The HD is dead. Long live the HD.
by Volker Weber
Today, the HD in Raven, my black MacBook, died. The computer originally came with an 80 gig drive, which I later upgraded to 160. Now this drive died, and since the computer is still in fine working condition, I am doubling the capacity again. And although I have a full backup of the old drive, I am going to give it a fresh installation without any baggage.
And when it's all done, I am going to sync the data back in from Mobile Me and Windows Live Sync.
Let this be a reminder to you not to trust your data to a single drive. Never.
Comments
I once had the idea to have my iPod as the single point of storage for my music (admitted, in retrospective a stupid idea). Then the hard disk died and I had to re-rip quite a number of my CDs...
I did learn and when the hard disk died a second and a third time, I had a backup. And actually, since the third disk died, the iPod has never received a fix, as all deaths happened in about 6-8 months (of course just past warranty...).
In the days when I still had a PC, I thought that backing up data is for sissies and I just threw out the oldest HD when I bought a new one. Well, until I was writing my master's thesis and the second oldest HD died.
I spent two weeks getting to know the wonderful world of a Linux liveCD with dd_rescue and managed to get back 90% of my data, but ever since then I'm having two external harddrives that are being mirrored daily with rsync...
i got a Intel SSD for my laptop its really the best hardware investment i done in years , i dont think ill every buy a "real" hdd for a laptop again
fast and silent but size still lacking and price is a bit over the top.
Stuff like papers for my studies I always throw on live skydrive or I just send an e-mail to myself.
If you do that daily or even more often you even have an automatic versioning of your paper.
The rest is backuped from time to time but too less, honestly.
I have never lost a harddrive in my entire life. From all I read and hear - I am the lucky guy. So far.
@Oswald - you're still using your first computer right? ;)
Patrick, agreed. Most important documents always get 'cyber' backed up in my personal gmail account as well.
Thanks Volker, I haven't done a backup on my personal desktop in months. Let me set it up tonight.
Between Synk and TimeMachine, I think I have it all covered. Unless of course there is a break in (or fire). Broadband is too limited in NZ to go the cloud.
I just spent money on a 1TB TimeCapsule. Expensive in a way that you get more backup space for less, inexpensive in the way I will not have to think about backups again. Still have my most important docs on a seperate HD as well.
Uhm Volker why do you name your notebook after my smtp-server?
Experience with failing harddrives didn't only led me to more backups.
I would advise to encrypt all drives completely where this is possible. If your drive is encryped you have no concerns sending it to the vendor for a replacement.
