death chirrup
It started suddenly: while I was working on the party invitation for Bella’s seventh birthday there was a sound like a quiet cricket’s chirrup.
And another, and another, marking a lazy rhythm.
Hmmm, it seemed to be coming from inside the MacBook. I must do a backup, I thought idly. Then the screen froze, all except the pointer.
Restart. Soft grinding noises – not my teeth (yet) but again coming from the machine’s guts.
White screen. A pause. While I waited and hoped.
Then, that icon of dread, a flashing question mark inside a folder. The hard disk was hosed.
This is really just another object lesson on the need for a decent backup strategy. I did have one, but I’d let it lapse to an extent. So I’ve lost two months worth of data.
And now I wait for a replacement to arrive from Ascent. The old disk appears to be completely unrecoverable, even with some specialist tools … and Apple seem happy for intrepid amateurs to perform the necessary surgery themselves.
Wish me luck.
Patrick Quinn-Graham
5 September 2007, 23:27 #
The last drive** that happened to me with I thought (in single user mode, using mount to connect to a windows share, after bringing networking up manually) thought I’d managed to save everything, then found I’d lost 6 months of photos*.
After that I started backing up religiously. My photos are backed up (using vaults) to two drives, my User folder (except for iTunes) is backed up daily to a hard drive under my desk at work that never moves.
You have my sympathies.
* the photo story has a happy ending. 18 months later, while trawling through a folder of stuff saved before giving away the box I backed things up on to, the photos surfaced.
** have I really managed to go two years without a hard drive failure? Oh dear.
Heck
6 September 2007, 01:49 #
My sympathies as well.
I’ve had about 30 external disks so far, and two have died on me.
I’ve had about 5 Apple laptops, and two of those had serious problems with the internal drive.
So… That’s my experience. Apple is not so stellar after all when it comes to hadware, I don’t care who makes the drives for them, they are the ones who sell them.
I lost several months of work and personal data too once thanks to Apple and my “I’ll do it later” attitude… I never recovered what I lost, lucky Patrick.
Thus, I never keep anything on any machine anymore, I back up everything daily and redundantly to several encrypted local and remote drives and if it’s important I back it up right away. In short, I never have anything that doesn’t have at the very least one copy for more than a few minutes and I definitely make sure it’s not tied to a particular computer.
Seems like I’m crazy to most people. Most people haven’t lost months of data… Yet.
Patrick may be religious about it by now, I’ve become a fanatic. The peace of mind it brings is priceless, I assure you.
Patrick Quinn-Graham
6 September 2007, 02:31 #
I was lucky – I knew the drive was failing, but while the OS wouldn’t boot normally I could get it up in single user mode. While it’s kind of nasty getting stuff out that way, it does work.
As to laptop hard drives – my desktop drives (Apple use similar one) are fine. I figure laptop drives have a much tougher life, and the two laptops I’ve owned with SMS have not had failures. Not a coincidence I’m sure.
Alan
6 September 2007, 07:11 #
Thanks guys.
I’ve tried a couple of different things: firewire target disk mode; Disk Utility; Apple Hardware Test; and the abovementioned software tool – and it seems that the drive is unrecognisable to the OS.
So I doubt that even your (Patrick) Apple-ninja method would work. I suppose I should try it though. Is there something on MacOSXHints?
Patrick Quinn-Graham
6 September 2007, 08:28 #
I’d say it’s unlikely Alan, I’m afraid.
My method worked because it would actually get to the gray apple (indeed, it got to the blue screen, but never the progress bar that precedes the login window.
Basically, you can try booting holding down S, I think. But if even firerwire target disk mode doesn’t like it, I don’t hold much hope for it working.
Alan
6 September 2007, 09:05 #
I thought as much. The disk is unrecognisable no matter what I try, so booting into single user mode isn’t going to work.
I’ll give it a crack though, just in case.
Heck
6 September 2007, 12:01 #
I agree with Patrick, if firewire mode doesn’t pick it up…
Your last hope is to actually take it out of the laptop and plug it to something else — another laptop, a desktop machine… In case it’s the connection inside your laptop that fails and not the disk itself. Far-fetched, I’d say, but oh well.
If that doesn’t work either, then it’s definitely a damaged drive and you can give up (unless you have precious data that must be recovered at all costs) and just replace it…
Good luck !