My iMac is back up and running, after a few days at the Apple Store to replace its internal hard drive, which failed. I was able to migrate all my data from my Time Machine backups. I haven’t tested extensively yet. The first thing I fired up was iPhoto, as the thing that worried me most was my photos and videos of Haden. And I haven’t noticed anything odd.
Migration Assistant Weirdness
Before it grows entirely fuzzy, I wanted to note a few things that didn’t go entirely according to plan. One of these was Migration Assistant, the software included with OS X that helps you migrate from one machine to another, or, in cases like mine, from a Time Machine backup. When I got my iMac back home, I walked through the Migration Assistant’s steps, and it started copying things over. It started with my documents, then it transferred my applications, and then it got to a final stage, called “transferring files to support applications.” And that’s where it stayed, claiming, for many hours, that it required less than one minute to complete.
I called Apple Care, and we ended up cancelling the transfer. Logging into the transferred account revealed that the data was transferred, but there were several question mark icons on the Dock, none of which would launch anything (even though they showed names of the apps that should have been there, when hovered). So we logged back into the generic account that the Apple Store created (a passwordless user named “james”), deleted the migrated account, and started Migration Assistant a second time. But, this time, we excluded one category of data, under my user account, labeled “all other data” (or something close to that). In my case, this was 9GB of stuff, including, evidently, some of the mysterious “files to support applications” that were hanging up the Migration Assistant.
This time, the Migration Assistant did its work. And I logged off of “james” and onto my restored account. So far, I’ve had to reinstall two things: my printer software (I have one of those ubiquitous HP all-in-one things), and iWork ’09 (Pages launched, but it warned me that it was missing files and needed to be reinstalled). I suspect there will be other applications that will need to be reinstalled.
Time Machine Weirdness
A scarier issue, but one so far of no consequence, was that a lot of my old Time Machine backups disappeared last week, before I contacted Apple, after I booted from the system DVD and attempted to restore from a Time Machine backup. What I think happened was that, since Time Machine was still on, my restored system started creating a brand new backup of my system (which was, at this point, still sitting on top of a soon-to-be-dead hard drive). This process never completed. But, in the meantime, Time Machine carved out space for the new backup, dropping off the old ones.
Dropping old backups isn’t a problem in and of itself; that’s part of how Time Machine works. What was disconcerting was that so many dropped off at once, with no warning. In the midst of all this weirdness, seeing something that drastic change on my only backup, put me in a highly anxious state (I feel that Apple Care owes me, at a minimum, a new bottle of Tums). In my case it hasn’t been an issue (fingers still firmly crossed, wood knocked). I just no longer have the ability to roll back to what my box looked like a year ago. The backups that remain go back about three months.
The Road Ahead
Spending a week worrying that you might have hosed your internal hard drive and your backup of the same tells you a lot about what really matters to you. In my case, the one thing I don’t ever want to lose is my iPhoto Library. I’m fairly paranoid when it comes to data. Unlike most people I know, I actually have a backup system. And, it’s fair to say that Time Machine saved me this time. But I want to get even more paranoid. I’m investigating two additional options:
- Buying SuperDuper! and setting it up to create a clone of my Time Machine drive on a regular basis. This would give me a second option if my Time Machine drive were to fail.
- Subscribing to an off-site online backup service. The three I’m currently investigating are Carbonite, Mozy, and CrashPlan. One of these would provide a bit of last-ditch assurance, in case some catastrophe were to happen.
Word to Your Mother
First, if you don’t have a backup strategy, get one. Even better, be paranoid like me and get two or three. There’s really no such thing as too many backups. Second, if you buy an Apple computer, buy Apple Care along with it. It’s a sound investment. This would have been a lot less fun if I, in addition to all the stress and strain of worrying about possible data loss, had a hefty repair bill to deal with as well. Finally, don’t trust drives. They’re totally expendable. The only way to live your life in a digital age and sleep well at nights is to have enough backups that you don’t care when a drive dies.