Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Back That Asset Up

Pardon the juvenile, Juvenile reference, but I'm still reeling from a catastrophic hard disc crash. Friday my MacBook's hard drive died. It was a quick and hopefully painful death.

Luckily I had most of my movie files, photos, and recipes backed-up on an external drive, but it was still a traumatic experience.

My Mac was cover
ed by the AppleCare service contract, so thankfully I was able to have a new hard disc installed. I'd like to thank the fine folks at the Apple store in downtown San Francisco for their fine customer service.

You have to make an appointment at the "Genius Bar" where their technician (called geniuses) work. Although they provided me with top-notch assistance, as an actual genius, it sort of bothered me that they use that term so loosely. Anyway, after a long frustrating weekend of reinstalling, reloading, reviewing, and reevaluating my career choice, I'm happy to say I'm almost back to normal.

I did lose about a month's worth of photos, so if you see less than stellar pictures in the next few posts, it's because I had to use still frames from the video. I'll leave you with a personal plea to back up your files! Even though I only lost a small amount of content, just the thought of what could have been is enough to make me shudder.

Photo (c) Flickr user Joe Lanman

16 comments:

An Ng. said...

I'm with you on this. My PC crashed once, and it was not the most amusing thing ever. But I also had a backup drive, so it really wasn't too bad.

Oh how I hate that spinning ball feeling... said...

Yikes, this is a potential nightmare of everyone who visits here! I'm certain we all use our computers for tons of stuff, and a crash is always a lurking, dark threat to our enjoyment, and the safety of all that we keep stored on our computers. Our sympathies, Chef John.

jeff said...

"juvenile, Juvenile"

If I had milk in my mouth it would have come out my nose when I read that.

Jeff

Scott - Boston said...

I just read a short but amazingly sad article on the very same thing. The tech world is a tough one:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/31615

Scott - Boston

Anonymous said...

I know how you feel. My laptop crashed a few months ago due to a virus/trojan/something...and half a year of photos, notes, word docs, etc., were lost. Learned my lesson: email important worddocs to myself or save them on google, and photos I upload on fotki.com because I can retrieve the original size there, or on myspace/facebook.
-- Katia

Chef John said...

scott, now that was funny!

CollegeGourmet said...

It's happened to the best of us computer geeks. Luckily today, in the land of gigantic external hard drives, having a hard disk crash isn't so bad. Macs may be expensive and incompatible with nearly every windows game, but at least their customer service is admirable.

Chris said...

I've lost data before, too--it really sucks. I hate plugging things, but Mozy (mozy.com) has a very good service for this very thing. For free, you can backup 2gb of data (automatically done on folders of your choice with their program) or unlimited data for a fee. I tend to back up my major things on my external drive, but mozy is good for folders that I don't back up often (School stuff).

milkshake said...

A guy is working at his office and suddenly feels strange chill - he turns around and there is a Grim Reaper standing right behind his shoulder!
Guy: "No-not yet. I am still too young to go."
Grim reaper: "You hapless mortal, I came for your hard disk."

bigotez said...

Hi Chef John. I'm a big fan from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. You were my inspiration to get on cooking courses early this year. My main job, though, is in IT and I own Mac computers, and is that way that I'd like to recommend that you use Time Machine, Apple's backup utility. The only thing you should get is an external drive (which you have).

I'll leave you with a link to the Time Machine info on apple's website: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html

Jesse from Detroit said...

I didn't think this could happen to Macs.. That means it could happen to me! ;)

Connie T. said...

I had a computer die on me so after that I have several flash drives to put all my pictures on. That way you have them.

djkaraok said...

"as an actual genius, it sort of bothered me that they use that term so loosely"

Sad comment!

Who cares? I am also a genius but am not so vain to worry about someone using the word incorrectly.

Chef John said...

yes, I was totally serious when I made that statement. I truly believe I am a genius, and it really upset me that they used that term at the Apple store. I was not kidding, or being facetious.

You haven't spent much time on this blog have you?

Jeff said...

Einstein worked at a patent office so who knows. Geniuses are usually wierd and smell bad.

Itsmee said...

Sorry to hear this. However, a man in your position should have all his data backed up in multiple sources. Most importantly and online storage source such as your web server, or a seperate storage service. I think google and microsoft and i know many other companies offer cheap file storage. that way if your whohle house blew up (god forbid) all your work would still be available through the interweb. Maybe you should look into it? Some of the better services make it easy too, with syncing software and such.