Yet another (minimally painful) disk crash

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.