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Backups save the day after data loss
About 13GB of data was accidentally deleted from my account on my Mac yesterday. Fortunately, due to an aggressive backup system, I was able to recover all of the files. I was trying to test out a tip sent to the TUAW team, which led me to log into (and out of) the "Guest" account several times. One of the logins seemed to hang, which triggered a memory about a data loss bug in Snow Leopard which I had read about (and which Apple is now acknowledging in "extremely rare" cases, per Cnet). I immediately reached around the back of my iMac and shut it down. At first I thought everything was OK, but then Dropbox started asking me to configure settings, as if it was the first time the app was run. Fortunately, due to the new "LAN sync" feature in recent Dropbox betas, the iMac copied my Dropbox files from my MacBook Pro on the same network in a matter of seconds, rather than having to download almost 2GB of data from Dropbox's servers. I thought that was the end of the problems, until I saw that my Terminal customizations were missing. Then I noticed that a few other applications were not functioning correctly. Suddenly I realized that I had most likely suffered more data loss than was immediately obvious. Read on to see what had to be done to recover after the data loss occurred.
Ask TUAW: Return to open, messed up Mighty Mouse, PDF alternatives, Boot Camp expansion, and more
It's time once again for Ask TUAW! For this round we take questions about cleaning a malfunctioning Mighty Mouse, opening files and applications with the return key, expanding a Boot Camp partition, finding alternatives to Adobe Acrobat, caring for your notebook battery, and more As always, your suggestions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions!
Ask TUAW: Open Firmware passwords, Desktop pictures, folder syncing and more
We've got a bumper crop in Ask TUAW this week! We tackle questions about about setting an Open Firmware password, changing Desktop pictures, folder syncing, external hard drives, video adapters, Palm/Mac personal finance packages and more. Let's keep it going! Please include your questions for next week as comments below and thanks to all the questioners from last week.
Ask TUAW: iPhone alerts, Migration Assistant, annoying coworkers and more
Welcome to this week's edition of Ask TUAW. As you probably know from last week's column, Mat Lu, your favorite TUAW answer-man, is on vacation and this week I'm here to try and fill his very large shoes. We'll see how that goes but I feel optimistic.Remember, if you want to ask us a question here at Ask TUAW, just post it in the comments of this post and we'll try to get it answered for you next week. Or, maybe one of your fellow commenters will give you the answer before that. Ok, now that that's done, let's get to this week's questions.
Getting the most out of synching and backing up with ChronoSync
I picked up a license for Econ Technologies' ChronoSync a little while ago, as I didn't want an app like SuperDuper which simply backs up an entire machine. ChronoSync offers a ton of options for fine-tuning your backup operations and synchronizing a machine with a backup folder or even another Mac, scheduling backups / synchronizations and even backing up to optical media. ChronoSync also has special options for performing operations like syncing Home folders between Macs, and even backing up to an iPod. Long story short: if you're looking for a highly flexible backup solution, I definitely recommend ChronoSync.The one catch with ChronoSync can be summarized with a twist on an old phrase: with great power sometimes comes great confusion. ChronoSync has a slight learning curve due to all its flexibility, but thankfully, 43Folders just pointed out a great ChronoSync Tips page with backup scenarios for a number of different users. Listed on the page are a dozen sets of instructions with screenshots for setting up operations like synchronizing/backing up iPhoto, synchronizing to a disk image or another Mac and even using the Document Scheduler to automate as many different backup and synchronization operations as you can dream up. For anyone trying to wrap their head around what ChronoSync can actually do for their backup and synchronization sanity, this is a great one-stop case study page that should convince any potential customers to take the dive.
Ask TUAW: Open With, AFP, iTunes with cell phone, escaping iPhoto, and more
This week in Ask TUAW we'll be considering questions about the "Open With..." menu option, mounting drives over a local network, using iTunes with a cell phone, getting all your original photos out of iPhoto, and syncing files between a notebook and a desktop Mac. Remember new Mac users and Switchers who are enjoying our Mac 101 series should feel very welcome to post questions for Ask TUAW; we're happy to have them. As always, please submit your questions by commenting to this post or using our tip form.
TUAW Tip: The easy way to backup on mount
Sometimes you have to suffer through the hard way once or twice just to find out... there's an easier way. I've posted recently about commercial backup applications that trigger a backup when you connect a target drive; I've posted on roll-your-own scripts that do the same thing. Over at MacOSXHints, an enterprising soul took the scripts from post #2 and enhanced/extended them. Great effort, everyone!Then, along comes a comment to the scripting hint: "Hey, why not just use Do Something When?" Gosh, never heard of that, let's check it out... gadzooks! A preference pane that launches an application or document when a drive is mounted! Why, with that plus SuperDuper!, or Automator, or even rsync/rsnapshot and Platypus -- you'd be a backup machine.So, the way to trigger backups on mount can be summed up thusly: Create your backup script in your tool of choice and save as a document or applet. Trigger that script when your drive is mounted, using DSW. There is no step three. There's no step 3! See additional notes and caveats after the jump.
Backup not all it's cracked up to be?
I don't rely on .Mac's Backup, but I tinker with it from time to time. It's never seemed to be the killer app to fit all my needs, but others in the Mac web who are more passionate and knowledgeable about backup software seem to be quite upset with it. In particular, Jonathan 'Wolf' Rentzsch, Michael McCracken and Erik Barzeski more or less echo the same opinion: Backup needs help, and a lot of it.All three of these notable Mac personalities have penned horror stories and useful overviews of what is so wrong with the little .Mac app that (someday) could, and I found them with a recent Apple kbase article John Gruber linked concerning a silly restriction of working with Backup 3 files.After reading through these, I think I might leave my Backup tinkering as just that, and rely more on ChronoSync since it does machine syncing in addition to straight backup. Though the fact that I haven't seen ChronoSync written up as good or bad in any of the recent reviews makes me curious. Has anyone heard anything?
