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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.
Drobo FS gains native Time Machine support, we go hands-on
Praise wasn't hard to find when Data Robotics finally caved and crafted a Drobo NAS drive last month, but ever since we've been itching to test one out and see how it actually fared. We've had our fair share of awful NAS experiences, particularly in mixed-platform environments, but we recently had the chance to sit down with a unit to test out the company's latest addition: Time Machine support. We asked the outfit why support for Apple's innate backup service was coming just after the product launch, and it really boils down to decisions based on fiscal calendars, accounting practices and other scenarios that interest you not. Fact is, though, the gratis update is being pushed out today through the Drobo Dashboard, and all Drobo FS users should be able to download the new build and start taking advantage right away. We stuffed our unit with four different sized SATA drives from different manufacturers, and just like the company promised, the Drobo FS took 'em all in as if they were equal. Hop on past the break for more of our setup experience. %Gallery-93324%
TUAW review: LaCie Network Space 2 low-cost NAS
Everybody needs storage, and lots of it. The race for space began when we started taking digital pictures, accelerated when we began purchasing music online, and went positively orbital when movies and TV went digital. While big drives in desktop machines are becoming commonplace (1 TB drives are now standard in most iMac configurations), what happens when you have a couple of laptops or older machines that you want to back up, or if you want to share data with others in your office or home? That's when some sort of network-attached storage comes in handy. Network-attached storage is nothing new; you can even consider Apple's US$299 Time Capsule to be a wireless NAS. Now storage manufacturer LaCie has released the US$190 Network Space 2 device, providing 1 TB of storage and speedy connectivity. LaCie provided TUAW with a Network Space 2 for review purposes, so we put it through its paces before sending it back to the company. Read on for a review of this attractive and useful peripheral.
Ask TUAW: Mac mini as Time Machine server, baby monitoring with a Mac, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we have questions about accessing a shared Google calendar, baby monitoring, sharing music between user accounts, scanning over an Airport Extreme, using a Mac mini as Time Machine target, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume that you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
Iomega iConnect review: getting your printers, HDDs online has never been simpler
Iomega's iConnect managed to launch during the whirlwind that was CES 2010, so if you didn't quite catch it the first go 'round, here's hoping that you're paying attention today. In essence, the device is fairly simple. It's a small, port-filled slab that's designed to sit beneath or beside your current router or hub, and while we're certainly dumbing things down somewhat with this description, it's basically a variant of the Pogoplug. Equipped with four USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet jack and an internal 802.11b/g/n WiFi module, the iConnect is designed to put your existing thumb drives, external hard drives and / or printers online. We've had less-than-awesome experiences in the past with devices that turn localized storage into network accessible storage, so we went into this overview with fairly low expectations. Much to our surprise, we came away duly impressed with the package that Iomega has assembled, so be sure to read on if this one has been sitting on your maybe-must-have list. Update: After a couple of months of use, we ran across some pretty intense issues with this device. Eventually, none of the PCs and Macs in our house would print to the networked printer, and our USB hard drives would only show up sporadically. Needless to say, our enthusiasm has been significantly tempered, and we wouldn't recommend this for homes where mixed platforms reside. %Gallery-88219%
Ask TUAW: File ownership and permissions, converting FLV and OGG, extra displays, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we have questions about changing file ownership and permissions, adding two external displays to a MacBook Pro, converting OGG and FLV files on an older Mac, transferring a Time Machine backup to a new disk, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
Ask TUAW: Key remapping in Boot Camp, iPad tethering, file-sharing with a media extender, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we deal with some technical issues on our production Mac before turning to questions about Windows key remapping in Boot Camp, sharing files with a LaCie media extender, downloading images in Safari, recovering from a hard drive failure, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
Ask TUAW: recovering deleted files, encrypted backups, cheap scanning, and more
Welcome back to a new year of Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about cheap scanners, encrypting backups, recovering deleted files, troubleshooting new hardware, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify), or if it's an iPhone-related question, which iPhone version and OS version you have.
Iomega's iConnect turns thumb drives into NAS drives, puts it all online
If you don't trust any of your datas online, meticulously delete your cookies and cache from your browser, and never use the same search engine twice for fear of your online activity being tracked... this post probably isn't for you. But, if you wish you could get to your most precious of thumb drive files even when those thumbs are at home, Iomega's new iConnect looks to be about the easiest way to do so -- and at $99 one of the cheapest. The device packs four USB ports into which you can plug storage or printers, connecting to your home network via Ethernet or 802.11b/g/n. With a few clicks everything will be available online, and when you're on your home network you can make use of DLNA streaming, Time Machine backups, and even rely on the integrated torrent manager to make sure your feed ratio is properly philanthropic. All this can be yours next month.
Why is there a progress bar when my Mac is starting up?
Update: As several of our commenters pointed out, the OS is probably running the fsck utility in the background to repair directory problems, while showing the progress bar to the end user so they know there's something going on (fsck can take quite a while). Here's an older Apple support article that explains the disk repair process very well. We will update you if we find a support article with more information. Here's a story for anyone who's come across an unusual progress bar during boot and my best guess at what it really is. The moral of my story: backup frequently and try not to turn off your Mac while it is starting up. Five days ago, I was prepping my late 2008 MacBook Pro for resale when I encountered the ever-spinning gear at boot. Ridiculously enough, I hadn't kept up any of my backups in a month and I hard powered off the machine while it was booting because I forgot to select the boot drive (yes -- I'm a technician and I did something dumb -- I know). Many thoughts went through my head: I've lost the last month's worth of work, I have to waste hours trying to recover data from my drive, why did this have to happen while I was trying to back it up? It goes to show that it can happen to anyone at any time and that the only real solution is to keep a current backup (if not several) of all your information. Now for a quick word on backups. I usually keep a continuous Time Machine backup of everything and clone my internal drive every couple weeks. The cloned drive is kept in a fireproof safe here in my house. Also, as much as I love Time Machine, in my profession, I've seen several instances where Time Machine backups don't restore properly. I always suggest having a manual clone as a backup to your backup.
Ask TUAW: Simple spreadsheets, partitioning with Time Machine, iTunes with a NAS, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about sharing peripherals, simple spreadsheets, backup configurations, using a NAS, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you're using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we'll assume you're running Snow Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify).
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.
Apple quietly updates AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule, promises improved performance
Just as it did in March, Apple has subtly updated both the AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule, this time improving performance on both. According to new testing between today's model and yesterday's edition, the AE Base Station (which ships within three days for $179) can hum along at up to 25 percent faster thanks to undisclosed tweaks to the antenna design, while the Time Capsule's improved antenna promises the same. Just as before, both of these devices support dual-band 2.4GHz / 5GHz transmissions, though we can't seem to find an "802.11n draft" phrase anywhere on either page. Apple hasn't gone out of its way to say that both of these are certified with the final specification, but it's certainly a possibility. Finally, the new Time Capsule promises Time Machine backups in Snow Leopard that are some 60 percent faster than before; we're not sure whether to celebrate with new buyers or weep with existing ones, but it should ship within three days for $299 (1TB) / $499 (2TB).Read - Updated AirPort ExtremeRead - Updated Time Capsule
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.)
HP makes nice with Apple users, intros two new MediaSmart Servers
While there are still some Snow Leopard users who are cursing HP and Apple for incompatible or nonexistent drivers for a variety of printers that worked well under Leopard, HP has made an announcement that shows that they really do love all things Apple. HP today announced two new MediaSmart servers, the US$549 HP MediaSmart Server EX490 (1 TB of storage) and the US$699 HP MediaSmart Server EX495 (1.5 TB of storage). Like their predecessors, the two new servers are based on Microsoft Windows Home Server. HP obviously listened to the concerns of Mac users while designing the new servers, since a Windows PC is no longer required in order for administration. Instead, Mac owners can use Microsoft's new Remote Desktop Connection for Mac 2.0 to log in and make changes. The servers are also Time Machine friendly, and include a new HP utility that allows bare metal recovery of machines backed up onto the server. Also new to the servers is the HP Media Collector, which automatically collects and organizes media files from Macs or PCs on a network, and then makes the data available for streaming over the Internet. There's also a new HP Video Converter utility for automatically converting unprotected DVDs into a format that can played at home or remotely. For iPod touch or iPhone users, HP has made the free MediaSmart Server iStream app [iTunes link] available in the App Store. Using this app, Apple fans can view their pictures, watch their videos, and listen to music, all streamed from their HP MediaSmart server. Intriguing? Take a look at more information on HP's Web site.
OWC announces portable, bus-powered external SSD drives
I'm pretty paranoid about making sure that backups are done on all of my Macs. That's why I carry a small Western Digital MyPassport hard drive with me wherever I go with my MacBook Air, since I do at least one Time Machine backup a day -- even when I'm on the road.This is my second MyPassport drive. That's not saying that anything is wrong with the Western Digital drives; it's just that the first one I owned fell off of a classroom desk while a backup was in progress, pulling out the USB cable and dropping about three feet onto a hard floor. The drive appeared to be OK, but never worked again. That's why I was happy to hear that OWC announced the Mercury On-The-Go Pro series of portable bus-powered SSD drives yesterday. Solid-state drives, since they have no moving parts, can put up with a lot more abuse than traditional platter-based drives. They also offer better read performance than regular hard drives, and are often less power-hungry. The drives come in three different capacities -- 64 GB (US$279.99), 128 GB (US$449.99), and 256 GB (US$729.99) -- and all offer 64 MB of cache, as well as Firewire 400/800 and USB 2.0 interfaces. Being bus-powered, they don't need an AC adapter, making the On-The-Go Pro series perfect for road trips.While SSD drives are still more expensive than traditional hard drives, they're definitely more rugged, and in the long run that might be less costly than replacing a dropped hard drive. I've had extremely good success with OWC's products in the past, making this a doubly-attractive proposition. Of course, making sure my students don't cause my drives to take a dive off of a desk is a cheaper solution!
Mozy fixes issue that affected Time Machine / Time Capsule users
Users of the MozyHome and MozyPro online backup services who also use Apple's Time Machine and a Time Capsule for onsite backups were dismayed to find last week that their Time Machine backups were not working. A bug in version 1.4.1 of the Mozy software caused Time Machine backups to Time Capsules and other network drives to pause, and then freeze up. A user quoted on the Computerworld website last week noted that Time Machine would no longer mount his MacBook Pro's sparse bundle file while running Mozy offsite backups, and that he had to wipe the Time Machine backup in order to get the Time Machine / Time Capsule combination working again. The problem did not affect Mozy users who were backing up to a locally attached hard drive. Part of the issue was that Mozy was attempting to back up the large Time Machine sparse bundle files. Engineers at Mozy's parent company, Decho, worked with Apple to gain resolution to the issue, and a fix was made available for download last Friday as version 1.4.3 of the Mac software for MozyHome and MozyPro. [via Macworld and Computerworld]
Ask TUAW: Migration, syncing, backing up, and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column! This time we've got questions on migrating to a new Mac, using a Time Capsule for wireless backup, speeding up podcasts, syncing two Macs, 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.
