Illness & Recovery
I Wonder If My AppleCare Warranty Is Still Good?
My G5 iMac's been comatose since April of last year. Where once I would have gleefully waded in with screwdrivers flashing and restore disks shining, I was reduced to a quivering heap of indecision. Too many years away from the tech support arena, I suppose.
I'd experienced some weirdness with the Email app, and a web browser crash that occurred while checking out the size of a desktop folder was apparently enough to corrupt the boot sector of the drive. No flashing "?" on startup, just the sound of the drive winding up, then slowing down, over and over and over.
SOS-APPL was no help. Their idea of recovery was "Boot to CD, Wipe the drive, start over". Yeah, thanks, dickhead. Just kiss off umpteen gigs of music and family pictures. I don' theenk so, Loosie!
The cost of professional data recovery is steep. With my perpetually strained budget, sending in the drive kept getting pushed back and pushed back until the iMac was a dust-covered relic.
I had a borrowed eMac at my disposal, but it's already geriatric by computer standards, and inadequate for gaming. So, I was able to websurf, blog, and email, but that was the extent of my online presence.
My online gaming clan carried me on the rolls longer than they needed to, but eventually I got the heave-ho. No surprise when the axe fell, if you can't play, they need to replace you. The biggest regret is losing contact with the crew.
A request from a friend to borrow my old VHF/UHF "rabbit ears" antenna forced me to plow through the landfill my computer desk has become. In order to unhook the antenna from the old MacTV (BlackMac!), I had to dig past the iMac and unhook all the connecting cables.
Once the iMac was unearthed and moved out of the way, there was nothing but my own laziness keeping me from attempting the last-ditch effort to revive what was essentially a $1500 paperweight.
There's a process called "Target Disk Mode" that allows you to hook up one Mac to another via Firewire, and boot them so that one Mac's drive shows up on the other desktop as an external drive. I was doubtful this would work. The iMac was way ahead of the eMac in terms of system software, disk drivers, bus speed, and so on. Still, the Apple website said they were both capable, so I gathered up cables, keyboards, etc. and shoved the iMac right next to the other computer.
Once everything was connected, it was time for the moment of truth. I powered on the iMac, and got the startup chime. I held down the "T" key, and to my everlasting wonder the iMac's monitor lit up and the Firewire symbol started dancing around the screen.
No disk icon showed up on the eMac's screen, though. Oh, well. Worth a try, anyway. I went to the kitchen to get a drink and feed the cats.
I came back to the office to unhook everything, and... "HOLY SHIT!!!" There was the Macintosh HD icon underneath the eMac's drive icon. Houston, we have connectivity!
At that point the slow process of file copying began. The iMac has a 160 GB drive. I had an external 100 GB USB drive and whatever drive space was left in the eMac, so I started dragging files across. Took all night long to get most of it done.
Now, I'll wipe the drive, then reinstall everything. Hopefully that will set things back in order. Then, it's off to MicroCenter to buy a 200 GB external drive to be used solely for whole-drive backups.
So, 18 months of absent iMac (and pictures, and music, and...), but data recovery didn't cost a dime. Wonder if it was worth it?
My G5 iMac's been comatose since April of last year. Where once I would have gleefully waded in with screwdrivers flashing and restore disks shining, I was reduced to a quivering heap of indecision. Too many years away from the tech support arena, I suppose.
I'd experienced some weirdness with the Email app, and a web browser crash that occurred while checking out the size of a desktop folder was apparently enough to corrupt the boot sector of the drive. No flashing "?" on startup, just the sound of the drive winding up, then slowing down, over and over and over.
SOS-APPL was no help. Their idea of recovery was "Boot to CD, Wipe the drive, start over". Yeah, thanks, dickhead. Just kiss off umpteen gigs of music and family pictures. I don' theenk so, Loosie!
The cost of professional data recovery is steep. With my perpetually strained budget, sending in the drive kept getting pushed back and pushed back until the iMac was a dust-covered relic.
I had a borrowed eMac at my disposal, but it's already geriatric by computer standards, and inadequate for gaming. So, I was able to websurf, blog, and email, but that was the extent of my online presence.
My online gaming clan carried me on the rolls longer than they needed to, but eventually I got the heave-ho. No surprise when the axe fell, if you can't play, they need to replace you. The biggest regret is losing contact with the crew.
A request from a friend to borrow my old VHF/UHF "rabbit ears" antenna forced me to plow through the landfill my computer desk has become. In order to unhook the antenna from the old MacTV (BlackMac!), I had to dig past the iMac and unhook all the connecting cables.
Once the iMac was unearthed and moved out of the way, there was nothing but my own laziness keeping me from attempting the last-ditch effort to revive what was essentially a $1500 paperweight.
There's a process called "Target Disk Mode" that allows you to hook up one Mac to another via Firewire, and boot them so that one Mac's drive shows up on the other desktop as an external drive. I was doubtful this would work. The iMac was way ahead of the eMac in terms of system software, disk drivers, bus speed, and so on. Still, the Apple website said they were both capable, so I gathered up cables, keyboards, etc. and shoved the iMac right next to the other computer.
Once everything was connected, it was time for the moment of truth. I powered on the iMac, and got the startup chime. I held down the "T" key, and to my everlasting wonder the iMac's monitor lit up and the Firewire symbol started dancing around the screen.
No disk icon showed up on the eMac's screen, though. Oh, well. Worth a try, anyway. I went to the kitchen to get a drink and feed the cats.
I came back to the office to unhook everything, and... "HOLY SHIT!!!" There was the Macintosh HD icon underneath the eMac's drive icon. Houston, we have connectivity!
At that point the slow process of file copying began. The iMac has a 160 GB drive. I had an external 100 GB USB drive and whatever drive space was left in the eMac, so I started dragging files across. Took all night long to get most of it done.
Now, I'll wipe the drive, then reinstall everything. Hopefully that will set things back in order. Then, it's off to MicroCenter to buy a 200 GB external drive to be used solely for whole-drive backups.
So, 18 months of absent iMac (and pictures, and music, and...), but data recovery didn't cost a dime. Wonder if it was worth it?
posted by El Capitan | 3:09 PM
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