Do you even know where your install discs are?

Snow Leopard install discs, keeping it close is good but it can also mean if your computer gets stolen, the thief can access your files by changing your master password

I had a little reminder/wakeup call just today.

My input device, my wireless trackball was acting up.

Changing the batteries and restarting didn’t fix it.

I was about to reach for a 3rd party software called Disk Warrior but decided that it wasn’t that serious.

So where was my Snow Leopard discs? I turned my office inside out…

Those install discs that came with my operating system is that important.

With it, you at least stand a chance of booting up your computer to see if you can fix the internal hard drive.

In the wrong hands, that disc can also create havoc.

If you keep that disc with your computer and your computer is stolen, a thief can just as easily change your master password of the administrator giving them access to all your files.

In case you’re wondering what this has to do with photography, well, nothing.

But if you aren’t shooting film, then it has everything to do with photography.

Every competent photographer needs to know their operating system or else, they will have to pay someone a lot to bail them out of a jam or risk losing every single image they shoot.

After booting up in "Safe Boot," head over to Utilities and choose Disk Utility

I had to do a restart into “Safe boot” by holding down the “Shift” key until the login screen appeared.

Then I repaired permissions by launching Disk Utility (Under Applications from the Go menu on the finder) then I selected my internal hard drive and chose repair permissions.

Select the icon for your internal hard drive. If you haven't renamed yours like I have, then select the one called "Mactintosh" followed by "repair permissions" Hopefully this fixes it and you won't have to resort to something stronger and costlier like Disk Warrior.

All is well again. The tech gods are smiling on me once again.
Peter Phun Photography

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8 thoughts on “Do you even know where your install discs are?”

  1. Tracy,
    I believe as long as you don’t enable File Sharing from your Mac, you should be safe. Head over to System Preferences (under the Apple icon) Hopefully it hasn’t moved in Lion. Then look for the pane called “Sharing” under Internet & WIreless.

    The default setting there shows a list of things shared and none of them should be checked. Keep in mind, I”m still running Snow Leopard so my suggestions may not be current to what you will see on your brand spanking new 27″ iMac. 😛

  2. Wow – thank you so much for taking the time/trouble to find that link for me. You are wonderful.

    I do love the new iMac. I expected to love it, but I love it even more than expected!! 🙂

    Do you think I am opening myself up to any security issues down the road if my new Mac is in a network shared by pc’s? I have a pc sitting on my desk for some work stuff and my husband and two daughters each have a pc in their rooms. I can “see” their computers when I’m in mine, so now you’ve gotten me wondering if theirs can possibly infect mine with something down the road?

    Thanks for keeping me thinking at any rate!

    T

  3. Hi again, Tracy.
    I haven’t made the upgrade to Lion (OX 10.7) myself only because my production machine MacPro desktop is not going to be supported.

    Lion is the 1st OS upgrade which is cheaper but made available or sold thru’ the Apple’s App Store. Fear not, I found an article on MacWorld which gives you a step-by-step on how to make a bootable install disc for Lion.

    I bet you must love the new iMac. I have a 24″ iMac which I don’t get to use. My kids and wife use that. I’m happy not to since they play games and will most likely be the source of a security breach on my all Mac network. Thanks for posting back. Let me know how your Lion install disc works after you make a copy.

  4. Hi again, Peter. Timely post – I had to jump back here for a second. I am a brand new iMac user – as of today coming from (mostly not that exciting) pc use. I just realized that when we unpacked this beautiful beast today (27″ of pure goodness) there were no disks in the box. I did a quick google search and discovered that no system disks ship with Lion iMacs. Hmmm. I’m guessing I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed that I don’t need them!

  5. Hi Tracy,
    Thanks for taking the time to comment. Yes, knowing where that install disc is important. WIthout it, you can’t even boot up your machine to diagnose what the problem is.

    If Disk Utility tells you the hard drive can’t be repaired, then it’s time to run Disk Warrior and keep your fingers crossed that the hard drive can be fixed. If it can’t, hopefully you can at least drag and drop or copy all the data you have from the damaged hard drive to a new drive.

    Great looking website, btw, Tracy. Have a great Thanksgiving.

  6. Rigo,
    When I decided to go down the road of self-employment, I also decided I would need to be self-reliant, self-supporting technology and computer savvy. The best thing I did was to get involved with the local Mac User group. Before long I was the webmaster of the group. It wasn’t a paying gig but I taught myself a lot of skills.

    These days I am confident enough to rebuild my computer, backup and do serious troubleshooting if ever I run into problems. The best advice I can give anyone is to clone the internal hard drive of your production machine (Windows or Mac) That way, if you ever have a hard drive failure, you can be up and running with minimal amount of fuss assuming your data is backup on external volumes somewhere. 😉

  7. Glad to hear you solved your issue without too much headache. Great reminder. I used to NEVER know where any of my backup/install discs were! A few years ago I put them all in one drawer in a hall table. Yes, they could still get stolen, but at that point if someone is in my house rifling around I figure I have much bigger problems! 🙂

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