Computer increasingly slow on start-up, eventually becomes sporadic in its ability to succeed, unexpected error messages…
Yes, it’s Disk Failure Time ! This time it was on my Mac Pro (desktop)
So I did these things:
- Copied latest stuff to a portable (WD Passport) drive:
- I copied documents, videos and downloads
- I generated a list of installed applications, both 32-bit and 64-bit.
- Opened up the machine to remove drives (and at the same time to hoover-out dust).
- Procured a replacement hard drive
- Google-search revealed my old drive to be obsolete, no longer (easily) available
- Phoned a local computer tech wizardry shop, who fix Macs as well as PCs, and they had a suitable replacement drive (a WD SATA 1TB drive, twice the size of the old/failing one.
- Bought that very disk.
- Fitted the disk, as sole disk, and recovered both the Mac OS and Boot Camp > W7 partitions, according to the “DO” (not “DON’T”) branch of the instructions listed at http://blog.davidesp.com/archives/300
- It took about an afternoon. The longest stages were the actual restorings from backup.
- For W7
- The first thing I updated was the antivirus. This was for the app as well as the database, and it wasn’t quick. No reboot needed though.
- Otherwise, two or three reboots were required, including first-use, windows updates critical, windows updates optional.