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1. Put install disk in.
2. Click install.
3. Watch episode of Firefly.
4. See install failed. Follow suggested advice of trying again.
5. Rinse and repeat.
6. And again.
7. and again.
8. See that there is actually an install log. Wow that’s handy. Open it. See that it's failing due to a Invalid Sibling link^‡.
9. See there is a "Disk Utility" tool. Wow that's handy. Run it.
10. Click verify on hard drive - Failed due to "Invalid Sibling Link" as expected.
11. Click repair on hard drive - Failed due to "Invalid Sibling Link" not quite as expected. Repeat clicking on repair button yields no further success.
12. Reboot back into Panther. Google for help.
13. Google says try use DiskWarrior.
14. Download DiskWarrior, through slightly dubious means. Remember kids always pay for software. Unless you think you are only going to use it once, in which case try justify it to yourself in several ways but still feel guilty. And I do pay for most of the shareware I use. Oh get off my back, I didn't even know if this was going to solve the problem.
15. Run DiskWarrior. Find out that you can't repair the disk you are running it from. Makes sense.
16. Burn DiskWarrior image to CD.
17. Try boot off CD for at least 15 minutes. Invent new swear words during this process.
18. Google ..... says that booting from CD is really hard and that you shouldn't really bother unless you really really want to. Suggests trying BootCD.
19. Run BootCD. Make bootable CD. Takes about 20 minutes. Start watching more FireFly.
20. Reboot, and boot of BootCD. Finally boots off CD. Well I'll be damned. Run DiskWarrior. DiskWarrior not on BootCD. Curse.
21. Boot back into normal OS. Rebuild BootCD, but put DiskWarrior on it this time too.
22. Boot off BootCD with DiskWarrior on it. Run DiskWarrior. Get error. Try everything you can think off for half an fricking hour to get DiskWarrior to run. Give up go to bed. Swear in your sleep.
23. Wake up. Google randomly. Find Carbon Copy Cloner. Ponder this as a method to solve problem.
24. Take external hdd and plug it into laptop. Use PartitionMagic, to make a third partition at the end of the hard drive.
25. Clone mac drive to new partition. Ignore errors that pop up saying some files exist when they really don't.
26. Clone created successfully. Reboot onto clone. Pretend to act surprised when it hangs when booting onto clone.
27. Run CCC again. Keep an eye out for the error messages this time. Find out that it's the cache directories and files for SquidMan. Note that SquidMan has been crashing the mac every time you run it up recently. Wonder if its related.
28. Spend about two hours trying every mother fucking conceivable way of deleting the files. Nothing and I mean nothing works. Reckon this is the source of the problem and perhaps hell itself. Failed methods include, booting into safe mode, Trash It!, Cocktail & rm -Rf.
29. Create clone, but create clone without the dodgy files on the clone. Clone creates fine with no errors.
30. Reboot onto clone. Clone hangs during boot. Curse. Read that sometimes firewire drives just don't boot.
31. Wonder if it's failing because the partition is the end of the drive. Know that sometimes it needs to be the first partition to boot. Plug drive back into PC, rerun PartionMagic, and start process to move partition to front of drive.
32. Watch episode of FireFly. Like 3% through process.
33. Go for haircut. Come back. Like 15% through process.
34. Go see Mr and Mrs Smith. Like 25% through install.
35. Go out drinking. Come home. Find that cleaner bumped poser supply to USB hub. Partition move failed. Drive seems fried. Drunk. Go to bed.
36. Wake up. Find out that all data on the drive is gone. Consider crying. Go play squash. Come back. Data still gone. Decide to wait till Monday and speak to OnTrack.
37. Go to U2 gig. Friend of mine mentions he had a similar problem and has a program that might help.
38. Get copy of Restorer2000 from mate. Appears it can save most of my data.
39. Since scanning the drive takes about 10 hours, dump external drive at mate with a desktop, and go to Amsterdam. Friends spends 3 days recovering most of data off drive onto his external backup drive.
40. Order 250GB Minipartner.
41. Get back from Amsterdam. Pick up delivered MiniPartner. Install. Create 3 partitions.
42. Clone current drive onto new Minipartner.
43. Reboot onto clone. Hangs during reboot. Kick empty Minipartner delivery box across the room.
44. As a long shot, put Tiger CD into drive and boot off that. Upgrade non booting clone to Tiger.
45. Reboot onto upgraded to Tiger clone.
46. Well I'll be damned. Paint me purple. It works.
47. Run DiskWarrior on original drive. Still fails. Consider crying.
48. Figure I have a working clone (and it's not every day you can say that) so may as well do a fresh install on the mac mini internal drive.
49. Tell install to format drive and install a fresh copy of Tiger.
50. Finally have running copy of Tiger on my mac mini.

Now just the long process of reinstalling all my apps and stuff. Add another two weeks for that one.

I know Mac's are better than Windows, but this was just ridiculous. Although on windows I would have expected this. Anyway, another few weeks I guess it will be back to normal. Some days I wish I didn't use anything more technically complex than a post it note.

^‡ The record of things on your hard disk is stored as a binary tree, which in layman's terms is made up of bits connected to other bits. An sibling link is the connection between two bits on the same level, and if one's invalid it means that one bit is telling the computer "Go to bit A next," but bit A does not exist on the hard disk. Hence Invalid Sibling Link.