As I said when I left off, I decided to junk Snow Leopard for the time being, reinstall Leopard and go back to the perfectly fine workspace I was in before SL entered my life.
This sounds easy. And it should have been. But that’s not the kind of day yesterday was. My first obstacle was finding the Leopard install disc. My wife, Annie, and I have recently moved our shared office into another room of the house (for the third time!) and piles of papers and discs were still in disarray.
After 20 minutes of rifling through old Tiger and AppleCare discs, I was ready to scream at not being able to find what I needed. And I certainly would have. Thankfully, thought, Annie was around, and saved my ready-to-be-shredded vocal chords by finding the Leopard disc for me.
Feeling hopeful, I began installing the old platform. After a couple of hours the install was complete and I was an almost-happy man. I began to migrate my old files to the laptop, again using Time Machine, and figured within an hour, I’d be good to go.
FALSE STARTS
About an hour into the process, the status bar read there was under a minute to go. I knew better than to believe that, but I thought we were at most several minutes away from normalcy. So, I checked back in 10. Then 15. Then 20. Then 30. After hearing my moans of frustration, Annie suggested I just shut the computer down and start again. She’d just had a similar thing happen to her computer and an Apple tech gave her that very advice. It worked for her. I thought she was crazy and declined at first, but eventually my patience gave out and I shut the laptop down.
I couldn’t have made a bigger mistake.
Because the next time I started the computer I learned that many of the files had in fact transferred, but many others hadn’t. And there was no way of knowing which were which. But that was least of my problems. Because when I looked to the desktop to find the external hard drive icon, I couldn’t find it! The computer wasn’t recognizing the external hard drive that Time Machine had backed my files onto.
At this point, panic really set in. I jiggled cords, I looked everywhere on the computer, I restarted it several times, but nothing I did brought the external HD icon back.
So I began the unenviable task of reinstalling Leopard again and again…and again. When it became clear that wasn’t working, I tried shifting tack, and installing Snow Leopard again. This allowed me to access my external HD (yay!), but I couldn’t import all of the files. There was too little space since some were already imported and it wouldn’t write over them. And like before, I had no way of knowing which hadn’t been imported.
A LIGHT DAWNS
I began thinking of possible workarounds, like maybe using my home network to transfer files and assorted other sure-to-lame ideas. Rather than get discouraged at my situation, though, clarity managed to barge its way in.
Somehow, through my frustration and fear I remembered a suggestion from hours earlier that I read in one of the Mac fora. Someone argued that if you erased your machine completely, then installed Snow Leopard and then reimported your backups that everything—including Photoshop—would work fine.
Earlier that had seemed an extreme option. By now—1 a.m—I was ready to try it. So, with the confidence that I could at least access my backed up files, I gave it a shot.
And two hours later I watched as the last of the files were placed back exactly where they belong.
REALLY?
Not completely trusting my apparent good fortune, I postponed celebration until I gave the important software a test drive. InDesign, check. Illustrator, check. Photoshop—the quirkiest and most vital piece of the puzzle—open file, wait for a minute…wait for two….three…five…seven, oh, alright—check.
Three a.m. and my beautiful 17″ Macbook Pro had all of its software up and running as it should, with the extra 20 GB of hard drive space and speed it had earlier in the day thanks to Snow Leopard.
A crazy, harrowing day. But one that ended well.
