I'm going to tell the short version of this story so as not to reveal all the details of what a dope I am. The one-sentence abstract is "back up your stuff." I've been pretty lax about getting data from our laptop (a Powerbook) to our external hard drive, which I keep in the basement, and don't hook up very often, and blah, blah, blah. Computer crashes and lots of stuff from the last year is gone. Pictures and music, mostly. Including all 1100 or so pics of this project, which had been on my iphone until just days before the fateful moment. C'est la vie. Sarah doesn't want to even think about all the family pics that are gone. I feel terrible. So back up your stuff.
I will tell this part of the story in some detail: Apple sent me a brand new MacBookPro out of the kindness of their hearts, though I was one day past the expiration of the 3-yr extended apple car warranty. They probably could have just fixed the hardware problem on the old machine and been done with it (or worse, told me tough luck). So I've got a brand new fancy pants computer (albeit with no pictures or music on it). Now it's kind of their fault that all the data's gone from the old machine (they erased it in trying to fix some minor problems the machine was having), and it's kinda their fault that the computer crashed (it was fine when I sent it off to have the mouse pad - which was acting up - replaced just before my warranty expired). But they tell you over and over again to back up your stuff before you send it to them, and I didn't.
Anyway, they sent me a new $2k computer when they didn't really have to and when I fully expected I was SOL.
And back your stuff up.
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5 comments:
So sorry to hear that. We had a G3 iBook which fell victim (three times!) to a known problem with the video circuitry loosening on motherboard due to excess heat. It didn't affect anything else, so I was able to start it up in target-disk mode and connect to our G4 tower after the first time. We bought an external drive afterward for backups, but doing them was a pain because the external wasn't typically connected to the computer.
We've since gotten an Airport Extreme and connected two USB drives to it. Now our backups are done automatically, wirelessly, and redundantly (lesson learned after our first external drive failed!). We were getting the Extreme anyway, so the additional cost was only about $250 for the two drives and USB hub.
A bright side is that you have this blog and at least have a lot of the photos you took of the house. Small consolation, I know, but it's something.
Sorry guys. That really stinks.
But about the house, it got me thinking. Are you setting up any sort of network in there? It sounds like you're Mac people, but right now I'm setting up a wireless network in my new house to share files between my Mac and PC. If you have something like that set up, maybe you could have the two machines backing each other up on a schedule. And you might be able to stream your media files from one machine to another or to a TV.
That way, not only will you be backed up, but you will be able to appreciate those new pictures all the more. (Not sure how you'd deal with the renters accessing your pics though)
oh no!! i guess it's time for you to take a trip to SD so that we can copy all the music from our hard drive to your new fancy machine. :)
Would you consider bringing all that cool music with you to Chicago? That might just be the factor that gets us to finally buy tickets to come watch you run for three hours...
ABSOLUTELY! Anything to get you guys to come to Chicago! Oh, and 3 hours is more like Seiko's time...you're gonna have to stay a little longer than that for me. :)
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