My first computer with a hard drive of any kind was an original 128 Macintosh in 1984. It was my dad’s, but I was only twelve and a regular user (programing, school projects, etc), so I use the word mine with a clear conscience.

If you only consider that and the computers I’ve owned since, not the parade of PC clones assigned to me at the office, I’ve suffered the effects of ONE hard drive failure in my life.

Until today.

I started having trouble fixing up our old iMac from the living room for Adam. I was freeing up space and rehabbing the HD from years of creating, moving, and processing large video files on WAY too little free space (the Mac OS is pretty good about managing space on the HD unless you abuse it like I did). Anyhoo, long story not so long… I traced the problem to my external (LAN) backup drive.

Three different disk utilities are telling me it’s suffering a mechanical failure and I should back up my data, by any means available… DAMMIT JOHN, RIGHT NOW!!!

Disk utility software is getting awfully touchy these days, eh?

So that brings us to hard drive failure number two. Times are tough at the Kauffman household, but this too shall pass :-)