The Mac Spin

Well after 3 months of loving my mac, i trusted it with the original and only copies of all my music, videos, pictures and games. Obviously like any normal intelligent person, the mac betrayed me and then said sorry. It was before the eve of my exams and i was running open office using X11 on my macbook looking through some presentations, that my macbook hung.

So i got worried, pressed a few buttons, and then finally just shut it down in the most barbaric of fashions. Having not completed my course content and running 4hrs behind schedule i was really "pissed off". Reluctantly restarting my macbook, hearing it make sounds never uttered by its kind before, i was truly scared.

What followed was lots of worry, few phone calls waking up unaware friends, and worst of all, an unplanned late night on the eve of my exam. The dreaded question mark appeared while i was loading the screen. I was smart enough to know that it was because my hard-disk wasn't booting up, but not smart enough to know what to do about it.



Vary of opening up the system myself, and tired of waking people up and asking them for answers, i decided to consult the manual. After following all the given steps, to no avail mind you, i was forced to admit defeat. I knew the problem would be fixed, but this was not supposed to happen to my macbook after only 3 months, specially when i took so much trouble taking care of it. For a general messy person, cleaning his hands before using a laptop is a big thing.

The very next day i took it to the service centre. Few days and a lot of pestering phone calls from my side i found out it needed a new hard-disk as the old one stopped spinning. Being told something i already knew was not why i had given it to the service centre, and when they told me they had no idea why the hard-disk had stopped spinning, i was even more "pissed off" as i was hoping i could avoid a repeat of this incident by finding the cause of the problem.

Finally i got a new hard-disk in dirty, poorly handled macbook, and all my data lost. Having to re-install all my updates and re-download all my software was a big pain. This lesson taught me to take creating backups as a serious part of using my macbook.

Now i create a backup every month, and make sure i am ready to face another mac spin challenge. Also after having my ipod replaced twice within 6 months and my macbook's hard-disk replaced in its first 3 months, i have understood the importance of warrantee with apple products.

I'm about to get my warrantee renewed and i suggest you do the same :)