[MLUG - DISCUSSION] Why hasn't Apple been sued.

["Christian M. Cepel" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

I'm not certain if I haven't asked this before, but I am increasingly 
amazed that Apple hasn't been cited in a class action lawsuit.   I've 
wanted to post the question to /. and really see it discussed but I 
wouldn't even know where to begin and I don't know if it's an old issue 
or just something of my imagination.

As I see it, the MacOS Disk Utility is pretty much 100% worthless with 
regards to fixing errors once they've happened.  I've had probably 40 
occasions to test this theory.   They've all be partitions with 
journaling enabled and some have suggested that errors and well as 
failures by the disk utility to fix those failures are less with 
journaling disabled.  I've had Disk Utility fix errors precisely twice, 
and both times it took several failures before it found success.   I've 
had disk errors occur the day after the disk utility giving me a clean 
bill of health on several occasions (I've gotten a little paranoid and 
now tend to run the thing often).   Before anyone says it, on drives 
that have failed and been repaired, they've then gone on to work fine 
for a long long time, so it's not (well.. once it was) a case of a drive 
that is physically failing.  My experience is this... once a drive error 
occurs (and especially once you detect it via wonky functioning), you've 
pretty much lost your drive and data.  Once an operating system won't 
boot because of a disk error, you're guaranteed an OS re-install and 
very nearly guaranteed to lose your data.   My standard policy now is 
that if something wonky starts to happen, to immediately power the 
machine off, boot to target disk mode and start copying off files in 
order of importance and hope to get as much as I can before the error 
cascades, and then re-partition, and re-format.   My experience is that 
fiddling with the drive at all after it starts having errors is a sure 
way to cause the error to cascade across the drive and render all of 
your data unreadable.

I have lost sooo much time and crap to this and other than my boss's 
machine, I've been fortunate that the machines are not my primary and 
that I tend to back things up fairly well.  I've been loosing sleep over 
it and have been watching Carbonite keep putting off the Mac Version of 
their software over and over and over, and just recently heard of the 
time capsule and am planning on giving that a look-see for my boss's 
machine.   I can only imagine how houses with macs as their production 
machines must deal with this nightmare... the problem is... the cult of 
mac.   Mac fanatics (and I've been one in the past) generally wouldn't 
admit to a bloody nose given to them by a Mac even if their blood was on 
the Mac's knuckles.

I just don't understand how this can be.  I remember a world of pre Mac 
OS X (thankfully gone forever) where I had folders full of disk 
utilities and I could at least have some hope of rescuing a disk using 
10 different utilities and perhaps sacrificing a few cats... now, once 
an error appears, I start with no hope... "Volume XXX cannot be repaired."

Has anyone else had this experience?   If I'm not alone, I don't know 
how Apple hasn't been sued out the wazoo.  Don't get me wrong... I love 
my Macs.... but how can this situation exist?   On my own experience I'd 
never recommend a mac for a production environment unless there were 
automatic incremental remote backups and a way to image back the drive 
in a couple of hours.

Am I just imagining this 'cascade' problem?   An error occurs... you try 
to fix it or mess with the data, it just cascades and renders your disk 
a molten pile of ones and zeros?.

--
Christian M. Cepel - Thistledowne Productions - http://thistledowne.org
Computer Support Specialist, Sr. - University of Missouri - Columbia
College of Education - School of Info Science & Learning Technologies
VRCbd, KidTools & StrategyTools Support Systems Projects, and Truman,
Library Whistlestop Project - Web Design & Programming - 573.999.2370


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