Jay,
We do have strong opinions here! <g>
I have to limp along on what I have and make it work is what I’m told
Does your boss buy a car and "save" by not performing routine maintenance?
Same thing with your computer. It needs routine maintenance, too. Explain to your boss that you’d be far more productive if your computer weren’t crippled — and it won’t get better on its own.
More productivity, of course, means more work done, and done well, per hour and on time! And that means money in the pocket of your company!
Ben Franklin’s adage still holds true: They’re being "penny-wise and pound-foolish."
You need the following tools on your bookshelf: Your Mac OS X system disk (for Disk Utitility); Alsoft’s DiskWarrior; and Maintain’s Cocktail couldn’t hurt either. Price it out. Get a P.O. and buy it. And, find a Mac-savvy IT person.
Neil
Something else to tell your Boss:
If he won’t provide the tools for you to replace the damaged Directory on that HD, he is in grave danger of the whole HD becoming unreadable resulting in the loss of all of his Client’s files.
Of course, there are Data Recovery companies out there and they only charge a mere $2,000 or so to recover files from damaged HDs.
I just hope that you are fully backed-up
8/
Jay…
If you were able to take a decent poll of visitors past and present, I’d bet you’d find more than a handful of users just on this one forum who could tell you that Disk Warrior (or Drive Genius) has saved their friggin’ bacon, when no other utility or maintenance routine thrown at the hard drive would make it read properly.
It’s happened twice for me in the past 11 years. The return on investment is incalculable.
I reiterate what Neil said:"Does your boss buy a car and "save" by not performing routine maintenance?"
"Same thing with your computer. It needs routine maintenance, too. Explain to your boss that you’d be far more productive if your computer weren’t crippled — and it won’t get better on its own. "I had a boss who was a horrible tightwad (and was known as such throughout the printing industry in my city), and kept balking on getting me some more RAM for the PowerMac 7300/180 MHz I was using. I was limping along on 32 MB, and many of the files I was working on daily were in the 100-400MB range. You have no idea how many smoke and coffee breaks I used to take, waiting for simple operations to take place. He stopped in my building one day, and caught me next door at the deli, sipping a coffee and leisurely eating a bagel. He read me the riot act. I let him act like a jackass and chew me out in front of everyone in the deli.
When he was done going ballistic on me I simply said to him something like this: "If you weren’t such a cheapskate, and would spend a little money to upgrade my machinelike I’ve begged you to for 6 monthsI could get a whole lot more done and we wouldn’t be in this predicament, now would we?"
I fully expected to be fired on the spot, but I had gotten to the point where I didn’t care. I was ALWAYS being given too much work for the machine to handle in a 50 hour week.
I had done research, and showed him facts and figures; I tried to make him understand in terms of dollars and centsa language he understoodbut he just didn’t get it.
Next day, I yanked a 128MB module from my system at home and brought it to work. I called him at the other building and demanded he come right over.
I had the cover off the PowerMac; loaded into Photoshop I had one of our typical jobsabout 200 MB. I had a Photoshop action set to go, and I showed him how long it took to do a few common procedures (Rotate/straighten, crop, save). In fact, we even went next door, grabbed a coffee, ate a bagel, smoked a cigarette and came back, and the file still had about 5 minutes worth of processing to go.
Then, I shut down, popped the 128 MB RAM module in, and performed the same manipulations I had done before. The difference was extraordinary, down from about 20 minutes to under 5.
He finally understood what I was trying to tell him. He got on the phone right then and there and ordered a half GB of RAM, to be shipped overnight.
All of this is offered as an anecdote, as an example of why you need to find what ever way necessary to explain to your boss the need for the monetary outlay. The small amount he spends now could very well save him enormously in the future, in time, aggravation and money.
