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All the iTunes downloads that I had purchased were still there. My programs were there. Everything was intact.
   technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

T h e   R o a d   L e s s   T r a v e l e d
How my local Mac store saved the day when my hard drive took a dive


Oct. 22, 2003


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2003, The Post-Standard

   Many of you wrote to ask if my computers were up and running after the disaster that knocked them out earlier this month. Yes, they are finally back in use, after a lot of work restoring them.
   Both my Apple G4 Macintosh and my custom-built Windows 2000 PC got hit the same way, at the same time, with the same symptoms, so I'm sure that their drives got zapped by some sort of power fluctuation. If a drive is writing to its own file tables and is subject to rapid on-off power cycling, it is likely to mess up those file tables so badly that they'll be destroyed.
   Before you write to tell me that I should have connected the two computers to an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), let me explain that I had disconnected them from a UPS because the UPS battery had failed. I'm shopping for a new UPS this week. (Replacing the battery would not make sense. The unit is too old.)
   Windows 2000 failed me just as much as Mac OS X did. Neither of them spotted the disk-directory problem when I tried to reinstall the operating system. A proper installer will check the drive integrity first.
   (Note that in nearly every case, an operating system installer does not boot from the computer's hard drive -- it boots from a CD in modern computers -- so it won't necessarily know that the drive is bad. But it should check the drive before trying to write to it.)
   I took the G4 to Applied Technical Systems, the locally owned Apple store that specializes in selling and repairing Macs and in peripherals that work with Macs. The technicians there fixed the drive quickly, then reinstalled OS X.
   After I got my G4 home, I updated OS X back to the current version and reinstalled some of the software that got lost in the fix. Nearly all my programs were intact, however. The folks at ATS were able to get the drive running without booting from it, and they were then able to copy (and thereby save) my entire home folder before they gave the drive a magnetic cleaning. (That's not what they call it, of course, but it's what they do.)
   After I took my Mac back home, I upgraded the operating system from the one they installed (an earlier version of OS X) to the current version. I reinstalled a few programs that didn't work right. But most of my programs and all of my documents were still there, saved by ATS. (Thanks, guys.) And what I was worried about the most -- my iTunes Music Store downloads, representing a few hundred dollars in purchased music over the last few months -- proved the least of my problems.
   As I discovered, music you buy from Apple's iTunes store is always yours, even if you lose it. Apple keeps a record of what you bought, and at any time you can click a menu option that tells the iTunes software to check for purchased music. If it doesn't find everything you've bought, it downloads all the missing items on the spot.
   Neat, right? But, since nothing was missing, I thought I was going to be OK. Little did I realize that downloaded music is tagged to the computer that did the downloads, and iTunes didn't know if I still had the same Mac. (The drive had a different "signature," for one thing, and no doubt there were other changes.)
   When I tried to play one of the songs, iTunes told me I would have to "reauthorize" my Mac. Bah! Humbug!
   But that took only two seconds, and it never asked me again. All my iTunes downloads were fine.
   As for the fate of my Windows PC, I'll save that tale for another time. You'll find it interesting.