providing graphic design, branding, photography and marketing expertise to denver and the world
Quote
of the Week:
All solitary dreamers know that they hear differently when they close their eyes.-Gaston Bachelard
crash and burn (or, why you ALWAYS get AppleCare when you buy a Mac)
Well, entropy finally struck one of my Macs, hard. All last week the little 12-inch G4 Powerbook I use for most of my day-to-day applications had been hiccupping, in different ways each time. Sometimes it was slow to start. Other times, it took a long time to build out the file directory views when saving or opening from within an application. Sometimes it wouldn't shut down properly....So I repaired the file permissions using Disk Utility, as I usually do every couple of weeks, and thought nothing of it.
Until Friday.
On Friday, the PB started doing really odd stuff. Like shutting down instead of sleeping when I closed the case. Or refusing to wake up when it was in screen saver mode. Then, on Saturday morning, when I was trying to bang out some Flash ads for a client, it took an hour to start up. An hour. Let's just say that's about an hour longer than it usually takes to get moving. I ran Disk Utility, this time from the CD. Couldn't repair the disk. Try again. Still no luck. I spent about two hours trying to get this fixed, burning all the time I had set aside for work before Robyn and I went off for our 24 hours of no kids anniversary date, which we do every year. I left the computer shut down, awaiting a solution.
The next day, fresh copy of DiskWarrior in hand, I ran its tests. While it was able to read the files, the physical structure of the disk was so badly compromised that it could only show me that, well, if the disk wan't completely hosed, why yes, it could fix the directory...but since the drive was as flaky as a pubescent nerd's scalp, well, sorry!
I ran Tech Tool Deluxe's Surface Scan overnight to check the physical disk integrity. When I awoke and checked the machine 12 hours later, only ten percent of the disk had been scanned, showing a whopping 160 errors. Now, that in itself isn't necessarily a high number, but the fact that it took all night and was still only one tenth the way through scanning an 80GB disk meant that it was trying really hard to read blocks that did report success, and so my fear is that those blocks would be the next ones to go. and if you multiply an average of 160 blocks by ten, that gives me an estimated 1,600 bad blocks on the entire disk...about three times as many as some experts assert is the definition of a "irretrevable disk failure."
My backups were in order, but there were a couple of folders I don't normally back up that I needed. Fortunately, I was able to connect the PB up to the server in target disk mode and pull them down...they check out ok on their new home according to all the utilities. I took the PB down to the local Apple Store and they sent it off to Nashville, where Apple will replace the disk and check out the rest of the CPU as well. Hopefully, they tell me, it will be cback in my hands in about a week--although I have had excellent results with them returning larger repairs even more quickly.
So what to do in the interim? Well, that's why I keep the 6 year-old TiBook around. A quick install of CS3 and BBEdit and I should be back in business. The worst part of it is that I burned what was essentially one and a half full days of work time on this, which I cannot get back.
Now, I should say, this is a very unusual experience for me, Mac-wise. I have had three incidents with Macs I've owned, over eight years. That's not too bad, especially if what my PC-owning brethren tell me is true about the PC fixit rate. And Each time I've had a problem, it was covered under Apple Care, Apple's extended (three year) warranty program. Worth every penny if, say, you need your PB's $2,000 screen replaced, or need $300 worth of work done to replace a $150 drive. So my advice to you Mac-folk: figure on dropping the extra cash for Apple Care when you make your Mac purchase, and compute without worrying about the repair bill (jsut don't drop your mac...not covered ;) ).Labels: apple care, hardware, holiday, powerbook, software
posted at 8:27 PM Leave your comments here: 0 comments
Leave your comments here: 0 comments
Archived Posts:
09.02
10.02
11.02
12.02
01.03
02.03
03.03
04.03
05.03
06.03
11.04
11.05
12.05
01.06
02.06
03.06
04.06
05.06
06.06
07.06
08.06
09.06
10.06
11.06
12.06
01.07
02.07
03.07
04.07
05.07
06.07
07.07
08.07
09.07
10.07
11.07
12.07
01.08
02.08
03.08
04.08
