 1995. But if I had to reconstruct everything… yikes. Us old-school guys are still all hard drive all the time. Time for me to subscribe to a back-up service. I am glad there are still folks out there smart enough to find a way to squeeze a subscription buck out of me.

  • 6 Matt // Apr 9, 2008 at 1:19 pm

    You should check Mozy. After starting with automatic remote backup, I think it’s the only way to go. It’s very nice to know that my files are always backed up far far away from my computer.

    Still, it’s no fun to lose so much stuff.

Leave a Comment