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World Backup Day reminds you to backup your world, today
It's a bit less silly than the National Day of Unplugging, but unless your weekend starts on Thursday, there's nary a snowball's chance in Hades that you're going to skip tonight's network comedy lineup in order to do something that you can clearly put off until tomorrow. But what if, dear readers, your data doesn't make until tomorrow? What if those images from your first date vanish into the ether? What if you spend $4,598 next week in vain as a perplexed computer technician asks you if you'd ever considered backing your critical data up? For those that choose to act on World Backup Day, that future isn't one you'll have to consider, and a host of online backup services are urging you to sign up today in order to protect what's most important to you: your stash of decidedly unbecoming Facebook messages. We'd also suggest investing in a NAS or RAID setup for your home, but throwing everything into a fireproof safe four miles below Arches National Park probably isn't a bad idea, either. You know -- in case your fail-safe fails. Not that we'd ever consider fear mongering...
Western Digital's new My Book Studio Edition II has 6TB on offer, but no Thunderbolt or USB 3.0
If you want a lot of the GBs in not a lot of space, 3TB per disk is about as good as you're going to get. Western Digital has slapped two of its triple-terabyte monsters into a dual-disk enclosure and paired it with eSATA and FireWire 800 interfaces to create the My Book Studio Edition II. There's a good 'ol USB 2.0 hole in there as well, but no USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt for those getting hip with the new connections. Time Machine support is baked in as well as your choice of RAID configurations, all at a cost of $549.99. That's a good bit more than you'd spend if you bought a pair of disks and an empty enclosure, but such is the price of convenience. %Gallery-119224%
Ask TUAW Video Edition: Time Machine over a network
This week, Jude writes in and asks about using a home theater Mac mini as a Time Machine location for his MacBook Pro. We show him how to do this with some tweaking to his MacBook Pro. In the video, we used this code to put into Terminal.app: sudo defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1 Remember, you can leave us questions in the comments! The video is on the next page. Update: The terminal command is if you are using machines that are pre-10.5.6. If you have machines that are 10.5.6 or later you can just connect via Apple File Share and not need the terminal command. If you are trying to backup to a device that isn't running Mac OS X (such as a NAS) then you will need the terminal command.
LEGO Universe invites players to battle for Nimbus Station
Grab three of your buddies, gear up, and get ready to travel through time to save the LEGO Universe (or at least, Nimbus Station). Starting on February 23rd, NetDevil and the LEGO Group are inviting groups of four players to journey backwards to battle the evil Maelstrom in a thrilling confrontation to decide Nimbus Station's fate. You'll need to find Wenn Wuzzit, a Venture League time traveler who has taken up residence in the present-day Nimbus Station. His time-twister contraption serves as your personal way-back machine and as a gateway to epic battles vs. 30 waves of enemies and bosses. In addition to the Nimbus Station shenanigans, LEGO Universe is releasing new build missions and achievements tied to players' Property Worlds. Four new dailies and 12 new achievements are on tap, with rewards that include faction tokens, Mega Brick booster packs, and new Doom Star and Behavior Model sets. Sound exciting? Check out all the details via the new trailer after the cut.
Macworld 2011: Dolly Drive syncs Time Machine to the cloud, creates bootable backup
We're finding many useful solutions here at Macworld Expo, and among them is Dolly Drive. This new solution (they just launched this week) offers encrypted Time Machine sync to the cloud and even creates a bootable version of the local drive you've been using for Time Machine thus far. I spoke with Anthony about the product, how it works and what the future holds. There are three interesting things about Dolly Drive. First, it allows Time Machine to behave just like Time Machine. The primary difference is that your backups live out in the cloud instead of locally. The benefits are obvious. Let's say you're at a meeting in the field, only to realize that an important file is corrupt or missing entirely. If it lives on an external drive back in your home or office, you're out of luck. Dolly Drive lets you restore it from the cloud, using Time Machine's familiar UI, getting you back in business. Check for more and our video of Dolly Drive in action after the break.
Mac Plus reused as a Time Machine server
Showing us that there is, in fact, a much more useful application for an old Mac Plus than a DJ using it as a helmet, Macenstein reader Dean Gray has turned his 1986 Mac Plus 1 MB into a Time Machine Server. By using an Intel Atom motherboard and replacing the screen with a 10" digital picture frame, Gray has taken an important piece of Apple's history and made it into what could be the coolest 2.3 TB-capacity Time Machine server we've seen yet. Sure beats using a run-of-the-mill Mac mini as a server on style points alone! While I do both online backups with Backblaze and local backups using Time Machine, Gray's Mac Plus server would look a lot better in my office than my boring Western Digital drive looks now. But even if you don't have a Mac Plus to call your own, if you aren't yet incorporating backups into your daily life, you may want to read Erica Sadun's piece about why Time Machine holds a special place in her heart, or Steve Sande's Mac 101 on backup basics. The most important thing is that you start backing up your computer today, no matter the method.
Time Machine holds a place in my heart, and it should in yours too
One of my TUAW colleagues who shall remain nameless revealed to us yesterday that he doesn't use Time Machine. "Don't talk to me about Time Machine," he said. "I hate it!" My goodness, I thought. Is that even possible? I cannot recount the number of times that Time Machine has saved me from thoughtless text edits or file deletions that I later regretted. Surely that has happened to you too -- you edit something in-place without saving an unmodified original. That's the way most people work. Few are diligent, methodical, and neurotic enough to save every state along the way as they work, version numbering and backing up as they go. There's pharmaceuticals for those people. There's Time Machine for the rest of us.
Mac 101: Backup basics with Time Machine and more
Did you get a new Mac for Christmas? Before you go too far in loading your Mac with software and files, make sure that you have a backup strategy. As a certified Mac consultant, I can tell you that there are two kinds of computer users: those who have lost data through error, hardware failure, or accident, and those who are going to lose data in the future. Most of the bloggers at TUAW are backup fanatics, and many of us have multiple backups using Time Machine (the backup app built into Mac OS X), cloning applications like Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper!, and online backup services like Carbonite, Mozy, and BackBlaze. In this edition of Mac 101, I'll take you through the basics of setting up your Time Machine backup to a local hard drive, explain the power of cloning apps, and tell you why off-site backups are a good idea.
Apple awarded patents for RF synchronization, Time Machine, and more
Yesterday was a busy day for the gnomes at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, as they awarded 19 patents to Apple for intellectual property ranging from "RF Pulse Synchronization for Data Acquisition Operations" to a couple of ideas that are implemented in Time Machine. All were reported on by the eagle-eyed bloggers at Patently Apple. The Time Machine patents cover navigation of backups and a method of resolving conflicts when restoring files from a backup. The first patent describes the method in which users can navigate through backup snapshots to find a file to restore, while the second provides a way of notifying users when a file being restored could overwrite an existing, newer file. Whether the Time Machine patents will help Apple to appeal a patent infringement judgment paid to another company earlier this year is unknown at this time. There were also four patents dealing with iPhone and iTunes, one of which describes the method in which the iPhone handles audio playback and call conferencing, while the other three look at aspects of the presentation, download and sale of media in the iTunes Store. Several of the changes described in the patent actually showed up in iTunes in 2004; it takes that long for some patents to be awarded. Apple's fascination with flash memory was rewarded with another pair of patents, while video fanatics might find a patent on "Encoding a Transparency (Alpha) Channel in a Video Bitstream" to be exciting reading.
Flash Rods' DeLorean hard drive: $250, 500 jigabytes!
Is a full-size DeLorean (time machine or otherwise) a bit out of your budget? Then you might want to consider Flash Rods' latest 1:18 scale replica, which not only faithfully reproduces the DeLorean Time Machine (complete with Mr. Fusion reactor from Back to the Future II), but actually packs a 500GB Seagate hard drive inside to give you some justification for actually having it on your desk. Of course, it will cost a considerable premium over a regular 500GB hard drive, but we can certainly think of plenty of worse ways to spend $250.
Western Digital debuts My Book Live NAS / media streamer, revamped My Photos app
The My Book Live definitely doesn't mark Western Digital's first foray into the world of connected storage, but the devil's in the details on this one. The company's newly released network drive falls into the budget-friendly My Book line, but promises access to files at up 100Mbps, or triple the speed of standard USB 2.0 units. Additionally, Apple Time Machine support comes baked in from the factory, and there's also an integrated DLNA-compatible media server that can stream photos, videos and audio through any number of devices (WD TV Live Plus HD, Xbox 360, your Blu-ray player, a PlayStation 3, etc.). It'll also double (triple?) as an iTunes music server, and when paired with the company's refreshed WD Photos app -- which is now optimized for iPad and iPhone 4 -- users can flip through their photo albums remotely. The My Book Live is now available for $169.99 (1TB) / $229.99 (2TB), and the aforementioned app can be sucked down as we speak from the action-packed App Store.%Gallery-104521%
Apple loses, challenges patent verdict surrounding Cover Flow and Time Machine
Remember that one random company who sued Apple back in March of 2008 for ripping off its display interface patents? Turns out it was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, a hotbed for patent trolls who know that they stand a better-than-average chance of winning simply because of where their issues are being taken up. Sure enough, Cupertino's stock of lawyers is today being forced to challenge a loss after a jury verdict led to Apple being ordered to pay "as much as $625.5 million to Mirror Worlds for infringing patents related to how documents are displayed digitally." Ouch. Naturally, Apple has asked U.S. District Judge Leonard Davis for an emergency stay, noting that there are issues on two of the three; furthermore, Apple has claimed that Mirror Worlds would be "triple dipping" if it were to collect $208.5 million on each patent. In related news, the Judge is also considering a separate Apple request (one filed prior to the verdict) to "rule the company doesn't infringe two of the patents" -- if granted, that would "strike the amount of damages attributed to those two patents." In other words, this whole ordeal is far from over. We can't say we're thrilled at the thought of following the play-by-play here, but this could definitely put a mild dent in Apple's monstrous $45.8 billion pile of cash and securities. Or as some would say, "a drop in the bucket."
Ouch! Apple dinged for $208.5 million in patent infringement case
You know that nice Cover Flow interface (above) that Apple uses on iDevices, in iTunes, and in Mac OS X? An East Texas Federal Court has ruled that Apple infringed on patents held by Mirror Worlds, a software business started by Yale University computer science professor and Unabomber victim David Gelernter. As a result, the court has ordered Apple to pay Mirror Worlds US$208.5 million in damages. The Time Machine interface, which shows a series of screen or application images "receding" back in time, was also part of the case filed by Mirror Worlds on March 14, 2008. As Mac Observer has pointed out, many of the Cover Flow and Time Machine concepts of showing files or album covers moving back and forth were in use by Apple in HyperCard stacks many years before Mirror Worlds received patents for the idea. Whether Apple will appeal the verdict or not is unknown at this time. Apple was granted a patent for Cover Flow in April, 2010, which makes this ruling even more questionable. Mirror Worlds, LLC was disbanded in 2003 due to lack of sales of its software products. Apple has not made any comments regarding the verdict or a possible appeal.
1TB hard drive thrown into a toy TARDIS, gives us a proper Time Machine
It's common knowledge that the Doctor's time- and space-bending TARDIS is a lot roomier on the inside than its external dimensions let on, and now we can put a definite number to just how much space there is in there: a terabyte. Yup, that's how much storage Max Shanly managed to cram inside his "toy" TARDIS. It took a bit of elbow grease (plus a screwdriver) to get it all to fit, but most of the credit here is for sheer ingenuity -- who doesn't want to back up his data onto a freaking Time Lord's intertemporal transportation device? Max is currently working on hooking up the flashing light up top to represent hard drive activity and we're calling up our favorite KIRF suppliers to get them cranking these out. [Thanks, Max]%Gallery-101940%
LaCie's Windows Home Server-powered 5big Backup Server now shipping for big money
The last we heard from LaCie about its upcoming home server we didn't know much more than five bays inside, gigabit Ethernet on the back, and Windows Home Server running the show. Seven months on it's now available and we have all the details you could want. The 5big Backup Server apes the vaguely HAL 9000esque styling of earlier 5big storage devices, contains an Intel Atom D410 processor, manages up to 10TB of storage across those five bays, and offers four USB and one eSATA ports around back if you need more, more, more. Through WHS you can naturally support the backup needs of 10 PCs and there's also Time Machine support for 25 more fruity clients. The cost? You can get one with five 1TB drives for $1,199.99 (€1,239 in Europe), a bit of a premium over a comparable equipped HP Storageworks WHS box -- such is the cost of good aesthetics.
Seagate's FreeAgent GoFlex Home adds flexibility to your next NAS setup
Looks like Seagate's not content with giving users a choice of connector -- the outfit's latest GoFlex apparatus utilizes a docking system to give users an easier way to upgrade their NAS. 'Course, those that really plan ahead will go ahead and grab a multi-bay device like Data Robotics' Drobo FS, but for the money, it's hard to argue with the FreeAgent GoFlex Home. Designed to work seamlessly with Windows-based PCs and Apple's Time Machine, the 1TB and 2TB devices provide a NAS dock for the drive to sit in, and the dock itself also boasts a USB port for adding external storage to the mix or sharing a printer over the network. Seagate's also tossing in its Share Pro service, which enables families to access content stored on the drive from mobile devices such as an iPhone, iPad or BlackBerry. Best of all, the $159.99 (1TB) / $229.99 (2TB) asking prices won't totally crush the bank, so it seems like you've just about run out of excuses for backing up those childhood memories. %Gallery-97737%
Apple extends warranty coverage on flawed 2008 Time Capsules
Several sites are reporting that Apple has issued a Knowledge Base article in the Support Forums that notes that some Time Capsules sold between February and June of 2008 are subject to a recall eligible for possible repair or replacement due to the problems described. Should you have a Time Capsule with a serial number in the range XX807XXXXXX – XX814XXXXXX that's experiencing the dreaded "shutdown and never power up" problem, it's time to either go to your local Apple Store with the device (after making an appointment at the Genius Bar, of course), visit a local Apple Authorized Service Provider, or to call the Apple Contact Center for your country to find out what to do. If your Time Capsule has died and it's in the suspect serial number range, the company will may either repair or replace it to get it back up and running. That is good news for those who have lost the ability to back up their data automatically using the Mac OS X backup utility, Time Machine. Good luck! [via MacSlice]
My trip through Time Capsule Hell leads to a different backup approach
I bought a one terabyte Time Capsule shortly after it hit the market, along with an external 1.5TB drive. I use the Time Capsule's internal drive to back up two smaller capacity Macs, while the external disk backs up my two larger capacity Macs. Working with Time Machine in Leopard or Snow Leopard, the Time Capsule updates its backups every hour. This makes perfect sense if you're just dealing with one Mac wired into the Time Capsule, since it really doesn't slow anything down. But if you are using it to wirelessly back up multiple Macs, hourly backups slow everything down to a crawl. TimeMachineEditor (a free utility that I highly recommend), allows you to set Time Machine to back up as frequently or infrequently as you like. I created a setup where, with staggered backups starting between 2am and 4am, each Mac gets backed up once a day. Outside of some errant sparse image problems that required a reformat, all was well. I had long beaten the 18 month Time Capsule funerals that were recently reported... but then things turned ugly.
Time Machine plus a clone secure the day
Time Machine isn't a new feature of OS X. It was first announced as part of Leopard, not Snow Leopard, and it even had its own Get A Mac commercial. I mention it because I just recently started using it, and today was the first day that it really came in handy. I haven't been using it because I never had a spare drive to use. Instead I had one which I used for a nightly "clone" of my entire hard drive using SuperDuper! (others use CarbonCopyCloner). When I recently saw a good deal on a 2TB drive, I decided to start using Time Machine with it. Time Machine keeps more extensive backups. Apple describes Time Machine as "hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for everything older than a month" whereas SuperDuper takes a snapshot at a particular time, in my case, 6 a.m. every day. My most important and most frequently changed files are stored in Dropbox which gives me at least a partial "off-site" backups. Dropbox saves every file change for the past 30 days, whereas Time Machine runs once an hour. Time Machine also makes it easier to recover information from iCal or Address Book. This morning I ran the Safari 5 update on my iMac, and it didn't work. The computer seemed "hung up" and when I determined that nothing was happening, I rebooted it. (That sound you hear is the collective gasp of people who realize that rebooting after a "failed" installation can lead to Very Bad Things.) My iMac would then not let me login. I've since gotten it to work, and the point of this is not to scare you off installing Safari 5 -- this could happen with any software installation. The point is this: with Time Machine plus a clone, I know that I could disconnect the clone drive to prevent it from updating for a few days to make sure that everything is working while still having backups in place via Time Machine. If the iMac had failed to boot entirely, I could have used the SuperDuper clone to boot and restore, sometime Time Machine cannot do on its own. The moral of the story is one you've heard time and time again: backups, backups, backups. Are you using them? Have you tested them lately to make sure they'd work if you needed them?
Data Robotics gives Drobo FS full Time Machine compatibility
When Data Robotics announced the Drobo FS last month, one common complaint among potential buyers was that it doesn't offer native support for doing networked Time Machine backups. Just connecting a Drobo FS to a network of Macs could cause issues for Time Machine backups, since the built-in backup feature of Mac OS X tends to consume every last morsel of space it can and even the huge capacity of the Drobo FS could be chewed up quickly. Data Robotics announced today that the Drobo FS now supports network-based Time Machine backups. The company shipped a new version of Drobo Dashboard for the FS allowing the creation of shares for Time Machine use. In Dashboard v1.7.2, there's now a control to enable Time Machine support on a Drobo array, then set a maximum size for the share so that the backup files don't take over all of the space on the device. The company has released the code that they wrote to specify volume sizes into the Open Source Community. The Netatalk project, hosted on SourceForge, provides a Unix/Linux daemon that is available to all Linux developers and any other vendors who sell to Mac OS X users.
