The White Screen or what happens when hard drives go to heaven
So, I got home from work this morning, did my thing-a-tee-thing and then sat down for some brief, but good, computer time. Yesterday was, in part, spent moving my desk around in the office, inserting large window A/C into small window, and making sure I was set-up and comfortable. On top of which, the thoughts and just missing wife and child who are in Utah for a few days was enough to cause me to not get good sleep. Anyway, was sitting at my computer, minding my own business, when all of the sudden everything locks up, I get the weird rainbow thinking logo Apple uses these days, and then nothing. After quite a few minutes of attempting to get the computer to force quit the application that appeared to be locked up I shut the system down. When I restarted I got what is called (online) the white screen of death.
The white screen of death, I am sure aptly named by ex-Microsoft detractors, is what happens when the hard drive on the computer won’t mount. I did the reasonably sane thing, pulled out the iPhone, and started searching for possible fixes for the problem. Allow another hour of elapsed time and I realize there really is no way of getting around packing the computer up and taking it to the closest, or one of the closest, Apple store so their well advertised Geniuses at the Genius Bar could look at it. For those who are in the need to know, you can actually schedule a time from home to visit one of these geniuses. In my case, I got there, had to set up an appointment, and then waited about an hour and a half before they saw me.
The genius determined the same thing I did: the hard drive is dead.
They checked to see if there was any way of getting my data off the now dead hard drive – they couldn’t; with the outcome that I’ve lost all of the data and documents created (more or less) since I bought the computer. There are some items that were uploaded to different places, my writing samples are all on my website and an external hard drive, and I have some things in email, but for the most part, I get to start over on all of the fiction writing I’ve done since I started working in this environment.
The outcome, a bit more than a hundred dollar’s for a new hard drive and a stand so that air gets all around the laptop and I am back up and running.
What I did notice was that I had to configure the OSX 10.5 install the Apple Store put on the computer (I do have Leopard and took the disks in case they needed them . . . dumb me) then told it to check for updates. If this had been Microsoft, those updates would’ve been downloading and installing for about twelve hours. I was done in under an hour.
At this time, I reinstalled iWork and Firefox, made sure iTunes is up-to-date and am hoping when I sync my iPhone and the iPod Classic and (maybe) get the paid for music not backed up on Erin’s computer or the external hard drive.
The outcome, my computer is back to being alive and well. I lost everything. And I am happy.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
Real Heroes Fly
Comments