The great Christmas rebuild

Ah, Christmas. Means one thing. Time to back the bloody computer up and rebuild it cos its been running like a dog for weeks (probably jealous of all the attention that the lovely new G5 iMac has been receiving).

Anyway, I decided this time to be really anal, and do a build, so that I don’t have to install all the apps everytime I want to wipe my computer and start again.

It took me a while to do this, but I have done it now and its all cool. I then backed up my Users folder only with CarbonCopyCloner, and was all set.

So wiped the Powerbook, cloned the build over, and its all good. Then things take a serious downturn. As I start copying over bits from the User folder backup, I do something really stupid. Really really stupid. I copy the Mail preference from the Powerbook over to the backed up User folder by mistake.

Agh.

Well actually ‘agh’ doesn’t quite cover it. A few choice expletives later and I try to calmly decide what to do. I decide that as I have already copied over the mailbox databases, it will be fine if I just go and set up each mailbox.

So this I do and all the mails appear in their respective mailboxes. Which is great until I actually click on one of the older mails. I get a polite message saying that this mail needs to be downloaded from the server, which it already has been, and as its over a year old, there is no way it will still be on there.

Agh.

And again, ‘agh’ doesn’t do it justice. More expletives later, I cool off and decide that I will rebuild the mailbox. Oh yes that will fix it. And it does. I no longer have the old mail problem. Because I no longer have the old mail. Everything prior to the mails I received on this start up of Mail have gone.

Bugger.

I now frantically search for an old backup which I do have, but it’s six months old and missing some mailboxes (though thankfully they are not that important, and never contain more than five messages).

I manage to copy this over and all is well again. Phew.

The moral of this story is, of course, don’t be an idiot.