Had to reformat
 

So this weekend was supposed to be my big backup, I had finally cleared enough room on my 500gig to hold everything. Went to bed with copy actions running and wouldn't you know it, woke up to the unable to boot screen. Of course none of my copies went and I had to reformat my hard drive. Lost all the pictures I had taken since last year's rally, and all the movies I had for my iPhone. I can get most everything back except for the pictures but it's gonna take a long time and a lot of ass pain. Stupid Vista, and stupid me for not backing up earlier or having recovery disks. I feel like such a n00b.

Nubs.

Macbook FTW. :D

sounds like a hardware issue.
Drive could be crapping out.

Sucks because it's a laptop, o really hope it's not the drive. I'm slowly replacing everything, the only thing I can't get back is the pictures. I'm buying a media server to pit everything on, til then I'm using my external to back everything up as I go. This sucks a lot, it's been a while since I've had to restore stuff and I forgot what a pain it was. I have to get a software package to restore my iTunes library off my 80gig, well, the music at least. The movies are gone but I can get them back from where I downloaded them in the first place, it'll just take a while. My next computer will be a mac.

I have personally found that the very best Windows computers, with the least issues, and the highest speeds (outside of esoteric gaming shit) are Apple computers.

In my house, as I have a family and we're musicians, we're integrating a recording studio, along with a number of personal computers of 3 major OSes (MS, Apple, Ubuntu Linux) of various versions (Win 4-6, Mac 7-10, and Ubuntu 7-9).

As we can afford it, we've been moving all hardware to Mac, and even virtualizing some of the PCs.

For what it's worth, with rare exception, hardware issues are now nearly a thing of the past with the Apple stuff. We can argue the merits of different OS's all day (we use them all), but we must give it up for Apple's hardware. If you just need an "appliance" that just flat works, their shit is tight.

...and Yes, I know it's expensive, and I know it's overpriced, but downtime, and frustration comes at a very high price too. Windows XP on a Mac Mini or a Macbook Pro just FLIES. Put an SSD lappy drive in a Mac Mini, and shit works like you see it in the fucking movies. BAM! Just scary fast.

Wanna set up the ultimate home network/media integrated system? Mac Minis and LCD TV panels in each room (dual boot Win/Mac) with Bluetooth mouse and KBs, and a central Mac Mini server, running MS server and/or Linux server parallel under VMware (giving you full server functions in both OSs), for maximum flexibility even on the server side.

The performance is amazing, and the cost of operation is low, as the Minis are cheap, quiet, and very energy efficient. It is also finally the best way to integrate TV and Internet while networking your entire house (wireless-ly!).

Costs about $1500 a room for a Mini and a TV. Mac/Win/TV Inexpensive, quiet, compatible, cheap to operate...and I finally can get back to work, and stop jerking around with hardware.

Priceless.

That is fucking baller. I have heard TONS of people say the same thing about windows running better on apple hardware. I had mine set up to dual boot for a while, but never needed to use windows so I eventually deleted it.

You can get just as solid of a Windows laptop, but you are going to pay the same price for it as you would a mac. Now if you want to run to walmart on black friday and buy the windows laptop for 149.99 with a 2.0 GHz single core processor, 512Mb of Ram, and a 40 gig hard drive, have at it, but don't compare your 150 dollar computer to my 1200 dollar one that fucking destroys it.

Sounds like an earthquake issue.

It's not the really the hardware, but the fact that Apple contacts it's own hardware specs to Asian OEM's resulting in a much tighter development process so the hardware and O/S can work together more effectively. In contrast, Microsoft O/S's are designed to run on many different pieces of hardware, making their systems slower and not as effective as Apple. This is why Apple has much fewer issues than Microsoft in general. However, saying that the physical hardware is built any better is a stretch.

It's possible to get Mac hardware performance for much cheaper. It just requires you to be more proactive in your hardware choices. Read reviews and ask questions about what mobo will perform with what ram and video card better. It's what Mac does and when you do it, it will work like that. Mac is the good no brainer way to get this done for you without the work though.