Been a while since I last blogged. My Macbook Pro died on me – specifically, the hard drive failed without any warning. I didn’t want to blog when not using Ecto, which supports previewing of all my custom functions (ie footnotes, markdown, etc.)

Incidentally, SpinRite was of no use since it wouldn’t work on the MacBook Pro; it would only load to a certain point then not respond to any keyboard input – hence couldn’t get to the actual testing/maintenance/recovery operations. Fortunately, Data Rescue II saved my ass – again. So I was able to recover all my data from the dying drive.

I ended up getting a 3.5″ 120GB IDE drive with external enclosure for about 3k bucks, which I installed and ran OS X from. It’s such a pain in the ass to not be able to move around when you have your laptop booting and running off a 3.5″ drive as you need it powered from a wall-wart. But the price of a similarly sized 2.5″ version is just too much.

In any case, the service center where I usually have my stuff repaired pre-ordered a replacement drive without me having to show or leave the laptop with them for a few days (the benefits of being a trustworthy customer). They let me keep and use my laptop until the new drive came and I only had to visit once – having the drive replaced within the hour.

So I’m back, and will now use the 3.5″ drive as a dedicated clone of my laptop drive – in case something like this happens a third time (or any succeeding time for that matter).