My harddrive died and I nearly my data - and I had a backup drive.
In real estate the saying is location, location, location. In tech, the saying is back it up, back it up, back it up. Literally. Three times. Preferably in different places. My harddrive on a two-year-old MacBook Pro died and I nearly lost three months of data - and I had a backup drive.
Now, I'm backing up in triplicate. I now have two backup drives, one automated and one manual, and a Mobile Me account.
When my drive died, it was in the middle of backing up. I wasn't too worried, after all I had backed up my data on Time Machine previously. According to the helpful sounding Apple Genius, all I had to do was get a new drive. Since it was under an extended warranty, it would not cost me the $300.00 they normally charged. It would likely get fixed in 24-48 hours. Once I got my Mac back, all I had to do was bypass the user registration and click "Restore from a Time Machine Backup". What could be more simple? I take my computer and my backup drive to the nearest Apple store.The next day my Mac was ready early at 8:00am, or as the email notice cheerily said, "just come by and you will be reunited with your Mac". Reunited, I thought, that sounds nice. I don't have to reinstall all my programs and copy thousands of files like I did with a PC. Just turn it on and restore.
My first inkling that something was wrong was when it wouldn't restore from the Time Machine backup. Thinking back, my first inkling that something was wrong should have been that a two-year-old drive on a high-end laptop died in the first place. When I was at the Apple store, it was packed with people, half of whom were waiting at the Genius Bar with stoic faces and Mac Books under their arms. The lady sitting next to me explained that she understood my predicament since she lost two drives in two years. Really I said, that's a lot. Yes, she said, I use to backup every week, now I backup everyday. Hmmm.
My Genius was very nice and very experienced and patiently explained Apple's policy on customer data. They do NOT touch customer data under any circumstances, even to try to retrieve data from a failed drive. When drives failed, they were sent back to Apple to be shredded. That's right, shredded. As in, you'll need the NSA to restore that data. I could sit at the Bar and copy data myself, but he could not help or advise me. No problem, I'm a smart cookie, I know what I need off this drive. Let's see, all contract work from Oct to the present, just to be safe. And I'll need my podcasts, my music and my pictures. iPhoto uses it's own filing system, so I need to get one huge file off this drive to run it. Hmmm, that file appears to be too big to transfer and it may be damaged. Although it's listed, the file size won't show up and that's not good. That's OK, I've got my pictures saved in separate folders as jpgs so I'm good. I save them there directly from my camera and then import the folder into iPhoto because I knew that if I needed individual jpgs, I would have to open iPhoto and export them. And I might have some sort of giant iPhoto file with data embedded in it to deal with. I'm pleased that my emergency photo backup plan worked. Photos are saved, I'm good to go.
Oh and should get all my Downloads too. Wait, there's 17,000 files? I guess I'll just get some software I downloaded in the last three months and the stock image files I've been downloading that I paid a pretty penny for and probably won't be able to download again. Well, I guess I got everything. Thanks friendly Apple Genius, and I walk out of the mall. All is well in my world and I have a half day off to boot.
I spend a quiet Thurs evening in front of the TV. I sleep well that night. The next morning I check my email and see the "reunite with your Mac" email. Great, I think, I can go pick it up and get right back to work. Then I realize: I didn't save my email off the old computer. What if it got sent back to Apple to be shredded? I may lose all my emails if my backup fails. Mac Mail has a nice feature that lets you copy one folder called, conveniently enough, "Mail", from one place to another so all I had to do was copy that one folder to the external drive. I call Apple and ask if they had the drive, if so I'd like to take it home. "Sure, we do that for you", the friendly Apple guy says. My drive is safe and I know where to get a sled for it so I can get the data off of it. I am not that worried about my data. I have a late breakfast with my husband, get dressed and head down to the mall.
I take my computer and the old drive and head to CompUSA on Capital. When I get there, the associate at the front door won't let me take my backpack with my computer and old harddrive in with me, even though I agree to be searched coming and going. I take the drive with me and leave the backpack after making the associate promise she'd put it behind the counter. I am worried about the computer.
An associate named Jared is very helpful and I get all the stuff I need. The price are good here so I pick up a wireless mouse and another backup drive. In the process of getting all the stuff I need to read the drive, I drop the harddrive. It lands on a front corner and makes a sickly click on the concrete floor. I am worried about my Mail. I have a sudden urge to get out of there asap.
When I get home I start up my Mac. It plays a happy little welcome movie where "welcome" flashes on the screen in different languages, one after another, while some "do-do-da-do" music plays. I feel that warm fuzzy Apple feeling. The movie ends with a screen asking me if I want to register as a new user or restore from backup. I click on restore and sit back.
The MacBook boots and then finishes. Wait, this is not my backdrop. Where are my programs? This is not a good sign. Undiscouraged, I open Time Machine to load my backup that way. Time Machine opens with a spacy flourish and several finder windows appear in order, receding off into the background. I click on the top one and hit restore. Nothing happens. I realize Restore is grayed out. Hmmm. I try a few different windows. Nothing. Then I select the files inside of one and the Restore button returns to white. Well that's stupid. I try to restore my backup. I check to see if it loaded correctly by searching for a recent file. It's not there. I am now very worried about my data.
I now try to shut down and reboot the Mac and try to get the restore to happen before it books. I try about 4 times, each time I have to wait through the welcome movie with the "do-do-da-do" music. It doesn't feel happy to me now. My backup won't load. I'm starting to feel a panic creeping up on me.
Fortunately, Time Machine is not set up like iPhoto. There is one big backup file, but you can open it and access the individual folders. The files from my backup from Oct 19th are uncorrupted. Ironically, that's my birthday. I check the data, it's there and I can open random files. I select my folders and copy it to the new external harddrive.
I check the integrity of the files I save at the Apple store, they seem OK. I wade through newly purchased plastic parts scattered on my desk and the floor and get the old damaged drive hooked up. I plug it into the Mac and hold my breath. It turns on and the drive spins. Not a healthy sounding spin, but it's moving. I get the following error message punctuated with the image of a large red stop sign:
This drive was unable to be repaired...file damage may have occured...you should backup this drive as soon as possible...you have limited access to this drive.
You have limited access to this drive. Oh shit. I find my mail folder and copy the Mail file over; I have 3GB of email. I click on Mail. It loads, oh thank you. Today's emails start popping up my inbox. My old folders are there, folders that took hours of work and money paid to a personal assistant to create, dammit. I am extremely grateful.
I think, this drive could die any second - I should copy it immediately. There are over 150MB of data on it, and the copying takes all night. I spend a quiet Friday teaching makeup lessons at the Y and eating Tangerine Cafe takeout. Mmmm, pad thai vegetable. That makes me feel better. I'm worried about my data and I do not sleep well that night. I wake up at 4 am and check it, click on some error messages and keep copying. It takes until the next morning to finish copying. I have a late breakfast with my husband, get dressed and go to check my data. It's not there, it didn't copy to the new backup drive. Maybe there's something I didn't set up right with the new external harddrive. I'm mad at the loss of time, but I still have the data.
I select just the most recent data on the old drive and try to copy it over to the new harddrive. Error messages pop up. I click on them and they disappear, but the the copying stalls. The drive is dying.
Then I select the data I copied at the Apple store on the external harddrive and drag it to the new harddrive. Do I want to overwrite data that exists, it asks me. It's talking about the data from Oct 19th, most of those files are the same. I think about it, these files may be damaged, maybe that's not a good idea. I click no and assume it will copy only the new files. When it's done, I check it. It's not on the new hard drive. The new hard drive is still showing data from Oct 19, 2010. Maybe it didn't copy right so I check the external drive.
It is not there.
It has to be on the external drive, it has to be somewhere, it' s not just gone, is it? Eventually I piece it together. On a PC, when you drag and drop files from one window to the next, it copies the files. On a Mac it moves the files. My new harddrive and my old damaged harddrive had the same name, so it tried to copy to a "Macintosh HD", maybe it didn't copy to the one I wanted. Whatever it did when it copied, the data came off the external drive and either disappeared into the ether or was now on a damaged drive. The most recent data I had was now on a dying drive. Oh my god what the f*ck oh sh*t oh what do I do. I let the panic go for a minute before I get a grip. I'll copy the data over to the desktop instead of where I wanted it on the new harddrive and see what happens.
I started to copy over the files from the damaged harddrive again. Some copy and some don't. I have to copy one folder at a time. I get some error messages here and there. Throughout the day, I got 95% + of my files. I still had to reload all my applications, and I am still worried about my data, but also very relieved. I'm backing it up on two external harddrives and one online system. The new backup system should keep this from happing again. I won't have to go though this again, I say to myself, I don't have to worry about my data.
But I still do, and so should you. Harddrives aren't "hard" and saved data may not really be saved at all. Backups fail, restores fail. Maybe the abilities of computer technology have reached farther than their reliability. Maybe it's a cost issue and we're paying the price for cheaply made electronics. Regardless, our data is important enough to keep safe even if it's one more thing we have to worry about. I remember a couple of months back hearing a radio DJ rag on a celebrity for having redundant backups of his Twitter feed. At the time, I thought that was a smart plan, for a celebrity. I don't backup my Twitter feed, I chuckle to myself, it's just not that important to me. All my important data is backed up, safe forever...
