August 18th, 2007. A busy day. I have to run to a client’s house to work on his web site (laptop in hand), do a lot of shopping for crap, and do a LOT of work/cleaning back at the old BRAT Productions Entertainment Complex.

(backstory on the incident about to be mentioned will be included when I get my MacBook Pro back from Apple…)

I get home after outdoor crap, and have a situation. I plug in my MacBook Pro, and start working. What I don’t notice is that, while the “battery charging” icon *is* present, the battery power level is actually decreasing! Horror.

Frantically calling around to all of my friends at 9:30pm on a Saturday night (bastards all having social lives, are a PAIN to get a hold of), I finally find two alternate MacBook Pro’s (thanks to Eric/Strati, and “Uncle Peter“, who’s laptop I am currently using).

Yep. Confirmation. My laptop is fried. Not only do I have to tell this to my main boss (who takes it in stride), but I get to find out that the Glendale Galleria Apple Store Genius Bar is apparently very popular (impossible to make a timely appointment).

My laptop is currently away for major (warranty covered) repairs, but this article is not about that. It is about the art of backing up.

If you do not already have a backup solution in place, START ONE! As I said, I am on a friend’s laptop, but I am working away as if the laptop was mine. How? Running Apple’s “Disk Utility” program, and using the “Restore” feature, I had made a backup of my MacBook Pro hard drive to a WD My Book 320 GB external FireWire hard drive. You set it up, you walk away (for a few hours), and viola! You have your hard drive, BOOTABLE, and cloned.

Now, I just boot up the external hard drive (start up holding down the option key), and all of my email / AppleScripts / bookmarks / web files / et cetera are EXACTLY as I had them.

Aahhhhh.

(deep cleansing breath).

Stop whatever you are doing, right now. Go buy an external hard drive, larger than your current main system hard drive. Hook it up, and immediately implement it as a backup hard drive. Don’t use it to store ANYTHING other than a backup of your main hard drive.

You will thank me later.

EDIT - The Backstory
Nora filled my car drink cooler with REAL ice, instead of my blue ice. I didn’t notice. Days later, I took a turn REAL hard, the cooler tumbled, and soaked my laptop.