This
week, Michel Munger wrote a great article on hard disk maintenance,
Mac Maintenance, Part 1:
Protect Your Hard Drive and Data. It ties in perfectly with my
article this week, which is about what happens when you don't keep
backups and aren't careful about keeping your hard drive's activity
to a minimum.
A neighbor of mine called me up the other day, asking if I could
help her with her 867 MHz
Quicksilver Power Mac. I'd helped her pick out the machine from
the local CompUSA about two years ago. I'd since forgotten the
specifications, but looking at it again reminded me that we'd
upgraded the RAM to 1.2 GB and installed an AirPort card.
The hard drive that shipped with the machine was a 60 GB Maxtor,
and it had failed completely and refused to spin up.
Her first question was, "I have my Christmas list of 250 people,
my email address book, and all of the photo's that I'd scanned in
and worked on in the past two years - how can I get them back?"
Generally, when a hard drive dies the only way to get the files
back is to send the drive to a place that specializes in data
recovery, such as DriveSavers. Sometimes, if the drive is just
stuck, you can tap it against a tabletop and hope that it works
just long enough to copy the data off of it.
In her case, unfortunately, the drive was completely gone, and
it just wasn't worth it to send the drive out for data
recovery.
The next question was how much it would it cost to replace the
drive. Apple had wanted to charge her around $200 for a new drive,
and she felt that it was too much for her to spend.
She'd get the computer back, sure, but she'd have to spend her
time installing all of the software (including the operating
system) that I had previously helped her install when we bought the
system. She's at the level where she can use the software, but
installing it is slightly beyond her capabilities.
I was a bit surprised that Apple wanted to charge her $200 for a
replacement 60 GB hard drive, so we ended up going down to the
local CompUSA where she had purchased the computer to see what they
had to offer in terms of ATA hard drives. We quickly found a 120 GB
Maxtor for $94 - it was a no-brainer which one she'd choose
Within a half-hour I had installed it and was installing Mac
OS X.
The first change I noticed is that the machine boots up a little
bit faster than I remembered it doing, but then again the last time
I used it it had been running OS X 10.2, not 10.3, which she
had me install for her (she hadn't been able to figure out how to
do it). This might be due to the 7200 rpm speed of the drive vs.
what was probably a 5400 rpm drive.
After a couple hours, I had reinstalled all of the software that
she asked me to, including a few updates that she never bothered to
deal with. Re-inputting her contacts, from her memory, was a
difficult task, but the new version of Mail in OS X 10.3
(which I'd never used - I use webmail) made viewing and sorting her
mailboxes slightly easier than the version I had initially had to
set up for her.
She's still missing her Christmas card list (her response to
that was along the lines of, "Oh, well, I hate sending out
Christmas cards. Now I have an excuse"), and all of the photos that
she took will have to be re-scanned. The digital photos are lost,
since her digital camera had been stolen and she had no
backups.
The moral of the story is back up your hard drive.
Or be like me - "'I can live without my data, I swear" - until
it actually happens.
