Barkings! | The Small Dog Apple Blog

Apple’s Time Capsule was released in 2007 in 500GB and 1TB capacities which were, at the time, sufficiently capacious to accommodate backups of most anyone’s Mac or Macs. Today, Apple sells Time Capsule in 1TB and 2TB configurations with substantially improved wireless speed due to compliance with the 802.11n standard, not just the draft standard.

With current generation iMacs standard storage starting at 500GB, and more and more laptops with 500GB and larger drives, 1TB is no longer enough for everyone. I bought a 500GB Small Dog Refurbished 500GB Time Capsule and quickly filled it with backups from my MacBook Pro. When my girlfriend bought a new iMac to replace her aging PowerBook running MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger), the added strain of an another Time Machining Mac made 500GB downright unusable.

I didn’t want to shell out for a whole new Time Capsule, so I asked Google how to replace the internal drive in a time capsule. I found an excellent guide that explained that the server-grade drive that Apple ships in their Time Capsule is not entirely necessary, and that an energy-efficient, lower-RPM drive would put less strain on the internal power supply and reduce the strain on the small internal fan. I picked up a 1.5TB 3.5-inch SATA hard drive (though 2TB would work just as well).

The first step is to remove the rubbery bottom of the time capsule, which is kept in place with some very sticky adhesive. Rebecca suggested I use the original drive for some time to warm the adhesive, but in the end a heat gun was necessary to cleanly remove it. This reveals ten phillips screws holding on the bottom plate, which comes right off. Once inside, it’s quite obvious how to proceed. Be careful of the temperature sensor, which must be removed without damaging its cable. The SATA power and data cable must be carefully unplugged from the main board inside.

Once you’ve installed the new drive, button the Time Capsule back up, and fire up AirPort Utility, you’ll be guided through the process of formatting the new drive. All told, the process took about twenty minutes, but as you probably know from experience, the initial backup took all day. Instead of 100GB free, I now have well over 1000GB free – plenty of space for my girlfriend’s and my backups!

Two weeks ago, one of our long-term customers returned a late 2008 Xserve to us stating it was not recognizing PCI cards in either slot. I jumped at the chance to take a look at it since we don’t see many broken Xserves coming back in. Xserves are traditionally easy machines to work on. Many of the components are user-installable and the whole thing can be stripped down in about five minutes.

Thinking that I was either going to find a failed PCI slot or Main Logic Board (more likely since both slots supposedly were non-functional), I grabbed a PCI card for testing and powered on the Xserve; it booted to a Kernel Panic while loading the kernel (the part of the boot process where the grey Apple logo is on screen). This was not what I was anticipating. Still going along the lines of a potential issue with the PCI slots, I removed both PCI cards and reboot the machine; Kernel Panic (KP). Ok, time to go back to basic troubleshooting.

First I attempted to boot to the 10.5 Server Install DVD, it KP’d to that as well as an external hard drive with a known good boot volume. Then, I swapped the RAM, which yielded no change. I then manually ran the EFI Firmware Update for that Xserve, but it wouldn’t accept it. Traditionally, with desktop Macs and Xserves if the machine is experiencing Kernel Panics while loading the kernel and both operating system and RAM have been ruled out the issue is with the processor. Luckily, we had an identical Xserve in the shop that I was able to borrow some parts from. I swapped out the processor, but still no change. I was able to then successfully run Apple’s Service Diagnostics in EFI, which told me everything passed. Logically speaking, the issue should be a Main Logic Board at this point, so I ordered one up and let it go for the day.

The next day, Jon, another great SDE tech, installed the replacement logic board and to his chagrin he was greeted with a lovely Kernel Panic on boot. Ugh. He let it sit and the next day I was back in the office and I started scouring the service manual for tips. All status lights were displaying their normal state, with the exception of the System Identifier Light which blinked to let me know that I had the top cover removed. Next step, minimal system! I disconnected everything except for MLB, processor/heat sink, power supply and distribution board, RAM, fan array and video card. I attempted to boot to my known-good external hard drive and still received a KP in return. For my next trick, I replaced all of the minimal system components with the parts from the identical Xserve that we had with the exception of the replacement logic board and processor; still nada!

Just to be thorough (read: stubborn), I then proceeded to replace every component aside from the replacement logic board with the parts from the identical Xserve. My thought was to then work backwards eliminating one component at a time until I found the piece of hardware that was causing the issue. I never got that far. Even with all of the good components in place the same issue still occurred. At this point it was just about comical, and from being in situations like this before I felt it had to be something really simple that I was missing; but what?!

I called in two other techs and talked them through my process. We all stared at the machine for a bit and scratched our heads, but no ideas were generated. Then, an even more bizarre issue occurred. The external hard drive that I was using for testing has three partitions; two 10.5 and one 10.4 boot. During one last attempt at booting the machine the power button was pressed, but none of us bothered holding down the option key to get to the EFI boot manager. I turned around and realized the machine had successfully boot to the 10.4 partition and was functioning. This should not be possible; a late 2008 Xserve should not be able to boot into Tiger! At least from here I was able to verify that the firmware was up to date, but now I was even more confused.

It was time to call in the big guns. Feeling a little defeated, I picked up the phone and dialed Apple Enterprise Support; Apple’s tech line for help with servers and enterprise software. I explained my process and issue to the tech, who also seemed stumped. I’ll admit that my first call wasn’t terribly productive. The tech seemed to have trouble following my triage process and he ended up telling me to reinstall 10.5 Server on the internal hard drive and/or to try the firmware update again. Despite knowing neither should resolve the issue, I did them and then called back when that didn’t work. The second time I called I got a tech who seemed really interested in the case. He ended up putting me on hold while he “asked the room” for advice. The one unanimous answer was that Tiger should not boot on that model Xserve and they suggested that I order yet another logic board, thinking the one I had received was defective.

Ok, one day of waiting for another board. It arrived, and I did the replacement this time. I was not surprised at all when I had yet another Kernel Panic staring back at me on boot. At this point I had the broken Xserve right across from the known-good Xserve that I was using as a parts-donor and after stepping back for a moment, I saw the problem. At first, I didn’t believe it. Even while I was then “fixing” the broken Xserve I was grumbling about how stupid it was. When I boot the Xserve and it happily booted to its internal hard drive without a hitch, I was relieved, annoyed and a little embarrassed all at the same time. So, what did I notice?

Well, there are two slots for the processor; since they can be configured with one or two processors. The good Xserve properly had the processor in CPU A. The defective Xserve had the processor in CPU B. Of course it was panicking on boot! I suppose the only silver lining is it is interesting to know that a late 2008 Xserve is able to boot into Tiger if its processor is in the wrong slot, but I can’t say that’s very useful information. After speaking with the customer, it was confirmed that they had a tech there who had upgraded the Xserve himself to two processors and he accidentally removed the wrong one before shipping the machine back to us. Since it’s incredibly uncommon for a customer to rearrange the processor configuration it hadn’t dawned on me (or the three other techs looking over my shoulder) that the processor was in the wrong place.

The good news is that the original issue—the two non-working PCI-slots—was resolved by replacing the logic board. The machine is once again a happy, functioning Xserve and I have been re-taught the lesson that if a problem seems that convoluted there’s probably a simple solution that’s being overlooked.

Tags: mac, repair, xserve

I love Spotlight, the search technology built into Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5. I find it easy to use and speedy (especially on 10.5 Leopard). The Spotlight search field in the menu bar usually provides almost instant results for finding files, folders, and documents, along with emails, contacts, iCal calendars, items in System Preferences, applications, and even dictionary definitions.

Recently, however, I noticed that Spotlight wasn’t finding files I knew existed on my Mac’s hard drive, and was running slower than expected. After making Spotlight reindex the drive, it’s now back to full speed. Since it’s not obvious how to make Spotlight reindex a drive; here’s how to do it:

• From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences.
• Click Spotlight.
• Click the Privacy tab.
• Drag a folder or even an entire volume (your hard drive) to the list.
• Remove the item or volume you just added.
• Spotlight will reindex the contents of the item you initially dragged to the list.

You can also do this to index any number of external hard drives. If you have a large-capacity hard drive, this may take up to a couple of hours.

You can tell that Spotlight is indexing a drive when a little dot is pulsing in the middle of the Spotlight magnifying glass icon. Also, when you click on the Spotlight icon, it will show a progress bar instead of results. Note that you can continue to use your computer as usual while Spotlight reindexed its hard drive.

Note that many Mac maintenance and utility programs such as Onyx will also force Spotlight to reindex a drive.

Tags: apple, mac, mac treat, spotlight

One of the toughest things a technician has to do is tell customers that their hard drive has failed and recovering the data will likely cost thousands of dollars. A Small Dog customer brought in her 24-inch iMac earlier this month because it would not start up. It was on the bench and diagnosed as a failed hard drive a few hours later, and we contacted her with a few options: replace the hard drive under warranty and return the failed drive to Apple, or send the drive to DriveSavers for professional recovery.

DriveSavers is widely acknowledged as the most capable and best-equipped data recovery firm in the world, and our customer was happy to receive an external hard drive with 100% of her data mere days after sending in the toasted one. She was not happy about the bill, though, which was more than the cost of her computer!

We spoke at length on the phone about how all hard drives fail eventually and how she needs to have a backup system in place. She clearly understood what I was saying, and I made it clear that our conversation was not really about sales but about her protection. No backup drive was purchased.

Three weeks later, the warranty hard drive replacement has failed again. She didn’t back it up and has lost three weeks of work and simply cannot afford the pricey recovery again.

David Lerner, an owner of the preeminent New York City Apple Specialist and repair shop Tekserve, has in his email signature “May you have 1,000 backups and never need one.” It’s a mantra we all should take seriously.

This is just one more sad story about 100% preventable data loss. Do yourself a favor and get a Time Capsule, an external drive, even email important documents to yourself or stash them on your iDisk. A $200 Time Capsule is much cheaper than a $2200 data recovery!

Do yourself a favor… (be sure to click the green links on the product page to view all specials)
Time Capsule 500GB from $199.99
Time Capsule 1TB from $349.99

Tags: back up, data recovery, time capsule, time machine

In the days of the classic MacOS, all downloaded files automatically had the web address entered into the comments field of their Info window. Of course, we had to regularly rebuild our desktop back then, and this often meant losing the contents of info windows. Thankfully, the days of rebuilding the desktop are long gone, and this feature is still present, though slightly different.

In OS X you can select a downloaded file in the Finder and select Get Info from the File menu, or press command-i to bring up the info window. Look for the “More Info” section, and click the disclosure triangle at left to reveal the file’s origin in the form of a web address.

This is a useful trick for those of us who stash away media, either for archival purposes or in a media server type environment. Sometimes these files become corrupted and re-downloading them is often the easiest way to get them back.

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Tags: apple, downloads, mac, os x, tip, treat