Wow, ouch. I just recovered from what the nice people at Apple called, clearly impressed, a "very rare" type of complete system software failure. Neat! I got to experience the joy of a total system reinstall. On a Mac! I didn't lose anything, thank goodness, but it more-or-less ruined my day yesterday. How much fun is it to totally reload your entire iTunes library? Plenty!
A lesson learned: when you replace your iMac, keep the old one around, sulking in a corner until it can be of use. I was able to Firewire them together and retrieve everything accumulated over the past three months before doing the reinstall.
Next purchase: Time Capsule.* You bastards.
*Actually, probably not. But I probably will get a new backup drive and use Time Machine.
8 comments:
Time Capsule has Wi-Fi and matches the design of your iMac, so it's "elegant" but any outboard USB2 or FW HD for $100 will get you the same results, for what it's worth (and that would be about $400!).
OW. You have my sympathies sir. I know it's a drag in our fast-paced world, but triple-redundant backups are a very good thing I assure you. It's good to hit the ground running after such a disaster.
But see, the difference between Mac owners and PC owners ... system failures are rare, and you can usually get your stuff back!
Wheee!
Yay, Princess! The foundation that's planning your future library is grateful.
You've just inspired me to finally get Leopard, or wait till Snow Leopard is out, if for nothing else but the ease of backup. I finally got it on a work machine, and now wish I had it at home. I'm using my backup as auxiliary storage, so I may have to do something about that... too much in iTunes, and too many software license codes I don't remember where I put the paper copy of to risk a melt down...
I have an external hard drive that I back up to.
It was what saved my sorry ass 2 years ago when my iMac decided that enough was enough.
The Princess should buy SuperDuper and a small, elegant firewire or usb drive. You get a fully bootable incremental backup.
Firewire has saved my bacon many a time. I've managed to rescue friends' data when they thought all was lost. And, DavidN - thanks for the tip about SuperDuper!
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