Reconnected

This post is unremarkable in appearance, but a big deal on our end of the keyboard. After a couple of weeks down, the iMac is functional again. We returned from vacation to find the computer on permanent vacation with a disabled hard drive. The rest of the computer is fine, but that is like saying that the patient's brain is great, but the heart doesn't work anymore.

Replacing a hard drive is not a unusual task; I have done it before with other computers. My first computer eventually had much in common with Washington's axe; very little that remained in the case at the end (including the hard drive) was an original part. Replacing any part in the elegant, slim case of an iMac, however, is quite a different than popping open a typical PC case. Thanks to very detailed resources on the internet (accessed through the old PC the kids use), I was able to open the computer, install a one terabyte (!!) hard drive, close the whole thing up again and reinstall our software. Like so many of stylish Hollywood types who embrace Macs, the iMac's slim good looks are achieved largely through plastic and tape, quite unlike the clunky metal screws that hold PC cases together. This makes disassembly and reassembly a tricky proposition (I took many pictures in case I got lost during the rebuild), and not one that can be repeated often, but this operation was a success.

Losing the hard drive, on the other hand, with its three years of financial data, written documents and spreadsheets, and irreplaceable pictures, has been traumatic. We are looking into companies that claim they can retrieve data from busted hard drives; for nearly the cost of a new computer, they might be able to collect all the data we were foolish enough to neglect to back up.

Gotta go now; I need to set up the automatic backup system.