The guts of a Mac

[belamyi]

I have owned (well, you understand what I mean...) A Mac for over four years now, and it still amazes me how during all this time I only had the replace the battery and update its hard drive and increase the storage capacity.
But there is something that is becoming an obsession: how can I be sure that, for all my cleaning and care, some particle with get inside through the keyboard , and how would I know when, once having got inside, it is working to screw my machine right at the moment when I need it NOT to fail.

I know how naive, silly and paranoid it sounds, but I am spending my few days of Xmas holidays working on a project with my mac and my notebook in a G-d-forsaken place and I would loose time and work if I should spend even less than 24 hours repairing or buying a new one.
Yeah, I know, I buy a new one and bring it along "just in case" but my interest is about the general situation of some external agent screwing macs or laptops in general.

Argh. I feel so vulnerable right now, what would I do then if something bad actually happened? I need to work like a machine and if anything gets in the way even for a few hours, my disposition to work will be maimed.

 

[onetwothreefour]

What you are describing is a fear of losing data and time.

There are many, many ways to back up your data to an external hard drive, and that is the main thing you should do: buy an external hard drive.

My best recommendation is a wonderful program called SuperDuper. It makes cloning your internal drive to an external drive super easy.


You could also either copy data manually, use a program like Apple's Time Machine, but I strongly recommend SuperDuper because it allows you to make an exact replica (or clone) of your internal drive.

What that means is that if your internal drive ever fails, you can connect your external clone to your computer or to any other Mac and choose it as a start up drive and boot to it and continue working with everything as it was the last time you created a clone. Having a clone means that you have a bootable drive which contains everything on your internal drive.

SuperDuper is free, unless you want to pay for an upgrade that allows you to make incremental updates to your clone rather than making a brand new one each time you update.

And your computer may very well fail at some point, but I doubt it'll be from a piece of dust. Good luck!

 

[GamerBear]

I've had my Mac for five years and even though it only screwed up once I made sure I backed up my data on an external hard drive just like onetwothreefour said.

 

[gambit22121]

If you are a true mac fan, you can buy Apple's time capsule. I've had one for several years and if I ever accidentally threw away a file (because my mac has never crashed or lost anything), I could always recover it from the Time Capsule. It's a wireless backup drive and router all in one.

 

[belamyi]

Now let's see. Thank you for your advice but I'm even more stupid than that. I'm not a Mackie... at all! But I was given this laptop and it's the best damn computer I've ever had, PC or laptop or even notebook, even if I don't use most of all its fancy possibilities.
All the data in my hard drive is being backed-up as I write: with the Time Machine option and a cheap Toshiba external harddrive I have actualizations of my stored data any time I want.
My silly fear is losing, not the data, but the machine itself, and having to care for repair or having to go to the Apple Store and buy a new one, plus the guilt and obsession of not knowing what it was that I did wrong or about which I didn't care that I should have do or taken care of, like letting some particle of dirt inside... apart the fact that I couldn't afford buying new laptops any time something is wrong.
I know myself well enough to fear that when I am stressed and absent-minded as I am now anything could happen... dust, crust, what do I know.
I'm sorry if this seems more a shrink than a geek-tech case, but given that these days I lived perched over my computers even when I try to relax, like right now, I somehow needed to vent and see if there is anything I can do apart from being careful against myself lol... oh well, thank you again, some of your suggestions were new and informative to me, and I guess I should be resting and not disturbing sane, awake people with my siliness.

 

[T-Rexx]

But there is something that is becoming an obsession: how can I be sure that, for all my cleaning and care, some particle with get inside through the keyboard , and how would I know when, once having got inside, it is working to screw my machine right at the moment when I need it NOT to fail.

Some particle IS inside your Mac.

Right now, this very moment it is working to bring down your Mac.

Slowly, surely, inexorably the particle is working itself into critical connections within your Mac. It will bring all computing to a halt at the most critical moment when you most need your Mac NOT to fail. AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!!!

 

[onetwothreefour]

I have OCD pretty severely. And it sounds like, at least about this computer, you have an obsessive fear of it failing and that your world would fail at the same time.

It would be OK if it failed and you had to have it repaired or go to the Apple Store. And it wouldn't be your fault. The fact that you have kept a laptop for over 4 years is an accomplishment I cannot claim. I replace mine much more often than that (also for OCD reasons, but different ones). Anyhow, even when people break their computers and it is their fault they don't beat themselves up over it.

I don't know whether OCD is the manifestation of other anxiety feelings you have or whether it's just organic and you happened to get tripped up on the issue of the computer. And given that I can't help myself with my own OCD, I don't know if I can help you, but in case you didn't know that your fears sound obsessive, it might help to know that they sound like obsessive fears, and perhaps your care of the computer has been compulsive. But it's not your fault that you are OCD either.

I have a message on my screensaver that I wrote to myself that says, "There is nothing you could ever do to fail in my eyes. Please love yourself. Please love everyone around you." It's something I've wanted people to say to me, and I am lucky I have had people say things like that in bits and pieces, but I like it stated like that, so I state it like that to myself.

You are OK. : )

 

[belamyi]

Some particle IS inside your Mac.

Right now, this very moment it is working to bring down your Mac.

Slowly, surely, inexorably the particle is working itself into critical connections within your Mac. It will bring all computing to a halt at the most critical moment when you most need your Mac NOT to fail. AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT!!!

Haha, I know.. last night I was groggy with meds for the muscular pain and the cold, and I was so stressed with my work, alone, at night, that I could do nothing but grow hysterical on the net... I'll be glad if I provided more laughs than anything else

I have OCD pretty severely. And it sounds like, at least about this computer, you have an obsessive fear of it failing and that your world would fail at the same time.

It would be OK if it failed and you had to have it repaired or go to the Apple Store. And it wouldn't be your fault. The fact that you have kept a laptop for over 4 years is an accomplishment I cannot claim. I replace mine much more often than that (also for OCD reasons, but different ones). Anyhow, even when people break their computers and it is their fault they don't beat themselves up over it.

I don't know whether OCD is the manifestation of other anxiety feelings you have or whether it's just organic and you happened to get tripped up on the issue of the computer. And given that I can't help myself with my own OCD, I don't know if I can help you, but in case you didn't know that your fears sound obsessive, it might help to know that they sound like obsessive fears, and perhaps your care of the computer has been compulsive. But it's not your fault that you are OCD either.

I have a message on my screensaver that I wrote to myself that says, "There is nothing you could ever do to fail in my eyes. Please love yourself. Please love everyone around you." It's something I've wanted people to say to me, and I am lucky I have had people say things like that in bits and pieces, but I like it stated like that, so I state it like that to myself.

You are OK. : )

Apart from the reasons I gave above, I can only think of adding that I'm so gay I somehow needed to have some sort of OCD

 

[Michiko]

I routinely use a third-hand, 11-year-old blue and white Power Macintosh G3 today. It works perfectly. I even use it for DESIGN...

 

[belamyi]

I routinely use a third-hand, 11-year-old blue and white Power Macintosh G3 today. It works perfectly. I even use it for DESIGN...

That's what Macs are supposed to be for, isn't it?

 

[Michiko]

That's what Macs are supposed to be for, isn't it?

I mean, try to run Adobe's Creative Suite 2 on an early model Pentium III-based PC. Or, worse, try to run XP SP3 or Vista on that... Tiger and CS2 run perfectly on a G3 Mac.

 

[pixie77]

I recently have 3 fine lines that have appeared down the screen of my monitor, one black pink and red. My iMac is about 4 years old. I would get another but is this one fcuking up? can someone offer advise here please?

 

[foodandart]

Now let's see. Thank you for your advice but I'm even more stupid than that. I'm not a Mackie... at all! But I was given this laptop and it's the best damn computer I've ever had, PC or laptop or even notebook, even if I don't use most of all its fancy possibilities.
All the data in my hard drive is being backed-up as I write: with the Time Machine option and a cheap Toshiba external harddrive I have actualizations of my stored data any time I want.
My silly fear is losing, not the data, but the machine itself, and having to care for repair or having to go to the Apple Store and buy a new one, plus the guilt and obsession of not knowing what it was that I did wrong or about which I didn't care that I should have do or taken care of, like letting some particle of dirt inside... apart the fact that I couldn't afford buying new laptops any time something is wrong.
I know myself well enough to fear that when I am stressed and absent-minded as I am now anything could happen... dust, crust, what do I know.
I'm sorry if this seems more a shrink than a geek-tech case, but given that these days I lived perched over my computers even when I try to relax, like right now, I somehow needed to vent and see if there is anything I can do apart from being careful against myself lol... oh well, thank you again, some of your suggestions were new and informative to me, and I guess I should be resting and not disturbing sane, awake people with my siliness.

Do not fear for your Mac. I am working now to get Apple Tech certified - have been fixing Apples for years and they are made with good quality parts.

The biggest thing to make your Mac laptop last long is to get a cooling pad to put underneath it.

Heat kills Mac laptops and it is usually the hard drives that go because of it. I have had to replace hard drives in two PowerBooks this past year and BOTH were owned by relatives that would leave them on their beds, with the air-vents blocked. . NO-NO-NO!

Happy Macs are ~cool~ Macs.

 

[foodandart]

I recently have 3 fine lines that have appeared down the screen of my monitor, one black pink and red. My iMac is about 4 years old. I would get another but is this one fcuking up? can someone offer advise here please?

Sounds like a loose connection between your graphics card and the monitor screen. I take it this just happened one day, and isn't from a fall or getting whacked? Sometimes the heating and cooling of the machine can loosen the connector.. in old beige G3's it was quite common for the sound card to loosen from the heating/cooling and make the whole machine act very strange.

 

[T-Rexx]

I recently have 3 fine lines that have appeared down the screen of my monitor, one black pink and red. My iMac is about 4 years old. I would get another but is this one fcuking up? can someone offer advise here please?

Plug another monitor into the video out port of your iMac. If the lines appear in the external monitor, then it is probably a software problem or some problem with the display chipset aging.

If the external monitor display is fine, then it is your current iMac monitor which is going bad.

 

[belamyi]

Do not fear for your Mac. I am working now to get Apple Tech certified - have been fixing Apples for years and they are made with good quality parts.

The biggest thing to make your Mac laptop last long is to get a cooling pad to put underneath it.

Heat kills Mac laptops and it is usually the hard drives that go because of it. I have had to replace hard drives in two PowerBooks this past year and BOTH were owned by relatives that would leave them on their beds, with the air-vents blocked. . NO-NO-NO!

Happy Macs are ~cool~ Macs.

I used to have one of those pads under the Esprimo but I almost always work with my Mac on the crystal of an old small TV stand, and I lay the charger on the lower crystal shelf.

 

[pixie77]

Thanks foodandart and t-rexx

 

[belamyi]

Well, here I am again, this time with something a bit more "real".
For the last couple of days, the Mac needs more time than usual to initiate. The first day it seemed to have just frozen, showing a blue screen, flickering in different shades every nw and then. So I thought that I had start it over again.
It seems that, after all, it's only that it takes more time, and during a couple of minutes after apparently having started to work properly, it's still too slow when starting to run utilities.
Since it's not getting worse every day, I finally decided not to bring it to the Mac docs, but it's obvious something is not right.
However, as long as it keeps this way for the next six months without any more trouble...

 

[andysayshi]

What kind of Mac is it? There's a known glitch with the Nvidia chipset in some Macs that can need a replacement logic board. My Macbook Pro had the issue and started to flicker blue stripes before completely shutting down. Apple will fix the issue for free, even if out of warranty.

 

[belamyi]

What kind of Mac is it? There's a known glitch with the Nvidia chipset in some Macs that can need a replacement logic board. My Macbook Pro had the issue and started to flicker blue stripes before completely shutting down. Apple will fix the issue for free, even if out of warranty.

A plain (or sunken if you want) 2006 Macbook Black Core Duo 13".
A couple of years ago there was a problem with the battery, which was reportedly quite common, and although the replacement was just €125, it was still far for being for free.