How to live with a failing hard drive
Normally, when I suspect a hard drive will die soon, I stop using it. On this laptop I need to keep going as it’s the only up to date laptop I have just now.
I hate having to remember to back up in this kind of situation. A back up is never up to date enough when drives fail. But as this is a Mac it’s different. I’ve just set up Mac OS’s built-in backup software, “Time Machine” with Apple’s special WiFi “Time Capsule” drive. Set up was simple: there are few options and it just seemed to work.
It back-ups automatically every hour without me needing to remember to do anything. This is an instant win over the PC’s (good) Symantec Ghost backup app. Even better, the laptop is usable throughout: back up is so unobtrusive that I have to check the Time Machine settings to see whether a back up has happened.
I can’t recommend Time Machine just yet. Until I try to recover files, I haven’t really tested a backup app. Problem I suspect that will hit me if this Mac fails is that I will likely need another (recent) Mac to access the backup as Time Machine is only available on the latest version of Mac OS. If so, it’s no good for me. I doubt my Panther-running Powerbook or my XP, Ubuntu and Vista PCs will be usable. Oh well. We’ll see.
Try SugarSync – it’s good for Macs, PCs and iPhones.
Ben L
November 10, 2008 at 7:07 am
Life will indeed be much easier if you have a second Leopard. If you are sure the disk is on its way out, I might be tempted to buy the replacement drive now and be ready to install it at fail time. Then you’ll be back to where you were much more rapidly. (It might also make sense to preinstall a fresh copy of Leopard on it, if you have an empty USB enclosure, because the drive will no doubt fail exactly when you have a fast approaching deadline…)
I use a Capsule to run TM on my MBA and my wife’s older MacBook. This has worked well and I have done a practice restore from scratch. I also run TM from my Mac Pro to an external LaCie FW drive. This has been much spottier – TM has started to fail several times, so I’ve had to futz around to get it working again – on one occasion losing all previous backups. But I think this is a LaCie issue as much as it is a TM issue.
Of course, all hard drives are failing hard drives.
Nick R
November 10, 2008 at 8:44 am
Ben – thanks for the reminder, heard of it, not tried it yet. Now is the time.
Nick – Yup. Only problem is that this machine is a MacBook Air so securing a new hard drive is hard. This is a major downside of the Air.
ianfogg
November 10, 2008 at 9:52 am
I have a http://www.rebit.com/ device, it’s kinda a windows time machine equivalent.
I had a few problems with purchase and initial use, but now it’s settled down it’s wonderfully transparent. I’ve not had to restore anything yet, though.
If you don’t hit the kinks, installation is pretty much plugging it into a USB port and clicking “Yes I want to backup my computer”.
Michael Stevens
November 12, 2008 at 7:21 am
[...] wobbly hard drive on my previous laptop forced me to think about where my digital stuff lives and how often it’s backed up. Much of my important, frequently changing documents no longer live just on my hard drive and so [...]
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