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Dare to be Creative announces Parachute backup utility for Mac OS X
If there's one thing you've probably learned over the years from reading TUAW, it's that backups are important. Many of the bloggers here are obsessive about backups, doing Time Machine backups, SuperDuper! bootable backups, and using services like BackBlaze for offsite backups -- and that's all for one Mac! With the importance of viable and easy-to-create backups for your Mac, it's not surprising that Belgium development firm Dare to be Creative has just announced a new backup utility, Parachute [US$39.00]. The application is Snow Leopard-ready, and can be used to back up your Mac's data to your primary hard disk (definitely not recommended by our team), external disks, FTP or SFTP servers, USB drives, network volumes, and even your iDisk. Parachute has many features that are found on other backup utilities. For example, you can schedule backups to run hourly, daily, weekly, or manually. The application also does incremental backups after the initial full backup, so subsequent backups take much less time. There is one feature that does appear to be unique to Parachute, and that's the ability to create multiple backup tasks for different files and folders on your Mac, and use a variety of destinations for each task. There's a 15-day full-functioning trial available for download here. While you are in your tryptophan-induced coma after tomorrow's Thanksgiving Day feast, you can set up some Parachute backups and rest assured that your data is safe.
Palm and Sprint issue statement acknowledging Profile backup issue
Even in a world full of racket, it seems that the squeaky wheel still gets the grease. In yet another blow to this whole "cloud" agenda, a vocal segment of Palm users began to notice that information transferred from their online Palm Profile was only a fraction of what it should have been. Today, both Palm and Sprint have issued a joint statement acknowledging the issue and promising to work much, much harder in order to avoid having something like this ruin your life once again. To quote: "We are seeing a small number of customers who have experienced issues transferring their Palm Profile information to another Palm webOS device. Palm and Sprint are working closely together to support these customers to successfully transfer their information to the new device." Between this mess and the T-Mobile fiasco, we're pretty certain we're being forced to stay on the manual backup bandwagon for the foreseeable future. [Thanks, Mike]
Samsung Story external HDD now boasts 2TB, eSATA
You've asked, and Samsung has delivered: the company's newest Story external hard drives not only feature a maximum 2TB of storage, but the device can now make nice with your PC via eSATA (in addition to USB 2.0). And like its earlier brethren, this one features either real time or scheduled backups, password protection, and SecretZone encryption. Available the world o'er sometime this November for an MSRP of $299. PR after the break, kids.
Palm Pre backups can be easily overwritten by a replacement device: replacers beware!
We've just been alerted to an unsettling trend in Palm Pre land, where strings of replacement devices are a bit too common for comfort: some users have been losing their Palm Profile backup, or a large majority of it, once they pair up their new device. The big issue is that since this problem is rather sporadic, Palm doesn't seem to have a good way to deal with it yet -- the trend in the forums seems to be a complaint sent to Palm, followed up by word of an inability to restore data from Palm a few weeks later. Lucky for these hapless Pre replacers, a particularly repeat offender (working on his seventh Pre) has posted instructions for making sure this sort of data loss doesn't happen to you. His theory is that it has something to do with a refurbished device loaded with an old firmware trying to sync with the newer-firmware-styled backup your dead device made with Palm's servers, and messing stuff up in the process. He recommends walking out of the store before Sprint tries to trip you up, and upgrading and wiping the phone before reactivating it and syncing. Sounds foolproof enough, right? Let's hope. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] %Poll-37250%
Eneloop Stick Booster supplies emergency power to your portable devices
Any time a company both enables our gadget addiction and discourages wanton battery consumption we have to consider it a good thing -- and, indeed, Sanyo's wicked-rechargeable Eneloop batteries already have quite a few fans here at Engadget HQ. But what's a busy gadget hound to do on the go, you ask? Try this one on for size: the Eneloop Stick Booster ships with two AAs and can be used to charge them, via any USB source. From that point the device can be used to power your PMP for roughly 90 minutes. How great is that? To be released in Japan on December 1 for an unspecified price, and worldwide whenever the company sees fit. PR after the break.
Imation Pro WX Wireless USB hard drive review
Imation was set to announce its first-ever Wireless USB hard drive a year ago, but it lost a dear friend shortly before it materialized and we'd heard nothing since then. Today Imation has returned -- holding hands with its new partner, Staccato -- to release the Pro WX 1.5 terabyte Wireless USB hard drive for both Windows and Mac. At $449.99, though, we thought to ourselves: does the Pro WX offer something extraordinary for the premium price? Or are you better off with a NAS device like Apple's infamous Time Capsule? We ran some quick tests to find out -- do read on for some juicy results.
Ask TUAW: Emptying the trash, migration assistant, Safari bookmarks, Mac mini server and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about the Trash, Migration Assistant, Safari Bookmarks, Mac mini Server, Windows and Mac file sharing and more. As always, your suggestions and questions 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 Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions. CL asks: Is there any way to just delete a single item in the trash can? I only see options to empty the entire trash can? Unfortunately, as they say in computer parlance "That's a feature, not a bug." At the moment, Apple only allows you to go for an "all or nothing" approach to emptying the trash. Of course, the best solution is to only put things in the trash you want to delete. But I'm sure you already thought of that. Lamdavidortez asks: I will be upgrading from my current February 2007 Macbook Pro that is running Leopard to a new October 2009 MacBook Pro that is running Snow Leopard I plan on transferring my data via the "Migration Assistant" but being that this is the first time I perform this type of operation ... I want to make sure that I do not run into any issues. Are there any precautions I should take? My other concern is that I backup my current 2007 MBP via Time Machine to my Time Capsule. What will happen to that data once I switch over to the 2009 MBP? Will I still have access to that data? Will it be rendered useless? Migration Assistant has been around for several years now and has evolved and become better with each successive update. There was a time when I would never consider using it and did things the manual way by copying each and every thing I needed individually from an old Mac to a new one. Now, Migration Assistant is good enough and, more importantly, reliable enough to be used on its own. So, migrate away.
SuperDuper! 2.6.2 now even more so!
Many Mac pros are unnaturally fond of SuperDuper!, the accurately-named backup utility from Shirt Pocket Software. The application is inexpensive (free, actually, if you don't want advanced features -- the best US$27.95 you've ever spent, otherwise), powerful, and easily makes fully-bootable backups of your Mac.The latest version of SuperDuper! has just been released. Version 2.6.2 is now available and has a ton of new features and fixes. Here's the scoop from the revision history: Significant copy speed improvements (up to 2 times faster!) Preserves compression when copying Fixed extra copying under Snow Leopard Scheduled copies in old format are now disabled and we prompt the user to recreate Scheduled copies work on Japanese systems and with more Unicode/composed character drive names Backup-on-mount should work on 10.4.11 Adjusted SDUtil path to improve robustness when application is moved (now symlinked/refreshed) Minor copy tweaks Reworked SL status to use 1000B = 1MB, 1024B = MiB for Leopard and earlier. Fixed crontab escaping if user has tcsh as their default shell Fixed issues with explicit Spotlight disable/enable under 10.5+ If you currently have SuperDuper!, you'll be notified of the update the next time you fire it up. If you don't have it, get it.Thanks to Scott for the tip!
Clickfree adds hassle-free migration, other features to C2 backup drive (video)
Quite a lot has happened in the world of Clickfree since it went a little crazy at CES, but we're pretty jazzed about its latest effort. The predictably titled C2 is little more than a tweaked and refreshed version of the original backup-inclined external hard drive, but the boost in features makes this one worth considering. Available with a built-in USB cable and an even easier backup interface, the C2 can now handle automatic iPod music / playlist imports, direct-to-DVD burning, improved media sharing and a lovely migration feature that makes the arduous process of moving from Windows XP to Windows 7 a lesson in simplicity. The drive will be available in 250GB (C2 227; $139.00), 500GB (C2 527; $199.99) and 350GB sizes, with the latter to be made available in January 2010. So, are you finally done pushing aside the need to back your digital life up? Has Apple's increasingly lackadaisical software team taught us anything? Bizzare promo video is after the break.%Gallery-75411%
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.
The T-Mobile Sidekick data failure, and what it means to iPhone users
You may not have heard about the recent loss of data for T-Mobile Sidekick users; after all, this is an Apple-focused site and there probably aren't as many Sidekick owners out there as there are iPhone users. I'll explain the situation, and how it could happen to anyone depending on cloud-based data stores for their mobile devices. The Sidekick is made and supported by Danger, which since April of 2008 has been owned by Microsoft. As such, all of the personal information on the Sidekicks was stored on servers owned and operated by Microsoft. During the last week, Danger / Microsoft had hired Hitachi to do an upgrade to their Storage Area Network (SAN). That's usually not a problem, as the owner of the data (Microsoft in this case) performs a backup of all the data in case of an issue. Well, something went wrong, and it appears that Danger / Microsoft did not have a backup in place. The result is a catastrophe for Sidekick users. T-Mobile sent out a statement last week explaining the situation, and placing the blame directly on Microsoft and Danger: "Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger's latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device -- such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos -- that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger."
Iomega announces next-gen NAS appliance for backup and media management
As data backup and media servers become more prevalent, they also become more complicated, with ever more devices to sync and ways to store information. Today, Iomega released a new NAS appliance that can serve as both a backup device and a media server with a view to streamlining the setup process for home or small business users, while implementing a few features that are more commonly seen in larger-scale networked servers. The newest iteration of Iomega's NAS appliance line, the dual-drive StorCenter ix2-200, has many of the features that you'd want to see in a media server or a backup target. As a backup device, the StorCenter can be set up as a Time Machine target for Macs and for remote access, so that the user can manage and upload or download files from anywhere with an Internet connection. It has three USB ports that allow direct interaction with other devices, such as external drives or a printer (the unit can act as a print server). Iomega's put quite a few other bells and whistles into this NAS. The unit can stream media to Xbox 360 & PS3 consoles, and to many iTunes-compatible music devices. It's also Bluetooth-capable, allowing a smart phone to sync with it, but this requires the separate purchase of a USB-Bluetooth dongle. The StorCenter is VMware-certified as an iSCSI and NFS storage device, supports direct streaming from up to five Axis network cameras, and can even serve as a BitTorrent client. One of the more interesting features for backup use is the device-to-device replication. The StorCenter can be set up to perform any number of "copy jobs" to sync data automatically to and froms various devices and files at scheduled intervals. It also has a QuikTransfer button on its front, to which you can attach any number of copy jobs that will be performed automatically when pressed, rather than having to wait for scheduled maintenance. For example, if you regularly import videos to your computer and want them backed up, synced to the computer upstairs, and put on another external hard drive you carry with you, you can plug the drive into the StorCenter, press the copy button, and voila! It's all done at once! (Of course, you have to set it up that way first. It's a button, not a mind-reader.)
Are some Apple Time Capsules locking themselves up for good?
A backup device that's not reliable is what some may consider a "very bad thing," but that's just the charge that a sizable number of users have been leveling at Apple's Time Capsule as of late, and the complaints aren't showing any signs of letting up. What's worse is that the problem being reported doesn't appear to be related to a firmware or software update, or some other configuration issues, but rather that the Time Capsules "just die" randomly -- most after a year or more. Judging from the reports on the official Apple forums, it also seems that folks are having hit and miss results getting Apple to fix or replace their Time Capsule, with some apparently able to get an out-of-warranty replacement and others faced with a $500 bill. So, has your Time Capsule bitten the dust? Let us know in comments.[Thanks, Michael]
Ask TUAW: Backing up photos, remove Boot Camp partitions, Snow Leopard and Windows 7 and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about backing up photos, removing a Boot Camp partition, Snow Leopard and Windows 7, Bluetooth menus, iPhone search results and more. As always, your suggestions and questions 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.Han asks:What is the best way to archive photos without using iPhoto? I have about 100 GB of original photos and I have been saving them on my NetGear ReadyNAS Duo. Sometimes I leave the photos in the folder and just copy it to the NAS or sometimes zip them before I put it in the NAS. What I am worried about is if I zip the folder and somehow the zip file itself gets corrupted, is it harder to recover them? Is it better to just not zip and leave it as a folder then copy it to the NAS?Because photos are pretty important and almost impossible to recreate I take my photo workflow and backup seriously. First, I never import photos directly into iPhoto and instead, using a card reader, copy the files to a folder I have labeled specifically for these photos which resides in my main "Photography" folder.
TUAW's review of the DroboPro, plus a discount deal for readers
Data Robotics delivered their "super-sized" version of the Drobo earlier this year. DroboPro has 8 drive bays into which you can drop 3.5" SATA drives of almost any capacity, from the old 160 GB model you've been using to hold the backup of your iTunes library to that 2 TB Western Digital Caviar drive you just purchased. Using a proprietary storage technology called BeyondRAID, Data Robotics makes it easy to use a DroboPro to give you a big box 'o storage right now, and easily expand in the future.Data Robotics recently lent me a DroboPro for a detailed review, and I was able to give it a thorough workout. Read on to find out more about the DroboPro and an excellent deal available to readers of TUAW.
Need a few petabytes of Mac storage? Build your own BackBlaze Storage Pod
One of the largest personal iTunes libraries I've ever seen belongs to a client of mine. This client, who was a DJ in the 50's and 60's, has a huge collection of vinyl albums and singles that he painstakingly digitized, cleaned up, and catalogued in iTunes. Needless to say, opening iTunes on his Mac Pro is an exercise in patience. Thinking about his music storage needs, and the huge amount of digital photos and video that my wife are accumulating, got me musing about other ways to do mass storage inexpensively. At this point, I'm probably OK with a DroboPro, but what if I needed petabytes (1 petabyte = 1,024 terabytes = 1,048,576 gigabytes) of storage? Most solutions at this point in time are quite expensive. As of 6 AM PDT this morning, off-site backup vendor BackBlaze has put their solution to mass storage needs, the BackBlaze Storage Pod, out to the world as an open source project. Their solution is a relatively inexpensive box (US$7,867 for 67 TB of storage) made up of off-the-shelf components that can be reproduced and/or improved upon by others who also need huge amounts of cheap storage. See those red boxes in the picture to the right? Each one of those contains 67 TB of RAID 6 storage in a 4U box. For a petabyte of storage, you're going to need to spend about $117,000 on about fifteen of the boxes.
Apple unveils 2TB Time Capsule, ships today for $499
Nearly four months after we first saw evidence that a 2TB Time Capsule was in the works, Apple has finally come clean and listed said device for sale in its webstore. So far as we can tell, the 802.11n router + NAS drive isn't any different than existing models save for the internal capacity, and it looks to be shipping today for $499. If you'll recall, that's exactly what Apple was charging for the 1TB model yesterday, which has today stooped to just $299. As for that 500GB model? Looks like the clearance / refurbished section is your only option there, where it's currently listed for $199.
Retrospect 8.1 brings back PowerPC support, improves performance
EMC announced today an update to its popular Retrospect network backup software; version 8.1 brings back support for PowerPC-based workstations and improves performance for Intel-based Macs. Eric Ullman, director of project management for Retrospect, said that while older G4-based Macs will run significantly slower than their Intel-based counterparts, Retrospect 8.1 can at least back them up (a capability that was lost in the move from the legacy 6.1 version). G5s with multiple processors, however, can see performance gains of 10 to 15 percent compared to Retrospect 6.1. Intel-based workstations will also see performance increases of 10 to 15 percent compared to 8.0, and 30 to 35 percent compared to Retrospect 6.1. Other improvements, including updates to the user interface based on feedback from early adopters, are also included in the update. Ullman said that with Retrospect 8, EMC had "recommitted itself to the Mac market" and this update was the second part of a three-phase deployment of the completely-rebuilt Retrospect 8. Phase one was the initial release, supporting Intel processors; phase two now supports PowerPC processors. Phase three, according to Ullman, is slated for release "in the Snow Leopard timeframe," and is expected to include support for importing Retrospect 6.1 sets and configurations, among other improvements to performance and the client software. As Steve Sande mentioned, Retrospect's update comes on the heels of BRU Server 2.0, which added a new user interface and performance improvements. Ullman noted that BRU Server and Retrospect are fundamentally different, with Retrospect scanning more closely to prevent file duplication and save time copying files. Retrospect is generally less expensive than BRU Server, though their pricing structures and trim levels are a little different. The update is available now on the Retrospect website. It's free for Retrospect 8 users and Retrospect 6.1 users who purchased the product after January 14, 2008. For new users, Retrospect 8 comes in a variety of flavors ranging in price from $129 to $1,669, depending on the size of the network.
Let's do the Time Warp again! Offsite Time Machine backups
Apple did the world a great service when they introduced Time Machine backups to OS X. Suddenly, anyone could attach an external disk drive to their Mac and have a constant set of backups at their fingertips with little or no intervention required. However, there was one very big, hairy fly floating in the soup of backup contentment -- if your backup drive was destroyed or stolen, your backup was gone. Many of us who are paranoid about backups started doing a second level of backups to offsite services such as Mozy, Carbonite, or my personal favorite, BackBlaze. There's a new kid on the block with a different approach to offsite backup -- Time Warp. This US$25 Mac application (free during the beta period) takes your Time Machine backups, compresses and encrypts them with 256-bit AES encryption, and then uploads them to your personal Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) account. How does the cost of storage on Amazon S3 compare with the other services? The current costs are $0.15 per GB per month for storage, $0.10 per GB to backup data into S3, and $0.17 per GB to restore data from S3. The Jumping Bean Software team says that backup up 20 GB of personal data would cost about $1.50 per month, which is in line with costs for the other services. Time Warp does intelligent filtering to keep "dumb files" like cache, trash, and temporary files from being uploaded and costing you money.If you take a glance at the sample screenshot at the top of this post, you'll notice that Time Warp does its best to give you a handle on your storage costs, so there's no guesswork involved. Leopard users who have been on the fence about whether or not to invest in an offsite backup solution might want to take advantage of the Time Warp beta.
The plan for legit Blu-ray copies explained at Engadget HD
For those with a disc rack full of Blu-ray packages and who'd like to shove all those optical discs to the attic for a streamlined media server solution -- without resorting to other routes like downloading or cracking open AACS -- Managed Copy is finally on the way, thanks to the just finalized AACS specification, to offer an authorized option for making a copy of your Blu-ray disc. We had a nice long talk with gatekeepers AACS-LA about what to expect when compatible Blu-ray hardware arrives in 2010 and Managed Copy-enabled discs begin shipping later this year; for more details like how many copies can be made, how the DRM works and how much this might cost head over to Engadget HD and see what it all means, and hopefully when we can put away our discs for the last time in favor of a Blu-ray Jukebox.
