Devastated Bethany

In Which Bethany Loses All The Data On Her Precious Mac And Has To Start From Scratch

Yeah. I'm still in shock from the news I got last night at the Apple Store. My hard drive is gone. What makes this so hard to believe is that I'd just been using my computer an hour before - I was just being grumpy about it running SLOW. And if I hadn't tried to fix it myself (using Apple's support site, mind you - nothing even half-sketchy!), I probably could have saved everything.

I know, I know - I should have had a backup. (Especially since witnessing @kristenrudd's data woes last year.) So... I've been thinking about the whole backup issue for a while, and the biggest problem I had with it was - what if there's a fire and I lose my computer? It won't help anything if the hard drive's in the house too! And online storage is so stinkin' expensive. But I'd been putting off a decision that I now realize should have been resolved a LONG time ago.

The good news is that last spring, I dropped my PowerBook and smashed the screen. How is that good, you ask? On that computer, only the screen is broken. Thus, two partially broken machines = one pretty decent one. I've at least got everything through last April/May. And I found a good program that should let me grab everything from my iPhone.

But I've spent the last several months cleaning off my hard drive, deleting lots of files (i.e., photos I would never ever need/want) and cataloging them. I even got iLife '09 and had started using the facial recognition feature! All that work is now useless.

The moral of this story, kids? BACK UP YOUR SHIT. Because you never know what can happen.

Update: Just to explain the fascination with all things Mac...
Yes, Macs crash on occasion. Yes, Macs get bugs (though supposedly they don't get viruses). Yes, once in a blue moon, Apple sends out an update that messes your computer up (the move to DRM-free music on iTunes messed up a lot of people's iPhones... including mine, of course).

The difference? You can walk in to the Apple Store, and 99% of the time they have an answer to your problem. And since they own both the hardware and the software, there's no one else to blame. Therefore, they can't be like PC manufacturers and send you to Microsoft, who sends you back to the manufacturer, who then sends you to another company... the cycle can go on for-ev-VER.

My friends, you actually get help the first time you ask with Apple. So if you're a PC know-it-all, Mac probably isn't the way for you. But for those of us who can't repair our own computers, Mac is the way to go, for sure.

Because even when I'm practically sobbing as I leave the store, I WAS given an answer and they DID fix the problem... they just didn't find my files.