About a week and a half ago, I had a disk crash. Another one. The
second one with a Macbook Air hard disk, as it happens. Disks break
semi-regularly, and I finally got the memo, so I had reasonably recent
back-ups. Hurrah. The things I learnt were:
- Disk crashes happen. Like I need reminding.
- Regular back-ups are good. More regular would be better,
but still, so much better than previous crashes.
- If you're operating old hardware, spares are great. I had
another MBA, and it could donate its disk. At the same time, I
discovered the spare's battery pack had developed a disturbing
bulge. So I got rid of that sharpish.
- The easiest way to install Snow Leopard on an MBA is copying
the DVD to a USB drive. Apple won't tell you this, as they
presumably think ripping their install DVDs is, er, dodgy, but on a
diskless laptop a thumb drive is soooo much more pleasant than
that remote disk faff.
- Disk crashes will nuke about a week of my time.
Always. The whole rigmarole of getting the hardware sorted,
reinstalling stuff (I just don't trust whole-disk back-ups), working
out precisely what went since the last back-up, etc. Very
tedious.
However, everything's pretty much back now, and with minimal
pain. Hurrah.
Posted 2014-03-06.