If Your PC or Laptop is a major part of your life, READ THiS

[Ed Garces]

My six month old MacBook had a fatal Hard Drive crash and possibly corrupted my external backup drive as well - Lost everything and data was unrecoverable from both drives.

My worst digital nightmare finally actualized. I was having recurring problems with my La Cie external hard drive so I decided to buy a Western Digital external HD as a second backup or replacement drive. I had too many business and personal files in my laptop that sometimes I agonize some nights just thinking what would happen if I lose both the laptop and my external HD. Guess what, Murphy’s Law is alive and well!!!!!! If I did this exercise a day ago I would have been home free. Also I still have my old Powerbook which pretty much had all my files but a month ago I cleaned out all the files because I was planning to sell it. Read on.

After I formatted the newly purchased Western Digital external drive, I started to do a back up on the Lacie Drive first to keep it up to date. The back up process started going but 30 minutes later, the screen locked up (rotating beach ball in Apple's lingo) and after going through all the proper Mac shutdown/restart process, I was left with a white screen (the Mac version of Windows blue screen of death). The hard drive is dead and my Mac expert friends confirmed that not only is it fried but the data is also unrecoverable. Next big shocking surprise - the external Lacie hard drive also had no user data, just the application softwares! It appears that it may have been affected while I was trying to restart, plug and unplug it while troubleshooting the locked up screen or may have been faulty all along. (I never checked what was in there for a long time, big mistake!)

Checking at Apple forums, I found out that there is recently a growing number of owners reporting the same Hard Drive problem on Macbooks purchased from November 2006. Our Maui Users Group also confirmed two other members had the same problem.

My advice to you all (even though it's supposed to be a basic "must-do" thing) - Backup your files and check/verify your backups! Better yet, get two separate external drives. And yes, it happens to Apple too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I will probably spend a solid week to restore some of my files when I get my Macbook back tomorrow. I could use a stiff drink