When your laptop restore stretches from hours into days into weeks, you start questioning every life decision that led you to this moment. That’s exactly what happened to my friend Stuart, a retired IT pro who recently spent 16 days – yes, you read that right – restoring 900GB of data from Carbonite.
This blog post summarizes the main points of my latest podcast episode. If you’d like, you can listen to it or watch it at https://www.backupwrapup.com/
Why Your Laptop Restore Might Take Longer Than Expected
The journey began when Stuart’s hard drive started failing while he was working in Lightroom. Like any tech-savvy person, he decided to replace the failing drive with a new 2TB SSD. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. The laptop restore process turned into a comedy of errors that would make any IT professional cringe.
When Even Simple Laptop Restore Tasks Go Sideways
First came the hardware issues. Some genius at a repair shop had replaced all the Phillips head screws with hex screws. One stripped screw later, Stuart was breaking out the Dremel tool – not exactly standard procedure for a laptop restore. Then there was the tiny ribbon cable that took four attempts to seat correctly.
Getting Through a Never-Ending Restore
The real fun started with the actual restore. After 48 hours, only 20% of the data had made it back. Stuart’s system crashed about five times per day, requiring manual login after each crash. The one bright spot? Carbonite automatically resumed the restore each time.
To speed things up, Stuart moved from WiFi to ethernet, literally relocating his laptop to the kitchen counter to be closer to the router. Did it help? Maybe a little, but we’re still talking about a 16-day restore.
The Lessons We Learned
Here’s the kicker – Carbonite offers a service where they’ll ship you a physical drive with your data for $100. In hindsight, that might have been worth it. But as Stuart put it, “The closer it was getting to the end, the more you think maybe you could save a hundred bucks.”
Want to avoid your own marathon laptop restore? Here are some key takeaways:
- Test your restores before you need them
- Consider paying for physical media shipping options
- Make sure your hardware is stable before starting
- Use a wired connection whenever possible
- Document everything for next time
The good news? Stuart’s data all made it back, his Lightroom catalog was repairable, and he’s got one hell of a story to tell.
Written by W. Curtis Preston (@wcpreston), four-time O'Reilly author, and host of The Backup Wrap-up podcast. I am now the Technology Evangelist at S2|DATA, which helps companies manage their legacy data
