Apple Mac Update!

So, when I got up this morning, the process we were doing yesterday, did not succeed, just webmailed the Mac Engineer, Liam. Waiting for him to ring me.

10am. We decided to scrap the 'partitioning' of the drive and currently carrying out Carbon Copy Cloner of my hard drive. Also, I didn't realise that you could sync everything on your browser – I use Firefox, so all my bookmarks are saved now whatever happens!

12pm. The Carbon Copy Cloner worked a treat until it got to about 85%, when after two hours it came to a grinding halt. It had found some dodgy files, obviously the same dodgy files that the 'Time Machine' didn't want to copy yesterday. But, as Liam explained to me, because Carbon Copy Cloner is a third party piece of software, it will more than probably copy everything, but just miss out the corrupted files. It hovered on 85% for AGES and everything kept freezing. Liam said he would ring back again at 1.30pm. In the end it took almost 5 hours to copy! Liam was obviously on another call and wasn't able to call back until about 2.15pm. Note: he leaves at 4.30pm!

2.15pm. We checked all the files had copied properly and then the next stage was installing the Mac installation DVD, which I was given lots of instructions to follow, including updating the original software etc and then asked to email back when I had done everything. All of this took until 4.30pm.

I was handed over to Liam's colleague Steven, who kindly assisted me until about 6.20pm. The next job was to use 'Migration Assistant' to copy everything from this morning's copy of the hard drive, onto my new internal hard drive..... BUT, Migration Assistant did not recognise my external hard drive to copy everything, which was possibly because of my previous corrupted files I was told. So with Steven's help, we had to choose what we needed to copy manually and back up each section – ready to lose my mind completely by this point!!! Which also means, that I have now lost my Adobe Photoshop CS5. I was extremely pleased that I had spent several hours over the last couple of days, copying all my photos onto external hard drives! I asked Steven to help me load up Apple Mail and Internet before he finished the phone call, which he did, but it played up for a while and I would never have been able to do it by myself. I have terrible luck with emails and internet or is a TalkTalk thing!!!

HUGE thanks to Steven and Liam who have helped me out enormously. Anyway, I was left alone to put the rest of my Mac back together. Found Firefox and downloaded that and synced my tabs and bookmarks back. Installed my printer disk, iWorks disk, imported my Address book back (good job I exported that on a DVD yesterday), installed a new Adobe Flash. Then I started to copy stuff back into my Mac including 2015/16 pictures (SLR and iphone), Documents and various other folders. In the middle of all this, my internet failed, no Apple Mail and no landline phone! Lots of swear words at this point and raised BP!

I spent ages trying to sort this, including unplugging wires from the router, turning back on, restarting the computer etc etc. I was putting off the inevitable – I was going to have to ring TalkTalk. Every conversation I have with them makes me angry. Phoned them up and spoke to someone who hadn't got a clue what to do at all, no surprise there – one of their suggestions was to unscrew the BT box in the wall, which I refused to do – I have had this suggestion before in the past, there is NO need for this at all. They ended up asking me to turn the router off for 30 minutes then ring back if it still wasn't working, so I did. 40 minutes later and it still wasn't working. Phoned TalkTalk again, sigh, sigh, sigh. The person I spoke to this time, also didn't know how to fix it and ended up suggesting the same thing, about unscrewing the box etc. I blew my top at this point and long story short, slammed the phone down in a rage! Switched router off and mac and went to the garage shop at 11.30pm to buy some comfort food!

I have not left the house since I got home from work on Wednesday night and it felt weird going out in the car. My mission was to top up with lots of chocolate, cakes and everything I could think of to console myself! I grabbed reduced berry tarts, apple turnovers, chocolate, bananas, lunch for tomorrow, ice-creams – think that covers it! On my return home, I put the shopping away, well most of it! Turned on the Mac and copied some picture folders over and then watched a bit of TV whilst it was copying. Washed up, made a cup of tea and then dared to turn on the Router! MIRACLE, IT WAS WORKING, I could have danced! Celebrated with a cornetto ice-cream, another cup of tea and started work on the Norfolk Bird News and this post.

Next job, although not until another day, subscribe to Adobe Creative Cloud Photography Plan which is £8.57 a month – this includes Photoshop and Lightroom. Then a big job of updgrading my Mac from OS10.6.8 to OSE EI Capitan, which is the newest OS and means my Mac will be totally up to date and like new, hopefully! That was a very long three days, three days I was supposed to spend with my family, birding etc. But, I suppose it could have happened in the middle of Autumn migration, so I maybe I shouldn't grumble too much!

GOOD NIGHT, or should I say GOOD MORNING!