Just after the new year Ingrid (My Mac Pro)started running slow than normal. Fine, just great. It's not bad, but it does annoy the hell out of me. I think it due to the new software I installed for for my Livescribe PEN. I can't prove that, but that's my guess. I call Apple and do some digging on the internet. The solution was to wipe the hard drive and reinstall everything. I wanted to do that as much as I wanted to run a 5k in minus 20 degree weather.
Ingrid has a second hard drive which is set as the Time Machine backup. I had planned for this possible problem, so I figured I'd wipe the hard drive and restore the system from the backup. Great! Long story short a full backup restore doesn't bootup. I reformat the hard drive, reinstall the system software (10.5), upgraded the system software to 10.6, run the updates. I drag what I can from the backup drive and restart the system. That takes me all weekend and a better part of a week.