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In the twelve years since we started COGBOX I’ve never experienced a hard drive crash. So, I was probably due.

Yesterday, while working on a COGBOX.com refresh my up-till-now trusty iMac suddenly froze. And, on restart I saw the dreaded flashing-question-mark-folder screen—not good.

While my iMac is still not back in service, I’m back in action with a combination of my laptop and other office machines.

There are a few choices that have made this hard drive crash much, much less painful than it could have been. I thought I’d post them here to give credit to the products/services that have helped. Maybe my experience will help you.

Hosted Subversion Repositories – Beanstalk
We use Subversion for version control on all our client sites, and we host our Subversion repositories off site with Beanstalk. Beyond all the other many benefits of version control, hosting at beanstalk makes picking up development right where I left off super-fast. Three other development tools we use that are subversion friendly : Versions, BBEdit, and Coda.

Google Apps – Gmail, Calendar and Tasks
About two years ago we moved all our cogbox.com email over to Gmail for Business. It would be impossible to go back. Besides the amazing speed with which I can search through 40,000 messages in my inbox, having our email as a web service means no hiccups in the case of disasters like yesterday’s. Just lately I’ve started using Tasks from in Gmail and really like it, easy fast to-do lists (they look good on the iphone too).

So I’ve got my client’s sites & development projects, my email/calendar and my to-do lists. What about other work files?

Time Machine
Fortunately, Apple came through for me. I’d stopped paying attention to whether my backups were working months ago. But Time Machine was there in the background storing my files every hour.

My only regret is excluding some of my system files and applications from my Time Machine backups to save space. When I do get my iMac back in working order I’ll have to spend some time re-installing a bunch of apps. What I should have done (and will be doing in the future) is let time machine do a whole system backup to a larger network storage device like a Drobo. Then my recovery would be as simple as a hard drive swap and restore from Time Machine.

All-in-all, relatively painless. I’ll update my post as my recovery proceeds.

Update:
I forgot one other app that has made my life much easier with this crash —Yojimbo. It’s another app from the makers of BBEdit that allows me to store (and encrypt) thousands of logins, notes, code snippets and other bits of information, then sync it between multiple machines. With all the mental space I’ve freed up with this app I can now sometimes even remember where I’ve left my keys!

Update 2:
I found the difference between an Apple HD replacement and a local Mac Reseller (MacDocs) HD replacement is about $150 and 1 TeraByte. Apple Store: Replace my 500 GB drive w/another just like it – $350. MacDocs: Replace with 1.5 TeraByte drive $200.

(Normally something as simple as a HD replacement is something I’d do myself, but the Aluminum iMac replacement process involves suction cups and major dis-assembly—well worth avoiding for the $75 mac docs fee.)

If you’re a person who makes websites and are wondering how your current situation compares to others in the same field head over to A List Apart and see their 2008 Survey.

They asked 30,000 web types their opinions on topics from their “level of excitement” to “how long since your last raise” for this year’s survey. And, if you are so inclined you can even download a copy of the raw data yourself to play with.

Go to the survey.

For the past couple of months I’ve been using a new application for development that is … just plain awesome!

It’s called Coda, by Panic Software — the same folks who make the very nice Transmit FTP client for Mac — and it combines a bunch of tasks that a developer on a mac will do over and over.

From within a single app, you have:

A text editor that rivals BBedit
Integrated SVN version control
A webkit powered preview mode — basically Safari built right in.
An FTP Client
A Terminal shell window
A library of programming reference docs
A CSS editor

So instead of jumping back and forth between applications while you’re developing, it’s all right there for you!

For a lot of our clients the process of an update used to look something like this:

1. Open BBedit or Dreamweaver.
2. Open the appropriate docs.
3. Make your changes.
4. Save your changes, switch to FireFox or Safari to preview
5. Repeat steps 3-4 until satisfied.
6. Switch to terminal, navigate to the site, and commit the changes in to the repository (or switch to Versions, another SVN GUI app we’ve been using).
7. SSH in to the remote server and check out the changes to the working copy.

In Coda, this goes something like:

1. Open Coda, click on the site.
2. Click the doc you want to open in editing mode.
3. Make changes, preview in preview pane.
4. Click the Source Control Status button to show your SVN status. One more click checks in your changes.
5. Click terminal tab, you’re automatically SSH’ed to the server. Just update the working copy, and you’re done.

Same work completed, much less time and hassle! See it for yourself.