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To a photographer whose work depends largely on flawlessly running Macs, any manner of hardware failure can qualify as a major disaster, perhaps leading to quiet panic and maybe even desperation. The idea of losing everything can elicit a hopelessly sinking feeling.

Unless you're running Leopard with Time Machine enabled, or if you've been at least practicing some sort of system, setup and data backup, even if on a piecemeal basis, things can go really bad. For whatever reason, machine failure can happen. And it usually happens (quite unexpectedly) at the worst possible time, which is also to say, only a matter of time.

But thanks to a few readily-available Mac technologies or services, such as MobileMe, and even the fact that Aperture's library files can be referenced to a dfiferent location other than the internal hard drive, and also quite possibly in spite of a user's quirks, the painful experience of machine failure can somehow be reduced, if not totally eliminated. It is still painful of course, but certainly not as much as when totally crashing without anything to recover from.

For a photographer to be faced with an unfortunate situation such as this, Aperture's ability to reference files to an external hard drive, choosing it over a managed setup, can turn and serve as an unexpected backup system.

That's basically my story the past 2 weeks, or something that began as far back as 6 months ago, with a lot of really obvious but nonetheless hard lessons learned along the way.

Up until about half a year ago, I've been using my MacPro with a dual 30-inch cinema display. That was my main machine when working on photography projects. But for some reason (yes, unexpected), it stopped functioning normally. Early diagnosis, which was later confirmed, revealed a problem with the graphics card. It needed to be replaced.

Since I have 2 working laptops, a relatively new 17" MacBook Pro and an old but still fully functioning 17" PowerBook, and despite the visual handicap of not being able to use and view images from the 30-inch dual cinema display attached to the MacPro (you can easily get spoiled with such a huge screen real estate), I was able to continue doing what I needed to do with my pictures. I simply directed Aperture to the library stored in an external hard drive connected via Firewire. And because I was able to continue working, and since I discounted the possiblity that my 2 laptops will develop problems as well, at least not that soon, I was confident that I'd be able to somehow continue working using these 2 portable machines for some time to come until the MacPro has been fixed. And so, for several months thereafter, most of my work was being done on the MacBook Pro, and occassionally, on the PowerBook.

What made it possible for me to somewhat smoothly transition and to continue working on my photographs from one machine to another, almost without missing a beat, was the fact that I chose to referenced all files in my Aperture library to a dependable external hard drive. My original intent for this setup was so that I won't fill up the internal hard drive of whatever computer I happen to be using with lots of RAW image files. And because the files were out of the primary drive, it was easy to just point to it from an attached drive and continue working as before even on different computers.

But then, more of the unexpected happened. (Aren't failures always categorically "unexpected"?) A couple of "catastrophic" events (ok, that was over-the-top, I admit), in the space of about a couple of weeks, made things quite difficult for me.

First, the hard drive on my MacBook Pro failed. Yes, unexpectedly. I was therefore left with no choice but to use the PowerBook full time. And second, the other catastrophe struck: the PowerBook's hard drive failed. Yet again, unexpectedly. No warning whatsoever. Can you imagine the awful regression from the luxury of a speedy MacPro with dual 30-inch cinema displays to the reduced speed and the somewhat "relatively" small screen of the 17" MBP, and then the turtle pace of the PowerBook?

Anyway, with all of the machines out of commission, I was finally forced to do something. First, I went to see a Mac Genius (something that I've actually always been curious to do but had no reason to), and, second, I decided to get a brand new laptop, the 15-inch unibody MacBook Pro.

Because of the situation that I was in, the visit to a Mac Genius felt almost the same as going a doctor. It wasn't at all what I imagined, and certainly not something as glamorous as how it is being portrayed. I went to see a Mac Genius because I needed to be fixed, I mean, my machines needed to be fixed. As for buying a new machine, I realized I would have to do it sooner or later, but I was deliberately deferring the purchase until maybe, and possibly, when the new 17" unibody would be introduced, which I was predicting, or betting, or imagining, would be about some time early next year.

This is not the first time I've experienced a computer hardware, or software, problem. I can say that I'm a veteran of computer woes. Each previous experience, naturally, inflicted its own kind of pain, from which, I should have extracted nuggets of valuable lessons. But, what can I say, I've been hard-headed. However, I can't be completely blamed for not implementing a full backup strategy. Since I converted to Mac a few years ago, and even though I've been through various computer failures, most of which were eventually remedied, I somehow became complacent when it came to the idea of coming up with a sensible back-up strategy.

Because Macs work so well, it can sometimes lead to a false sense of security. At the back of my mind, of course, a small voice kept telling me to create a backup, specially when Leopard's Time Machine came out, making the process quite simple and easy to do. And yet, it was one task that I kept deferring, until it was too late.

In my 45-minute session with a Mac Genius at the Apple Store in 5th Avenue, I was told that the 2 laptops I brought in would take at least 5 to 7 working days to get fixed. It was explained to me that it can take several days before the parts, which may not be readily available (e.g. brand new hard drive replacement), can be ordered, brought in, and installed. To my surprise however, I received a voicemail the following morning telling me that my 2 machines were ready for pick up. I thought there had been a mistake; but upon confirmation, my machines were indeed ready. I went to the store on the same day to get them. The fast turn-around was a very pleasant and welcome surprise.

Perhaps like many Mac users, I spend a lot of time configuring and tweaking the setup to exactly how I want it. The degree or level of personalization and customization can become quite hard to immediately duplicate. But since I will now put Time Machine to good use, and if in case something goes wrong, which hopefully wouldn't be any time soon, I know I'd be well-prepared for the recovery. I will be using the 1TB G-Drive Q which I picked up from the Apple Store the same time I got my laptops back as my Time Machine backup.

And so, with laptops coming back to life, my weekend was spent mostly upgrading and updating, and configuring, to at least hopefully approximate the personalization and customization I used to have on them. I realize I've lost something that could no longer be recovered, and that I wouldn't be able to exactly duplicate, but one thing that made the process of recovery easier was my MobileMe subscription.

Almost all of the important data from my previous setup has been synced to MobileMe's "cloud"--my emails, calendar and address book, and calendar information, and also even my bookmarks, dashboard widgets, dock items, keychains, mail rules, signatures and smart mailboxes, preferences, notes, and online galleries, as well as important photo data from my iDisk and my a 3rd-party application backup. Recovery was far easier because of MobileMe. Important and essential bits of informatiion were just there, up in the cloud. (And by the way, while my Macs were out of commission, I even felt wasn't even totally orphaned: the iPhone synced to the cloud capably proved its mettle, handling emails, some web browsing, and a number of other tasks, even including slight photo editing using a couple of 3rd-party apps on some photos I regularly post on my Flickr, Tumblr and Facebook.) But of course, I would like to believe that recovery would have been far easier, faster, and even painless, if I were to do it on Time Machine.

As for Aperture, once I installed and updated it, along with the 3rd-party plug-ins and after reimporting key settings, all I had to do was reconnect my trusty external hard drive. (Oh, you might like to know that of all the external drives I've used, the one that proved most reliable to me are the G-Drives from G-Technologies, Inc.) Although there are many good reasons to favor managed over referenced setup in Aperture, my practice of working on images from an external drive unwittingly saved me from the additional trouble of recovering images from failed internal hard drives.

And as for the new 15-inch unibody, I decided to plunk cash on an AppleCare for it. This decision made me feel at least somewhat protected from what may potentially be troublesome and heartbreaking to come somewhere down the road.

Of course, after finishing each project, I intend to continue backing up each finished projects by spanning them on multiple DVDs using Toast Titanium 9 from Roxio.

If not for anything else, of all the "recoveries" I've had to go through, and because of the relatively new technologies that has been implemented on the Mac, this latest fiasco was the smoothest and fastest ever. I may be biased here, but coming from the perspective of recovering from a computer failture, I think this is a proof how well-built Macs are, when compared to PCs.

If were using Time Machine, perhaps I would have only lost only a day or two instead of two weeks. I am almost certain that, with Time Machine, what took me days to recover, install, setup and configure my machine to bring it back up to snuff would be reduced to mere hours of restore. I am making sure that this time, I will be using Time Machine. And thank goodness, I've been using MobileMe, and yes, Aperture.