After the horror (my iMac hard drive died)

Brought over from Emma's Friends, a Mac blog. Originally posted 02/25/2008. Author CF. It started when I was (as usual) running a zillion different things, having done the 10.5.2 mega update that morning -- but hey, I'd been luxuriating in the faster processing and the maxed-out RAM. What I remember most clearly about the beginning of the incident is that after I rebooted my hard drive icon and the icon of my external (Time Machine) HD would flash on and off, on and off. The dock spontaneously rose and fell a few times then rose no more. I have both a standard account (which I usually use) and an administrative account, and I started worrying there was (inexplicably--since I'd done no relevant installs recently) a start-up/log-in app conflict so I restarted several times. Each time was worse than the last. My menu bar disappeared after doing it's flashing on and off thing for a bit. Next I signed into my admin account. It was fully operational, leading me to believe that there was some anomaly tied to just the one account. I researched (holding onto my fantasy that it was a start-up item conflict) for how I might turn off the start up times for my standard account from my admin account and the closest I came was "Eliminating incompatible login items" which I dutifully printed out and tried. Steps 1-9: Shut down computer. Wait 30 seconds. Press power button. Immediately after tone press and hold the shift key. Release shift when you see the gray apple....oh! Wait. I never saw the gray apple. I did't see the gray apple for about another 10 days. Maybe it wasn't quite that long. Nine days. Next, an hour and a half on the phone with Apple Care. (They were terrifically nice.) Nothing worked. The install CD (disk one) that came with my iMac would insist on spitting out every which way we tried to boot from it. Speed forward a few days. As there is no Apple store within hundreds of miles, an onsite tech is coming by. Very nice and capable fellow. Kept me well informed via phone. Installed new hard disk. No joy. He's on the phone with Apple. They're going to send everything but the kitchen sink. (Actually, another hard drive, some cable, the CD/DVD thingy, a logic board.) I'm getting edgy. I'm losing work days. The first few days were good--I work two jobs and don't get much time up for air. I call to see if everything's there; one of the four items is not here yet. Another day: it's arrived! We'll schedule for tomorrow morning! A different tech comes out as the first fellow was obligated elsewhere. Another nice fellow. Discovers one of the parts sent is the wrong type. Proceeds with the logic board installation. Tries to boot. No joy. Installs the new hard drive, replacing the one installed a few days previous. At last! I see a gray apple! I'm nervous, because...why would two hard drives fail? Is this one going to last a short while then fail? Is there something else still lurking that will cause it to fail? What was that cable for? But for now, I am operational again. In the interim, I've located this excellent and terrifically reassuring walk-through on restoring from Time Machine. Time Machine rules! A few places my experience differed; mostly it was as described. With the boot disk in the CD/DVD thingy I chose "restore system from back-up" (look for the Time Machine logo) from the Utilities menu. Then go somewhere for about 2.5 hours. (I went to my other job.) As he said, the Mail restoration was a cinch. I do note that iTunes is going to argue with me over the authorization for purchased songs. (This is a drag.) Contrary to what he said, I did have my Adobe products (and I have five or six) want me to reauthorize them (I wish I could remember what it said). Mostly, that went smoothly but for one (Flash) I had to call to get a new authorization by phone. I'd done all this (through the Mail restoration) without my ethernet/cable modem plugged in so I got messages about weird times until that was attached. And my hard drive had a weird "last modified" date (double click the icon then click the eye thing for info) until, after doing a bunch of work for a few days, I restarted just for the heck of it. I notice its normal now. Cross your fingers for me!