An ounce of Prevention = A pound of Cure

[Kevin]

This may be old information or redundant. I thought I would share my experience this last week when my hard drive would not boot.

The directory was damaged and would not boot up the computer, (Mac OS 10.3.8). I tried using Disk Utility, Tech Tool, and Diskwarrior. None of these utilites was able to resurect my hard drive.

Note that each of these utilities takes a long time to work. In the case of Diskwarrior, it took 24 hours for it to run it's cycle. Making two attempts with just that utility took two days of my computer being out of action. In total, I spent at least 4 days trying to resurect the hard drive. That is a lot of down time.

All of this was preceded by a power failure. I can only assume that the sudden loss of power caused the corruption or damage to the hard drive.

In the end I finally succumbed to the inevitable and I reformated the hard drive by writing zeros to all sectors. I reinstalled applications from their CDs and reinstalled my documents from DVD backups that were archived by Retrospect. Do you realize how many times you have to download, install, and reboot just to bring the system software current with all the security updates?

Here is what I have learned:

1. A UPS, (Uninterruptable Power Supply), is a must. I never had one in all 16 years of owning computers. The Powerbook of course has one by default as it is comes with an internal battery.

I now have a nice big UPS with an additional battery. I cannot tell you what peace of mind it now brings. It also points out to me how often my power goes to a low voltage state, (brownout). Every time my photocopier starts, I get an alarm fromt the UPS showing that it is augmenting the voltage back to normal values. I never thought much about power, except of course when it went out. But I now assume that low power and sudden no power most likely causes disk errors and corruption.

2. Backup the entire volume, not just documents. Installing applications from CD is time consuming. I also forgot how much customization I did over the years. My freshly installed Vectorworks seemed so foreign without its custom tools and workspace.

3. An of course, realize that any work done between now and your last backup is forever lost. So backup often.

As I said it might be obvious to others, but in doing a search on this Board, I did not find one topic on UPS.

[CipesDesign]

Just wondering if your local power supply was perhaps less than perfect...And if it had to do with your location...And where that was... Thanks

[Kevin]

Well I am not next to the huge hydroelectric power grid of the Northwest as some lucky people are.

Actually, for me it is a very local power issue. When my power was out I could look across the street and lights were on.

Various previous causes over the years are bad/old transformers, blown fuses, cars running into transformers. (All power is underground with transformers at grade).

Summer is comming and I am sure that we will lose power again.

[wv_vectorworker]

there are also cumulative updates for OSX that can be downlaoded and installed so you should only have to reboot once.

another good idea would be to keep another hard drive around and just plug that in (basically a mirrored drive) and or another old machine to use to salvage the disc while you get back to work.

[Kevin]

That is a good idea about the second drive. I have been backing up to DVD but it takes time and that leads to procrastion. I have a second hard drive installed in my G4.

My plan now is to set Retrospect to back up once or more per day to the second hard drive and then backup the second drive to DVD for off-site storage.

[Kevin]

As far as the OS updates, I chose to be cautious and not update everything at once. I updated the OS with a combined update but then loaded the 4 separate security updates one by one. I tried to load the software in a chronological manner.

[ErichR]

I too had a major problem, but with 10.3.7.

Bought an external hard drive and copied the errant one to the new drive, except for the OS. Put a new OSX on the new drive. Ran the diagnostic and repair utilities on both drives. Trashed the errant files. Wiped the original hard drive, installed a new OSX. Copied everything back to the newly wiped and freshly installed OSX. Now use the new external for backups.

This saved having to reinstall all of the original software. You only lose the old apps' preferences. The culprit was Apple Mail... I think.

[Kevin]

I did not realize that you could copy an application from drive to drive as you describe. Having watched the Vectorworks installer churn away, I assumed that it was placing information in specific places in a specific manner.

[matto]

Please don't hurt me for mentioning this too late to save Data on the old drive.

A mac with a non-booting hard drive will likely still Boot in Target Mode.

So if you have another computer with firewire, and a spare drive hanging around. Target mode will let copy data to another computer or hard drive.

Under Mac OS X everything should be in either the User folders or the Application folders, both of which can be copied without much drama. Sure it's best to do fresh installs for as much as possible, but how many of us don't realise to back up workspaces, or other templete files we have in the VW folder till it's to late.

[Kevin]

Target mode is what I used to try and resurect the drive. Since it would not boot, I accessed the drive from my Powerbook via firewire. Very cool.

Thanks iboymatt, good advice.

[Thom]

Peter

I am sitting here next to one of the cheapest and larger power producing dams in the NW and my power has a tendency to micro-spike. It is very hard on computers unless you have a UPS. Location has nothing to do with quality of power supply.

[CipesDesign]

Hi Kevin, I'm curious - where are you located???

[Kevin]

Hi Peter. I am in Southern California.

Now I am curious - Why do you ask???

[islandmon]

Come on down to the US Virgin Islands where the local quasi governmental monoploy Water & Power Authority is a well known terrorist organization. A day does not pass without a power outrage. Equipment often catches on fire around here. UPS bricks get burned out after one year !

In the 30 years I lived in California I never experienced a single outage. In the USVi we get at least 30/week. Oh and one other tid-bit ... we pay the highest rates in the world for the privilege of having electric current randomly flowing. Come to America's Paradise !

[Nick_Reid]

Kevin - I know you've already spent the cash on a UPS but have you considered a second drive (firewire or USB2) and carbon copy cloner. The drive isn't free but CC Cloner is donationware and will give you a bootable clone of your whole system. That way you'll have everything working again in five minutes not 5 days.

[Kevin]

Nick; You make a good point and bring me to ask this question. Carbon Copy Cloner will make a duplicate bootable copy. Dantz Retrospect will make a full backup.

What is the difference between these two methods.

[Nick_Reid]

I think the retrospect version is encrypted and compressed so you need to use the Dantz software to restore it. Large HDs are so cheap these days that its no problem to keep a clone. CCC can be scheduled to copy overnight. For backups I prefer synchronize pro x. I use it to mirror mixed network user folders and master project data to my the Mac server drive. CCC keeps a cloned backup.

I've never had to use it in anger but murphy's law dictates that if I didn't have one then I'd probably encounter a problem like yours. It has however proved very useful for restoring to earlier OSX versions when apple have screwed up.