Nur Ahmad Furlong

Tag: backup

  • My macbook HD has crashed, go backup yours now!

    The importance of backing up

    Anyone seen the terrible flashing question mark of harddrive death before, well now I have.

    A few months ago, my HP notebook’s motherboard burnt out and put me out of action for a few days. I managed to take the harddrive to get it backed up but Incredible connection’s service centre did an incomplete backup. So I ended up lossing loads of data and being in a bit of distress for a while being the digital nomad that I am.

    Technology can never be infallible

    So I decided to make the switch back to mac hoping for a more stable and reliable setup. I hoped to use the time machine system to keep a regular backup of work btu my 500gig HD has already got loads of data on it so I couldn’t format it just yet until I could find a way to back up that data.

    Yesterday, in nearing the end of my largest project to date and with 6 other projects running in the background, my macbook HD seems to have completely packed up. It started with a few freezes and then a flashing question mark. I tried most of the generic fixes provided online to no avail and I think I’m gonna have to kiss loads of data goodbye. Thanks the Lord for my online backups and test sites of my current projects I might only have to catch up on about 2 days of work in the short term, but all my juicy resources, wordpress code, plugins, themes, imagery, etc etc is a distant memory.

    Be warned, your Data is at risk

    So My warning to anyone out there who is listening, backup right now, yes right now, now is almost too late to backup.

    Mac Data recovery guru needed

    To any mac gurus out there who might have a solution for me, the HD still seems to be making some buzz but is completely not detectable. I’ve even bought a casing and attached it to another mac but nothign detected, if anyone has any solution out there I will be eternally grateful and might even be able to offer something of value in return.

  • Miraculously my Categories have returned?

    So my cats are back in the wordpress hat!

    After some trouble with my comments going walkies, it seems all is well again in nomad-one land. Turns out the problem was caused by some quota limit which caused some plugin problems and not the plugins themselves so WP Super Cache and friends, my apologies. Donncha was kind enough to point out that the WP Super Cache plugin doesn’t have any code which can access the categories db at all. The WP-DBManager plugin by Lester Chan came in handy and allows you to repair damaged database tables, back-up and restore your database and generally manage and keep your wordpress db in tip-top shape. I recommend it highly as it helped me restore some data which seemed to have been lost.

    I’m at a loss for words right now and am hoping and praying that I will find a solution other than having to re-categorize my entire sites posts. Something randomly went wonky with my WP Super Cache Plugin which forced me to disable and then delete it. The result was total loss of post categorization, tagging references as well as loss of my entire blogroll.

    If anyone has a solution out there please let me know, I might even reward you if I can manage it. Be very very careful with plugins and remember to keep a regular backup, my last backup is more than a month old. Also export your blog content to an xml file regularly which will allow you to import it all into a new installation should you need to do so.

    YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!