Can you tell where my mind is at?
So there's this amazing Mac store near my office called TekServe (it's where I bought DW yesterday). While DiskWarrior managed to my the drive usable again, the fact that it had this sort of problem indicates to me that it's on its last legs. So I have a couple options (presented in allegedly increasing order of expense):
- Bring the desktop over from Mom's and make it my main computer again. This would be brilliant, if not for the fact that I really like OS X and I've been using things like Pages and Quicken and Entourage that either don't have PC counterparts, don't export easily to their PC counterparts, or require (re-)buying software (which may make this not actually the chepaest option)
- Buy another $40 FireWire enclosure and a $40-$50 drive and boot off it. This kills the whole portable aspect of a 12" laptop.
- Buy a 2.5" drive and FireWire enclosure. Laptop drives are more expensive than desktop ones, but some enclosures at this form factor don't require an external power source. This partially kills the portability of the laptop, between sucking more battery life and being slightly unwieldy.
- Buy a replacement drive for internal use, and a 2.5" firewire enclosure to access things off the old drive. This would seem be the way to go, except for one glaring problem: swapping the drives. I have consulted various online guides, and this is an operation involving more than 50 screws of various sizes and shapes that I would need to keepo track of, as well as unclipping things from the logic board that are persnickety at best. As curious as I am about my lappy's innards, screwing this up would turn it into a very expensive paperweight.
- Have these guys swap the drives and do the data transfer for me.
- Have TekServe do that, but locally.