Well, this happens to everyone…mine happened yesterday night.
The Main mac stopped working. It simply stopped booting up – got stuck at login window and the kernel crashed. I found that the disk itself is doing just fine. but somehow, the OS had gotten corrupted – either due to a bad Apple update, or some other reason. I had a few options:
- Debug and try and fix the issue: I tried several things such as using the Install disk to open Terminal, then re-install select patches (2009-01 Security update, combo update etc) , Using the Disk Utility – tried to fix permissions, repair disk and such, Safe Mode reboot, etc. – none of these worked.
- Re-install OS X Tiger: I wanted to use this as the last option. Also i found that since i have the Leopard upgrade disk and not a full retail disk, I had to first install Tiger and then upgrade it. I was unable to install a fresh Leopard on blank (or reformatted) hard disk.
- Mount the main disk in “Target” mode on my Macbook, then do a Leopard upgrade again : Again – did not work due to the reason explained above.
- Restore data from Backups: Well, i do have backups. I use Super Duper! software and backup weekly from my main Mac onto a NAS (Ximeta Network storage drives) and once a month onto a Firewire portable disk that i store off-site. The fact of the matter is that i had never restored data either using the software or from the network. I never knew if this works. Plus, since the backups are on my network storage, I might have to remove the disk from the NAS – either replace the internal drive with its clone, or mount it via Firewire so that i can boot from it. Although there is an option in the start up choices to boot from the network, i have not tried i. Luckily, I have a Macbook as well – So, here is what i did – I first mounted the corrupted mac in “Target” mode on my Macbook, and using a copy of the Super Duper! restored the backup files from NAS. I was able to restore data as of last Sunday.
Once done, I had to resynchronize my emails (Luckily – i store them online on my offshore email server). Everything else worked great ! In fact – when i opened up Firefox – it opened up some 10 tabs from last Sunday. The iTunes had to go back and re-fetch a few music and podcasts – but Lightroom had no problems – I store my library file on an external disk – So, it remembered all the images i worked on yesterday and even had the quick collections intact!
In case you are wondering why i don’t use an online backup service such as JungleDisk or Mozy, here is my take on it:
- I am hesitant to post my life’s work of images and stuff – on a server hosted and managed by someone else that cannot guarantee to be in business doing this exact thing for as long as i care. Although Mozy is owned by EMC and Amazon is the most reputable online store – they may one day just decide to pull the plug on online storage. Digital Railroad was a reputable online business aimed at photographers – and it shut down.
- Backing up some 500GB of data via an Internet connection, no matter how fast your connection is – is slower compared to having an eSATA, Firewire, USB or local network disk attached to your computer.
- My data storage needs are growing leaps and bounds every year – If i decide to get a 25 mega pixel camera in the near future, my storage requirements may just double in a matter of months. Imagine the cost of storing this much data on some external server and imagine pulling down this much if you are restoring the data.
- In situations like the one i just had (disk issues) – Imagine, rebuilding my OS from an online storage! It might take days to just recover my OS and make it operational.
That said, I still recommend using Mozy or JungleDisk – if i am planning on backing up limited data – such as emails (already online) or few portfolio images (A few select full resolution images are already online at Flickr!).
While the Drobo looks very very attractive option, it is quite expensive to have. I am not prepared to expense $400. I already do redundant storage via double disks and existing software. And the only thing that Drobo buys at the moment is “Automatic” protection. I guess i will live with duplicating data into a 2nd disk at the moment with no regrets.
I sometimes wonder if these above reasons are good reasons to continue using Film?
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