mohdwahidi’s photo ideas

This is the screen that delighted my day two days ago.

My Mac partition has been damaged when I tried to install Windows XP using Boot Camp. It is not the fault of Mac OS X, Boot Camp or Windows XP. Then, what is wrong with my Mac partition?

Well, it was me. I tried to install Windows XP to Mac partition without preparing a separate partition for FAT32 partition that is needed by Windows XP to reside in. What I’ve done is telling the Boot Camp to install Windows XP to HFS+ partition that is used by my Mac OS X.

My Windows XP installation was terminated halfway through the installation due to unrecgonised hard disk format. I have guessed this is due to the HFS+ format that Windows XP can’t recgonised. After that, I restart my computer and holding the Option button to change the restart disk to Mac OS X but, there is only Windows hard disk show in the boot up.

So, what I did was to restart my Mac with Mac OS X Installation Disc 1 and browse to Disk Utility. Checking with Disk Utility have shown that the disk has been in the unformatted partition. I was really angry at that time and thinking of the gigs of pictures and documents that I have stored inside it. Then, I saw a “Restore From Backup” in Disk Utility option with the Time Machine icon beside it. So, I think I might be able to restore the data from my Time Machine external hard disk. I have been using Time Machine for quite a while now and the last backup of it is just few minutes before my Mac was in trouble. So, I plugged in my external hard disk and choose the option and leave it for 3 hours (this is show in the “time remaining” section). But before restoring the backup, I have formatted the Mac partition to GUID Partition Table (Journaled).

I was thinking Time Machine will only restore my data and NOT the setting from my previous Mac OS X. This is normal when I was using Windows XP, where fresh installation will only restore data, but not the settings. I still remember those days when my Start menu needed to be copied manually to restore it to the state before the reinstallation.

But, I was wrong! Restore From Backup restored everything including my settings and my Yamaha TZR 50 wallpaper! When I saw the wallpaper, I knew that everything is intact. There is not a single thing that has been changed from my previous Mac OS X settings. Even the Mozilla Firefox history, cache and saved passwords is there! Now, I’m happily backing up and will always use the Time Machine just in case this thing will happen again.

For those who still think that backing up is wasting the space of the hard disk, think again. We cannot predict the future. Here, I would to say that backing up is important and Time Machine is the best ever software for back up ever made. Back Up Now!

What do you think?