The K Experience

Time Machine Just saved my life

Present - Here and Now

Wednesday, 27 August 2008

First of all I thought it was amazing. The convenience, the ease of use, the automation...then the novelty wore off, and I thought I would hardly ever use it. Then, just a few days ago, the worst happened, and I just thank Mac that Time Machine was around to save the day...

Been a Mac user for nearly a year now, and so far things are going quite well. Was a long time Windows user before this, but I adapted to it quite well being the "under-nerd" that I am (not quite a nerd, but aspiring). For the first few months after I got my Macbook, I scoured the Apple forums, such as Mac Rumors , and Apple Insider , for hints, tips, apps, and deals. I scored pretty big quite early on with the Black Friday deal, which got me Mac Office 04 and 08 for just postage and Packing (Yea it was Microsoft, but it was cheap!). Being a student, I also got Leopard for dirt cheap too. Getting a free Ipod and Printer with the Mac didn't hurt either, especially when I scored an extra $50 from the rebate (Ipod was $150, the rebate was $199). Coming from Windows, my biggest worry was the amount of free software that would be available, but there is more than enough out there for me. So overall, Apple has been good to me. I can't complain.

Even though I loved all the Leopard features, it took me a while to get Time Machine up and running, mainly because I had to make room on my external hard drive. But once I got it going, I was extremely impressed. The graphics, was way cool, and it was just so innovative. I used it quite solid for about 2 months, allowing the hourly backup to do it's things.

It was around this time that it started to lose its appeal. I must have used it about 3 times during the year to restore some random odd files, but nothing important. And the hourly backups started getting on my nerves. I know I could have hacked it to backup at different time intervals, but I couldn't really be bothered.

Soon I wasn't even connecting it to the backup drive at all, apart from when to get something from it. Every so often I would get the "You haven't backed up in 10 days" message, which encouraged me to backup, but then settled into a once a month, or whenever kind of routine. For a period I turned it off altogether. I just didn't see myself using it at all.

It wasn't until a few days ago that it actually proved its worth. I was on Second Life, killing time, checking out some random places, and decided to visit some Naruto Anime place. I wondered round a bit, before I realised that everything was blocked off as private. I walked around a bit more, and the computer froze. I didn't think much of it. I waited for the rainbow beach-ball to stop doing its thing, and continued, and then it froze again. This time I was totally stuck. No amount of key pressing got it going. I waited a good few minutes, then gave up, and decided to do a hard reset. Not thinking much of it but feeling quite annoyed, I turned the mac back on, but to my dismay, it refused to turn on properly. It hung around on the grey screen for a while, and gave off this strange "can't quite get into gear" sound from the hard disk compartment.

At this point I started to get worried. After leaving it for a while, the screen started to show that folder with the question mark, meaning I was pretty screwed. After a bit more prodding and poking, I figured out that the hard disk had died on me. Strange! I hadn't banged it, or anything. I just restarted it while it had frozen. I had no idea that could have a negative effect on the hardware. I guess, the fans going full blast, and the processor on overdrive at the time of hard reset may have had something to do with it, but it was still very unexpected.

I rummaged through my old files to find my Apple care documents (which I also got on discount :)), and phoned up the Apple people. ( I still had about 2 weeks on my standard 1 year warranty that I could have used by the way). After explaining my issue to the guy on the other side, he offered to send me a new hard disk to allow me to fix it myself, which I think was pretty cool. I didn't have to worry about sending off my Mac to some random person, and didn't have to worry about my memory upgrade going missing if they gave me a new Mac.

I got the new hard disk today, 3 days after the phone call (I would have got it yesterday, if my apartment wasn't so anal about letting in the DHL delivery person :( I had to wait outside my apartment for 3 hours, so I could let him in). It was now that the good fortune came into play. Like I said earlier, I hadn't been backing up as often as I used to. It was about once a month or so, but for some reason, on the day before the big disaster, I wanted to get something off my external, and while it was hooked up the backup was doing it's thing. So the next day, when hard disk died, I wasn't as screwing as I would have been.

The task of restoring my computer was even smoother than I thought. I whipped out the old hard disk, plugged in the new one, formatted it, and then installed my OS. Had to install 10.4 first as my 10.5 was only an upgrade DVD, but that was cool. After 10.4 was done, I did a full install of 10.5, which I later found out was not necessary. All I had to do was select the restore option from the 10.5 DVD and hook up my backup drive, which I did eventually. And 2 hours later, Voila, my mac was back, as good as new(ish). What was so amazing was that it was so easy. It restored everything, (which is what backups should do, so I shouldn't be so amazed). The only existing sign of any failure, is that I lost my boot camp partition, which I hardly ever used. However, I do have my VMware Virtual XP, which I didn't think would be restored.

Lesson:
Funnily enough, I have taught Computer Science at university, and secondary school levels, and have stressed to my pupils the importance of backups. My biggest loss before this one was when I lost about 10gigs worth of Music, and pictures, just before I left to go to Japan for a year. I used that story in my lessons to get the students to backup. To have slacked off since then nearly cost me big time. If it wasn't for the lucky connect the day before the hard disk failure, I would have been screwed. I never thought I would be so grateful for Time Machine. I'm gonna make sure the backups are more regular this time. I'll tweak it to once a day though, once an hour is a bit too much.

Lastly, I wonder what was up with that Naruto Second life place? What was it that caused my Mac to lock up? Definately not going there again.

[Source: Second Life pic from Westcomm.org, Time Machine Pic from Freerepublic.com.]