DrunkenBlog

Data Disaster

So, this is the absolute worst.

My 15" Powerbook has been having problems for awhile, and Apple has been being a bit ornery about sending it in. I know I registered AppleCare, I've got the box for it sitting in front of me... but for some reason they can't find it in the system, which means a whole rigamarole. Faxing invoices, UPCs, a real drag.

Since I've had a few massive projects over the last few weeks, plus the whole blog getting swamped thing and some personal stuff going on... I've been trying to make do. When your powerbook is your main machine, doing without it for a week is just seriously unappealing. And the problems weren't that bad, so I've been putting it off and trying to make do.

Basically it came with a broken RAM clip, and the fan was starting to make a slight noise when it spun up and spun down, nothing major but noticeable. Figured better safe than sorry, but with the whole crappy process of getting it fixed... just wasn't pushing myself to get it in over those two little things, like I said, I can make do, and it's not as though the fan has ever been quiet. Normally it's simple. Call, explain, box gets sent...

The kicker was the hinge. I've been gone for awhile, coming and going, so I get home and open it up and *crack* the left hinge snaps. The hinge didn't separate, or come loose. It literally snapped where the screen met the hinge. As a slight digression, titanium my ass. This thing has been babied. It doesn't even get opened and closed once a day on average since I've owned it. And it snaps in half. That's... disappointing.

I faxed in my info and it was past AppleCare hours, so called today... and they said they didn't get it. Great, I'll do it again tomorrow, but that's a Saturday and it's going to be such a drag. Either way, I've been working very, very hard on a ton of projects and I need that data, some of it can't even be replaced via hard work. So even though the S.M.A.R.T. status says its fine, I need to back this data up, and now.

I happen to use a piece of software called Carbon Copy Cloner to do my backups to a set of firewire drives, and it's a nifty piece of software. Plug the drive in, load up the software, copy laptop hard drive to firewire and done. Unfortunately CCC has a habit of getting "confused" when old data is involved, so it's recommended to initialize the target drive, then clone to it. I always do so, with good results.

I don't touch the screen, just carry it into the other room gingerly and everything seemed to be working fine, even though the lower left hand corner seemed a bit dim. Plug in the drives and load up CCC. Initialize the firewire drive, start the copy, and go put on some coffee as I'm going to be making a lot of calls over this. Making calls, enjoying coffee.

Then I hear this from the other room:

whiiiiiiir *clack* whiiiiiiir *clack* whiiiiiiir *clack* whiiiiiiir *clack* whiiiiiiir *clack* whiiiiiiir *clack* whiiiiiiir *clack* whiiiiiiir *clack*....

Freaky scary.

It's amazing how unsocial you get when you hear that unnatural of a sound coming out of something that's practically an extension of your being. Hangup, hit the computer. Hardcore GUI lockup, nothing is responding and the drive is just going nutso. Read sound, then awful harsh write sound like I've never heard.

Figuring it can't be good, I press and hold the power button just to get it to stop, and in doing so realize just how hot that button is and have to wrap my sleeve up over my thumb. Yeah, the whole back part of the case near the top of the keyboard was that hot, you just couldn't hold your skin on it for any period of time without major pain. And then I realized the fan was not going at all. This can't be good.

Damage control: try to fire it up, nothing. Drive sounds like its trying to do something, but it's usually a whiiiiiiir *click* sound. This is just a whiiiiiiir . Up comes the blinking system file icon... not good. Grab Diskwarrior, and pop it in, as perhaps some process just went nuts doing i/o and things are a little messed up with the drive headers... and hey, DiskWarrior has saved my ass when it comes to firewire more than once.

DiskWarrior can't see a thing, not even the external firewire drive, just the DiskWarrior CD. Just to be sure, move the firewire drive to another computer. Nope, nothing there of value, all messed up. Can initialize, but that's about it. Really, really not good. The Powerbook drive is toast, and the backup drive is fubar.

I do have a backup of the backup, but the last full one (not incremental when I hit a stopping point) from before I was going everywhere and nowhere... or about 3 weeks ago. Huge amounts of work, and as I said, certain media files which can't be duplicated. And if you've emailed me in the last few weeks, consider it gone.

We aren't going to go into the work situation any further, it's just way, way, way too depressing at the moment, and I'm way, way, way too sober at the moment.

This is beyond uncool.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    May 08, 2004, at 06:51 AM