Car and Apple iMac Update!!!

Skoda

Its been a bit stressful over the last couple of weeks to say the least. I had my yearly car service last week Friday 11th August, but wasn't there for long, as the electric went off in the Quarff area for several hours, so had to return home and reschedule for Monday 14th August at "Toner" garage in Quarff and then had the MOT done at "Shetland MOT & Repair" (known as SMR), based at Tingwall on Friday 18th, which failed! "Suspension arm pin or bush excessively worn offside front lower (rearmost bush) and advisory: the nearside front lower.

Back to the garage this morning to get these replaced and then returned to the MOT centre to get re-tested. Pass! Tax purchased over telephone this afternoon and now the car is good (hopefully) for another year! Just need to get some "Winter" tyres sorted before Winter! Plus a garage would help for salt corrosion, which means I need to buy a house before the hard weather sets in, lets hope that actually happens! Several properties available at the moment, but either too expensive, in too poor condition or too far away from work.

Apple iMac

My Apple iMac is still out of service. I'm typing this up on the laptop. I have had several very lengthy telephone calls with Apple Technicians. So on Wednesday evening, my iMac did not get backed up as I was supposed to do, as it froze and I had to shut it down and whatever I tried after several hours, I could not get it turned on again! Gave up.

Thursday evening, straight after work, phoned Apple again and was part way through the call, when the signal went! Not a brilliant signal from my house. So, I had to ring back again and had to finish the call with a different technician, which meant explaining it all again! For several years I have had three 1TB external hard drives and last year I decided to invest in a new 6TB Sandisk G-Drive and its a good job I did. The technician explained that if I had a large enough external hard drive, then my iMac hard drive could be copied to that, but it needed to be empty. So he partitioned my 6TB external hard drive into a 4TB with current stuff saved on and a second 2TB drive and it is this, that would be used to copy my iMac hard drive onto.

I was then asked to reinstall my Mac OS Big Sur and this would take at least a couple of hours and then ring back tomorrow for the next stage. I did this and then went to bed. Friday afternoon after car stuff, I phoned Apple again and it was explained that I now needed to copy over the Internal hard drive! This took almost 7 hours to complete. As recommended, I checked it had all copied over and then as instructed, shut down the Mac, then disconnected the external hard drive and then phoned Apple again, which I did at 7.45pm (they close at 8pm!). The next Apple Technician then assisted me to erase the entire disk and begin the process of reinstalling OS Ventura from new – this took a couple of hours and then commenced to do the usual stuff you have to when you have a new iMac, eg which country, language etc etc. Then I shut down the iMac. Tomorrow I have to ring Apple again for the next stage, which is assisting me to copy my copied internal hard drive from the external hard drive to the newly installed iMac!!! The techncian will then help me to put my 6TB hard drive back into one drive.

It was also pointed out to me that I would have to reinstall and set up any programmes, such as Adobe Photoshop, emails etc, so its going to be a computer weekend, not a birding weekend. Emails will be the hardest to sort and I hate having to ring TalkTalk, as the customer service is the opposite experience of phoning an Apple Technician! I will never not back up regularly again. My last back up was early April – I could have used this back-up and it would have been far quicker to do, but I would have lost everything I have done since then, including every photograph I have taken! Fingers crossed its all saved, when its all copied back tomorrow! Hopefully I will get out at some point tomorrow or on Sunday!!! Loads of migrants to see here currently!

B A C K  U P ! ! !