It never seems to fail. When you think everything is perfect a curve ball comes in high and fast.
A few weeks ago I had a small problem with our home computer. Ok, it really wasn’t a problem at first, but through my messing around it became a problem. Let’s just leave it at the idea that all the data on our iMac hard drive had been erased. Keep in mind this is the computer that holds each of my children’s accounts with music, photos etc. But more importantly my wife’s data, music photos etc. And I had a few things too.
Several months ago I had taken my own advice and installed a brand spankin’ new two terabyte Time Capsule. It has been faithfully backing up my son’s MacBook, My MacBook Pro, two Mac mini’s (One is a media center device, but that’s another story) and of course the iMac. All the data was erased? No problem I have Time Machine and a Time Capsule.
The story goes like this. I had a fresh install of Snow Leopard and proceeded with the setup assistant. I really loved when it asked if I wanted to transfer data from a Time Machine back up. All plugged in to the household ethernet network I emphatically clicked yes.
I’m no dummy, most of the time, so when the computer reported back it would take some where north of ten hours to complete the data transfer I took it in stride. After all, it was almost five hundred gigabytes of data traveling over a home gigabit network. At that point I went and found something else to occupy my time, still coming back every half hour or see to check the progress.
Imagine my surprise when after two hours it said, all done. I realize in retrospect I should have realized this was one of those “things that make you go, hmmm” moments. Or even when I tried to log in to my account and it kept bleeping that my password was incorrect. But nope I thought everything was hunky dory.
My two younger sons accounts logged right in and everything looked good. Of course neither of them have the huge iTunes library of their teenage siblings. The older kids gave the same bleep of dismay at the attempt to login as mine did. But thankfully the wife got right in, major catastrophe averted, except her desktop photo was gone…. And half of the applications from her dock were missing.
Weird, but not the end of the world. Through the spouse account I accessed the migration assistant and once again began the process. But this time I selected to only migrate the applications. After a couple of hours, it actually reported a fairly accurate time, I rebooted and voila all her programs were back.
I figured some where in the transfer it had simply scrambled a few of the passwords. I grabbed the installer disk and went through the steps to reset my password, which went off with out a hitch. That is until I rebooted, logged in to my account and found a blank new account with all my data gone. Logged in to one of the older kid’s account with the same result, no data.
Don’t panic, deep breaths. Logged in to my wife’s account, she is an administrator, and deleted my blank account, plus the others that had come up as blank. At that point I was able go back to the utility folder and use the trusty Migration assistant. With fingers crossed I selected only the accounts, that I had just deleted, from the Time Capsule and clicked migrate. Another few hours was the guesstimate. I was done messing with it. It was late. I went to bed.
The next fine morning before buzzing off to work I checked if my account had been resurrected. To my complete joy it was there. Login successful all the data in tact, deep sigh of relief. Dragged kids out of bed to make certain their’s were also whole then exhaled for what seemed the first time in the last day.
Sitting later at my desk I was pretty proud of myself. Even though I had created a near life ending situation, my life that is, I saved the day and looked like a hero. Then, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hi honey. I think I have a problem.”
My heart sank.
“All of my photos are gone.”
Photos the joy and bane of my existence. Hadn’t I done this once before to her?
“And my email looks funny. I think some of it is missing, and I can’t download anymore mail.”
Ok. I rolled the dice with my own account and the kids accounts, time to hit a seven. I told her not to panic. I should know that is usually not the right thing to say, beside I was panicking enough for both of us. I walked her through logging in to my account and (gulp) deleting her account.
“Are you kidding? Delete my account?”
“Hey trust me. I’m a professional.”
Once again the process was started off using the migration assistant and migrating only her account. I did tell her if she had done anything in the last half day it was lost. Thankfully that wasn’t too big a problem. If all her photos were gone? Well that would be a problem.
She let me know the system reported her account would take an hour or two to transfer. Not too surprising since her’s was the largest account before. Nervously I told her I had to actually accomplish some other “work” and it wouldn’t really help for us to be on the phone for the next several hours, but instead to call me back when it had completed. I hung up and waited.
Now from the opening paragraph you might think this story has an unpleasant and ugly ending. I am still actually alive to tell the tale, which should tell you otherwise. In fact in turned out great. I know the Apple technology didn’t behave exactly the way it should have, and I spent a little more time than intended, but still it did work, I kept everything and more important I still have a happy home.
The moral of the story. No matter what, have a back up. That way if you do something dumb things can still turn out alright.
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