A Time Capsule for T

About a month ago, T's MacBook crashed. A hard disk failure can be like a death in the family especially when, as in T's case, her last backup was from a year ago. (Of course, the lack of backups was my fault, but I won't get into all that.)

Here's part of T's Inquirer column about her Mac crash:

Parting with my cyber memories
By Tessa Prieto-Valdes
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:16:00 04/27/2008
MANILA, Philippines - Lost in cyberspace, I have a year’s worth of digital photos and files waiting to be retrieved hopefully by some computer geek. Just last week, my iMac’s hard disk crashed. When the screen went blank, my electronic life flashed before my eyes! But as with any loss, I’ve learned to “just let it go!” To help me move on, this week I want to write about cleansing, both in the real and cyber worlds.
I had failed to back up my files, so my first call was to Mac genius Elbert Cuenca. I went to visit him in his superb restaurant, Elbert’s Steak Room at Unit 3-A, an almost hidden walk up the side stairs of the Sagittarius Building at 111 H.V. De la Costa St. in Salcedo Village, Makati. If you’re lost, call 3393363 or make reservations at www.steakroom.com.

Unfortunately not even Elbert could save the disk. All T had done was initiate the Shut Down procedure and then closed the MacBook cover. Elbert said that wasn't the cause, but who really knows with computer gremlins?

MacBooks are equipped with SATA hard disks, which have a small failure rate. Worse, when a crash occurs, the SATA drives have a rep as being unrecoverable. All this was explained by the techies at Ynzal and Xyon Systems, where we sent the hard disk for any possible Lazarus effects. They suggested sending the hard disk to the U.S. for clean room recovery, but the price tag on that is $2,000. Hmmm. Luckily, T said no.

After I got her new hard disk installed, I decided to also get a Time Capsule for the house. I first read about TC from David Pogue's column, Pogue's Post, in the New York Times (which unfortunately came out two weeks after the crash).

TC backs up a computer automatically, constantly and wirelessly. I named the machine Yellos Base, after one of Tyrone's Internet code names. YB does a backup of T's Mac every hour, on the hour. At the end of the day, it saves one version for the day. It does the same at the end of the month.

In the event of a hard disk failure or if T wanted to find a file she had previously deleted, all she'd have to do would be to start up Time Machine. The display would show a space continuum with all the backup versions lined up. When she finds what she's looking for, she simply clicks Restore.

At home, YB is not a one-trick pony. It's connected to the main internet cable and acts as a wireless router to connect Tyrone's, Annika's, Tessa's and my computers together. So all our computers are now backed up regularly. Of course, true disaster-recovery pros would still scoff, since our backups are not stored offsite, but hey, these aren't the Bangko Sentral's records.

Also when we have guests who want to connect to the web, they can easily do that since YB acts as a wireless hub. Why talk when we can just check each others' Facebook accounts from across the table? That's what I call cloud socializing!