I'd like to share a personal story that I think holds a valuable lesson. Just yesterday evening, my computer started hanging - I had three browser windows open, 2 office applications, Adobe Acrobat etc, the stuff I usually have running in 6 windows under Spaces. I held down the power button to switch it off, then turned it on again, and it wouldn't boot. All I saw was a gray screen: no elegant apple icon, no friendly spinning wheel. I thought it was just misbehaving and so I turned off my computer, took out the battery, reset the Power Management Unit, put everything back together and restarted. I still got only the Gray Screen of Death (GSOD). I tried this multiple times and still only the GSOD came up.
It was highly depressing, since the computer is my lifeline, as I'm sure it is for you: I do everything on it, including (esp.) research. I brought it down to the Apple Genius Bar today and they offered me 2 scenarios: the logic board had gone crazy, or the harddisk was corrupted. The logic board would take 7-10 days to replace, and the harddisk 3 -5 days. I almost wept, since losing my computer is like chopping off my arm (and more).
I didn't feel so bad though, because I had backed up everything using Time Machine. Just prior to my computer failing, Time machine had run faithfully as always, backing up my entire file system. As such, if needed, I could restore the entire system from my external harddisk. So I was distressed at the prospect of losing my computer for a few days, but at least I wasn't distraught at having lost years of completely irreplaceable data.
To cut a long story short, turns out it was the harddisk that was problematic and not the logic board. They quoted me a 3-5 day turnaround time still to install the harddisk, but I wheedled them to find out if they had any harddisks on hand to install it right away. Turns out they actually did have ONE, so they installed it for me, I got my mac back this evening, and restored my entire filesystem in an hour from Time Machine. Time Machine really restores EVERYTHING: when I started my browser again, it even remembered the last few tabs I had open before the computer died on me.
Elapsed time of ordeal: 24 hrs. Emotional state: disturbed, but happy to have my computer back in its literal entirety, and loving Time Machine.
Lessons learnt:
1. BACKUP EVERYTHING FREQUENTLY. Take advantage of Time Machine if you haven't - buy an external harddisk, link it to your computer and have it run in the background, backing things up all the time. It's DEFINITELY a worthwhile investment. This is the second time in my mac ownership history a harddisk has failed on me (interestingly enough, both times were in Stanford - once in 2003 when I was a tourist and now). Time Machine is good enough for most purposes but if you're extra kiasu you can make cloned bootable images of your harddisk from programs downloaded online.
2. BUY APPLECARE. I hope you can still do this, if you haven't already. Extended warranties aren't necessary for most things, but I've found them to be terribly useful for notebooks.
3. If you happen to be unfortunate enough to have to send your computer in for servicing and find yourself without a computer for use, you can take advantage of the Apple Store's return policy to get a "loaner" computer - buy a brand new notebook, use it and return it for a full refund within 14 days. Hopefully, you have your Time Machine backup with you and you can restore your system to use on the loaner, then back it up and transfer it back to your repaired laptop when necessary.
4. If you've important documents, email them to yourself online so you have an additional online backup as well that's accessible everywhere. This was another reason why I didn't feel too horrible when my computer died: my important docs are all online, my calendar's online etc etc.
5. Backup everything frequently. 'nuff said.
I LOVE TIME MACHINE.
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