Hard Drive Lives!

So after being so busted that DiskWarrior couldn’t even find it, and sounding so loud and sickly that my room mate could hear it in her room, and basically being unable to start up for over three days, when I finally get to the Apple Service Depot my PowerBook manages to start up. Furthermore despite thinking about it, I did not bring my iPod so in the unlikely event I got a chance to, I could not back up my user directory.

So once again I run to a nearby computer store, this time I bought a USB key fob, which I’ve been meaning to buy, and some blank CDs. I didn’t really haggle and I didn’t follow my plan of buying the key fob from the cutest salesperson I could find. Instead because I was in something of a hurry, I bought it from the very first person who I talked to. She spoke decent English and I had my Chinese notebook with me so I could double check some phrases.

I was interested in buying a Chinese branded USB memory stick but she was pushing a Sony on me. I refuse to pay for the Sony name so as a compromise I got a SanDisk. I ended up getting a 512 Mb fob for 310 RMB, that was less than one RMB per megabyte which seemed like a pretty good deal. The SanDisk packaging not only had the Mac logo on it, but also said it worked with OS X. It also had some encryption features too.

Of course when I go to the bank machine I went to last time it won’t give me any money temproarily. I went back and said I had to buy a cheaper memory stick. She said there were other banks nearby. I tried another one and was able to withdraw 1000 RMB.

The Starbucks I went to last time was gone, but luckily I knew where another one was. This one was huge. Easily the largest Starbucks I have visited. And I’ve been to my share of Starbuckes. Of course I took pictures but until the Mac is fixed you’ll have to imagine a large Chinese Starbucks. Chinese Starbucks look like Starbucks in every other country except all the customers are usually Chinese.

Of course while backing up my stuff, I got a DiskWarrior warning, saying that my hard drive’s internal testing mechanism had reported an error and data loss was eminent. I finished backing up and took a screen shot of the error message. I also left it logged in and showed the Apple Depot staff the error message. Their Engineer still thinks it is a software problem.

I have a degree in Computer Science, you can hear just how sickly the drive gets. I’ve spent hundreds of dollars and days of my life trying to nurse that hard drive back from the brink of death. It needs to be replaced. I could have saved myself a lot of time and headaches by just voiding my warranty and putting in a different drive. Hopefully they fix it for good this time. Reinstalling the OS isn’t going to fix the drive mechanism.

I need a new laptop again and have for years but I’ve also needed a new job for years. I returned to China and there are a lot more Apple devices than when I lived there the first time and a lot more Starbucks. I don’t know what happened to this USB fob but that laptop eventually died. If you have tragic tales of hard drives dying you can leave them below.

This entry was originaly posted on November 28th, 2005, it was last edited on March 12th, 2019 and is filed under: Information Technology and tagged: Apple, Diskwarrior, Hard Drive.