my powerbook suddenly became very slow to boot. rummaging about in the logs, i found numerous disk0s10: I/O error messages.
cue the ominous music.
booted single-user, tried to run fsck. no joy ... it filled the screen with the same message and hung.
my last full bootable backup was, alas, 3 months ago. however, by pure luck, i had just -- the very day before -- copied all my personal files (Documents, Library, etc) and /usr/local/src to dvd. whew.
erasing the disk and installing from scratch seems to have fixed the disk woes, and i'm now reveling in my pristine system. i resisted the temptation to copy all my files back in; instead, i'm doing a very selective only-as-i-need it restore.
lessons learned:
- backup your files. really.
i was lucky. if i'd had only the full bootable to rely on, i'd be missing 3 months of mail, documents, etc.
at the very least, back up these files. when i remember to do them, i use carbon copy cloner to make full backups.
- keep an eye on your hard disk's health.
SMARTReporter is now in my menu bar, glowing a nice reassuring green.
- keep track of what software you install
being a compulsive packrat, i keep a simple text file that records for each application i download:
- application name
- where i found it
- version
- where i put the dmg, tarball, etc (yes, i keep all the dmgs)
- whether or not i installed it
- license keys, if any
i have a handful of scripts that slice and dice the text file to get lists by date, by name, by install status, etc. this made it easy to get all my favorite apps reinstalled. if you don't want to go to those lengths, you might use Licensed to keep at least the minimal info.
nlm
