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Back the F*%@ Up Two Times
I’ve always stayed ahead of the curve technologically yet, I never considered myself a dweeb, just informed enough that I can help others while satisfying some of my curiosities. I bet some of my friends would think otherwise (and girlfriends would probably disagree completely) but whatever, screw you all! LOL! Today has been a frustrating!
I woke up today and had a menu problem on my macbook pro. Just couldn’t connect my bluetooth keyboard and mouse to my MBP. I tried some basic troubleshooting, realized pretty fast that this wasn’t just a bluetooth problem… My system preferences application wouldn’t open either…uh oh, was my 500Gb 7200 rpm rock-solid hard drive failing? Was it really possible? In theory, very much so.
For the most obvious reasons.
1. For two straight weeks I’ve been researching a larger internal solution. Looked at every conceivable hard drive option for my computer with a $100 budget in mind.
2. I found a PERFECT option and didn’t buy it, thinking, “I can afford to wait”.
3. The drive is two years old and had been in and out of about half a dozen different computers, had traveled well over 100k miles by plane, was in and out of a backpack traveling through Europe and the United States, brutal weather changes, etc. etc. etc. This drive has been a beast all the way through. I do love you Samsung.
Now comes the time where I fix this thing.
Without going into more than an hours worth of restarts, forum reading and basic troubleshooting, I decide to just do a restore through time machine/capsule. I have a back-up macbook that I use for emergencies and a second backup drive that I run once a week, so I have TWO back ups of my MBP (one through a 2TB Time Capsule and one through a 1TB External Drive). This is the perfect solution for me. I figured I would just use the backup macbook with the external drive for a few hours while the MBP restores.
But wait…the backup drive wasn’t mounting. ugh. This was turning into a holy crap moment for me. If my time capsule backup, with my everything on it, fails I am 100% screwed. Even after doing the iTunes Match last night, I would cry if I lost more than 5% of my digitally saved life.
I did some much needed maintenance on the old macbook waiting for the MBP to finish being restored. Restoring 450 gb onto my MBP only took about 4 hours, not bad at all I thought. Once I re-booted I had to download my mail and everything should be perfect again right?
Wrong.
The bluetooth problem happened again. Upon further digging I found out that I probably needed to reset my PRAM which is VERY EASY TO DO. Takes one restart and its done. I reset my PRAM and here I am…back up to 100%.
All of that time was wasted worrying instead of taking 5 more minutes to research the bluetooth/system preferences problem right?
Wrong Again.
1. I got to update my macbook to Lion which was painless and overdue.
2. This made me go to that 1st back up external drive for testing and sure enough it was messed up. I can fix it easily, but what if I was traveling, which I am a lot over the next 5 weeks. I have to fix it locally first which now I have time to do.
Lesson: All true computer back up plans involve at least two back up drives (and even now people are saying two backups and one cloud backup are standard protocol, which surely will be folded into my two backup drive plan VERY soon).
Back your stuff up 2x (two times). You will thank yourself and maybe me.
matt
ktcmgmt.com, killingthecabinet.com