I think I knew this day would return, but I had sort of hoped it would happen a bit more slower and obviously than last time, but it didn’t.

On Tuesday Will was using the Macbook for some notes when it suddenly froze up. I shut it down and left it after being unresponsive for over half an hour (really unusual) and when I started it back up the next morning I was faced by the flashing folder of doom.

So I knew it was curtains, but thought I’d better just check, and all the tricks I learnt from the last this happened (a faulty drive going in the first weeks of having the laptop two years ago) just confirmed it for me. Dead drive.

For those curious to know how you can tell whether you’ve got a pretty nasty situation:

• Incredibly long start up wait then the flashing folder of doom (comes complete with question mark)
• Rebooting takes no effect
• Holding down T while booting and linking to another machine via Firewire: if it fails to show a big firewire symbol on the screen/it’s non-mounting as a disk-type device on the other machine
• Booting from DVD setup disks and running Disk Utility demonstrates no reference to the hard disc, only the mounted DVD
• Additional clicking noises are not a good sign (the stylus may have collapsed or similar - potentially scratching the disc face)

If you meet this criteria, you’re probably in for some fun and games.

Luckily, I’ve been using SugarSync for a month, which silently syncs everything up to a big S3 vault, so I’ve lost very little thankfully. That’s damn good timing though - there were some critical files still on there from the last time I remote worked; this time last month I’d have lost it all.

The only other thing affected was my calendar and address book, but luckily I also run a regular automated iSync (using Proximity and an AppleScript) which keeps a complete and up-to-date version of both of these on my phone. Still, it’s a hassle having to transfer it all back into the appropriate multiple calendars. I’m going to start using gCal I think.

Anyway, the new hard drive with five year warranty is in the post. All I’ve got to do now is wait for the fun of installing and configuring every single app again. Hurray.