5 Life Lessons Taught to Me By a Dying Computer
Posted at 1:28 PM Dec 03, 2008
By Bonnie Ruberg
There's nothing fun about your computer dying, especially when you're a writer and you haven't backed up files in... well, never. That, as you may have guessed, is exactly what happened to me last weekend. First things started to move sluggishly. Then my laptop wouldn't shut down. When it finally did, it wouldn't turn back on. Even my Apple engineer roommate couldn't fix it. That's how I found myself curled on in a ball on the floor, frantically playing through my mind a list of all the files I'd doubtless lost. It was, in short, no fun.However, once I'd calmed down, my roomy recovered most of my files, and I realized life was in fact not over, it occurred to me I did learn a few things from this gut-wrenching experience. Here then are the life lessons taught to me by a dying computer, shared with you in the hopes that you never have to experience the horrible feeling of laptop loss for yourselves:
5. Always, always, always back up.
It can happen to you. Seriously. And chances are, it will. I've heard the "back up" mantra countless times before, and yet somehow I was blissfully strolling through computer land believing that, for some mysterious reason, my files would always be safe. Save yourself the sheer terror of losing everything you've ever worked on and get your ass an external hard drive. Like, now.
4. Living with computer dorks is awesome.There are lots of reasons to love tech-savvy people: they can set stuff up, they geek out adorably, they crack jokes that make you feel cooler by comparison. The greatest thing about living with two such dorks is that, when your computer is going down like the Titanic, you can curl up in a ball in the corner while they take care of everything. Then you can buy them dinner to say, "Thanks for your help, and please don't hesitate to fix everything again when this happens the next time."
3. People are sympathetic -- to a point.
Tell your friends, family, and employers that you can't do all the things you were supposed to -- send out that "thank you" card to Nana, plan someone's birthday party, actually do your work -- because your computer just up and died on you, and they'll feel bad. They might even cut you 24 hours of slack. But sooner rather than later they're going to get that instant-gratification internet itch and wonder why the heck you're not back up to speed. Just watch.
---
2. Sometimes it's nice to just start over.It may sound bizarre, but after the initial panic of watching your laptop suffer the equivalent of a life-threatening stroke, there's something strangely peaceful about the idea of having lost it all. Gone are the emails you were supposed to respond to but never did. Gone are the articles you were working on and now we'll surely be assigned to someone else. Heck, you could start over. You have no more ties. Why not go farm beets?
1. Apple store employees aren't as handy as they seem.
When I took my laptop in for repair the morning after the horrible death scene described above -- it turns out it needed a new hard drive -- I was impressed at how quickly the guy at the Genius Bar took care of my problem. He whipped out the drive, tested it, and stuck a new one back in. I even said, "Wow, you make that look so easy." Silly me. No one is ever that competent. When I got my laptop home and started it up, it began to vibrate. It hasn't stopped since. Guess where I'm headed Friday morning bright and early? Back to the Apple Store...
Comments
thats why you need a good apple specialist shop vs. an apple store. people at the apple store are pretty much worthless and just hired to fit there image. an apple specialist can do the same warranty and non warranty work and usually non warranty stuff is much cheaper than the apple store, because apple charges arm arm and a leg for generic parts like ram where the specialist will probably have there own much more reasonably priced source for memory. also probably have a better selection of hard dirves should you ever want to upgrade. (the hard drives in early macbooks are horrible and we end up replacing them all the time.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 07:23:45 AMAwesomne story. No doubt it is nice to have a computer geek friend!
www.anonweb.eu.tc
Posted 12/06/2008 at 07:26:02 AMAs opposed to Justin, this is why you need to remember that you need a good "computer technician" not an apple store genius or a so called "apple specialist". Apple is just like all the rest now, and actually always has been. Anyone claiming to be an Apple specialist is just perpetuating this illusion that Apple is something out of the ordinary. Actually, it never really was at all.
A good computer tech would have pulled the drive, retrieved the SMART data and would have seen if the drive was really in need of replacement. More often than not, you just needed a few sectors repaired then you would have been back up.
Again, contrary to Justin, hard drives in early macbooks are no different than _insert_randowm_laptop_brand_ being sold at that time.Apple does not and did not use anythign other than the flavor of the week hard drives avail to OEMs, ALL OEMS.
Anyone claiming any different is trying to be the omnipotent voice behind the curtain and should be ignored.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 07:35:03 AMYes, us geeks can be handy. Not only last month I resurrected a work colleges dads harddisk, the pcb had gone, I had a duplicate dead disk (surface damage) and I just swapped the pcb's over and bingo fixed disk. On that disk were all of his photos of his kids / family : irreplaceable stuff.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 07:43:28 AMI MUST SAY ITS BETTER TO HAVE A BACKUP THAN TO GET FUCKED UP.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 08:12:37 AMA few suggestions:
Backup your working files to the Web. There are lots of backup outfits out there to choose from. Your files can then be retrieved with any computer anywhere that has an Internet connection, such as a coffee house.
Backup your working files to a USB thumb drive. They're up to 8 GB now, maybe more by the time I post this.
Use automated backup software and schedule dailies to multiple places - Web, thumb, external USB drive.
Use gmail. Google docs? Naw.
Keep old working computers for recovery machines should you get into a pinch with a dying primary machine. I have three machines underneath my desk, any of which can be used for production work. Will be buying a netbook (low powered cheap laptop under $400) for mobility and disaster recovery early in 2009.
Learn what disaster recovery is and how it should be done.
Never trust a computer no matter who makes it or what operating system it runs. Stuff happens. I've seen a lot of stuff happen since beginning with computers in 1979. I'm very olde tyme.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 08:14:00 AMPoint 2 is so true - it is satisfying to start again, it forces you to evaluate which programs you really need and gives you the incentive to try keep your machine clutter free.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 08:17:33 AMlol, apple fags can't figure out their computers.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 09:06:33 AMYou might want to check out Spinrite from Steve Gibson - it can actually help recover data from physically damaged drives - I work in tech and have all the utilities (Disk Warrior, DataRescue, Drive Genius, and Spinrite). They have all saved my clients at one time or another. Datarescue is good at attempting to recover files, Disk Warrior at fixing directory/disk corruption, Drive Genius at misc. stuff, and Spinrite for sector level damage or corruption (damage at a lower level than the file system). I suspect given the Apple Genius replaced the drive that Spinrite might still be an option (although the drive needs to be put in a pc first). It also has a money back guarantee. Good Luck.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 10:04:07 AMThink you missed one another point, its called shit happens, deal with it.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 11:14:03 AMApple's Time Capsule.
Set it up, and you're done. You'll always have a back-up without ever thinking about it again.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 11:24:25 AMregarding 4: fuck you. You like to use people like that,
Posted 12/06/2008 at 12:25:44 PMdo you? Seriously man. Fuck you.
I know the backup thing very well. I had been using X-Drive but AOL unceremoniously decided to end the service in January.
Being that my computer is now three years old I decided to do two things. First I'd buy a 750GB external drive for backups, the other was to buy a new bigger internal drive for my laptop. Total cost, $139 for both drives.
Now once a week I drop an image of my machine onto the big hard drive.
I'm using a Windows box and used the free version of Macrium Reflect to do the disk cloning.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 12:30:08 PMYour right, backing up files is important.
Flash drives are great for doing that.
If those files you have on a drive are
very important you can pay someone to
get that information right? Otherwise,
get used to using flash drives for backup.
thanks from tony
Posted 12/06/2008 at 03:58:20 PMForget about Apple notebooks. Overpriced and when they go down they cost a fortune to fix.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 04:31:29 PMThe author of this post and most of the comments here are moronic. If you've never backed up, you're just clueless and you deserve what you got. You were warned about backing up....you said as much.... and then you presume to preach on a blog about the importance of backing up. And then you go and call the people who helped you "dorks".
I judge the combined iq of this blog to be about 90. Get a clue, all of you. This so called article is a piece of crap. Thanks for wasting my time. NOT.
Posted 12/06/2008 at 10:45:00 PMWow. Bonnie, you really opened up a seemingly sore subject here. I work in IT and most of these comments gave me a good laugh, mostly in how they attacked each other. Just thought I'd mention it.
Posted 12/07/2008 at 02:28:00 PMThink you missed one another point, its called shit happens, deal with it..
Posted 12/08/2008 at 06:34:20 AMForget about Apple notebooks. Overpriced and when they go down they cost a fortune to fix...
Posted 12/08/2008 at 08:11:39 AMThink you missed one another point, its called shit happens, deal with it...
Posted 12/09/2008 at 07:44:52 AMApple's Time Capsule.
Set it up, and you're done. You'll always have a back-up without ever thinking about it again..
Posted 12/20/2008 at 10:25:47 AMForget about Apple notebooks. Overpriced and when they go down they cost a fortune to fix..
Posted 12/22/2008 at 02:17:58 AMThink you missed one another point, its called shit happens, deal with it....
Posted 12/24/2008 at 01:39:09 AM