Lesson Learned: Lightning and Computers Don't Mix
Tuesday, April 3, 2007 at 11:16PM 
So, I'm sitting in bed, Monday night, TV on (The Tonight Show with Jay Leno), computer on my lap - working away (please no comments), and I notice that a thunderstorm has rolled in. I don't think much of it, since I really don't pay attention to the weather. Next thing I know, there's a brief brown-out on my computer. It didn't register with me at the time that there shouldn't be a brown-out. It has a battery - and I was plugged in. So if the power went down - the battery would have provided the power. But, I don't think anything of it.
However, I now notice that my computer is moving very, very slowly. So I give it a restart. Won't start up. I try every trick in the book (and I know a lot of tricks). However, it still won't start. So I pop in my Disk Utility CD. Nothing. I can't even eject it and try another Utility. Tuesday morning, I drive to the Apple Store. After 15 minutes of trying all his tricks, the Genius informs me that my Logic Board is fried. Great! So I purchase a MacBook Pro 15" and ask them to transfer the data from my hard drive to the new machine. "We'll call you when it's done," says Bob, the Genius.
About 2 hours later, I get a call. My hard disk is fried too. No recovery available - unless I spend over a thousand dollars with a specialty shop. Not worth it. My last backup was about a week ago. I'll just take this as a lesson learned. You can too. Want more info, try these:
Reader Comments (1)
OK. So it turns out my backup wasn't one week old, like I thought. It had been over three weeks since I had a full backup! What a royal pain. Lesson REALLY learned. Every day when the backup software reminder box pops up, I won't click the SKIP button.