Additional file recovery tools appear in Apple's Leopard - Page 2

I wouldn't either, personally. But it's an improvement.


Agreed.

Those aren't common on OS X either, though.

Again, I'm not saying it is the best way to do it. But, there will be people who, for whatever reason , will not buy a backup device, no matter what it is, or how cheap. But they might do this. It's better than not doing anything.

Just FWIW:


This is completely unrelated to Time Machine, actually. It's simply a feature like Norton UnErase and whathaveyou.

That's why I have to start mocking people if they lose their life's data due to such a failure. While a separate partition is better than nothing, I really don't think there is an excuse. An external hard drive can be had for dirt.

They are not. But at some point they will become more common.

Sure, I've said that. But even with 10.5 making it so easy, I'm willing to bet that most people STILL won't buy a drive for backup. Want to take that bet?

I think Apple's cited numbers (25% bother to have a backup system at all; 4% have one that actually works) prove your bet right, so we don't even need to discuss it.


Yep.

I think you are right that most won't buy a separate drive, but it's just not a good idea to avoid it. It may be largely the people that haven't had a drive failure yet, reject experienced advice and do this. I just think that the practice of avoiding a separate device should be highly discouraged, especially if the data is of any value, be it sentimental or monetary. Time Machine will be good for backing out of file handling mistakes and the odd corruption but that's about it.

I remember the 4% as the state for those that use a fully automated backup plan, not a working one.

I don't have the exact quote. My understanding was that the 4% refer to "ineffective", useless backups, i.e. those that aren't created frequently/regularly enough, or simply don't restore correctly (hello .mac Backup 3!), or incompletely.

Lets get this straight.

Copying or duping a file to your drive or a partition on your drive is highly recommended by myself and everybody in this instution of higher learning. But it is still not backing up your hard drive.

We are talking about Time Machine and everything that we have been given by Apple tells us that this program is designed to simplify the backup process and restoration of your system to a specific period of time you so select. It is intended that you use an external drive or server to back up to. Not to an internal partition on your machine.

Sure copying data to another partition is better than nothing. We do it all the time, actually dozens of times a day. Create code. Dupe the file. Test the code. Change the code. Dupe… etc. etc. Twice a day, the system is completely (incrementally) backed up.

Now, I am sure that if your life was not dependent on the contents of your computer, anything else than the occassional back up to CD is fine. However, as seen in the release of Tiger, a number of quite knowledgeable individuals did not follow Apple's recommendations, i.e., backup, disk image, etc., causing considerable furror and a lot of wasted time.

With a lot of our students using laptops, the idea of anybody walking out the door with all their curriculm only stuffed in their back packs defies logic and common sense. Certainly not somebody that you would want to guide your IT department.

I always encourage people to have some backup. Any backup.

I have a friend who owns a small department store in Brooklyn. She had a tape backup, because I constantly bothered her to install one.

Her system went down early this year. I said that it was a good thing she installed the backup.

To my considerable surprise and consternation, she told me that it had stopped working, and she didn't replace it because she didn't want to spend the money.

So, it took two weeks for her to rebuild her database, and she never got all of it back from her paper trail.

That's not inconsistant with even most small business owners.

And her problem was NOT that the drive went south, it was the corruption of the disk database and files that were the cause.

Again, that is the main cause of data loss, not an actual drive failure.

Yeah, that was me until just recently. In the past if I ever lost my hard drive, it would have been a major inconvenience. But now, well now I have hundreds of dollars invested in iTunes music, software purchases (online download only, receipt via email) and a web site that took 100's of hours. I have backups of all of this, but only now am I thinking of buying a separate external hard drive (I have a MBP) for backups. So if any of you experts can recommend a good external hard drive.....

I think the 4% refers to people who have a backup plan in place, and who excercise it, rather than just having a backup device that is used irregularly, as most people who have backup devices at home (and in small business, as I've just said) tend to do.

Most people who have backup devices tend to use them less frequently as time goes on, because they are simply too much trouble, and take too much time. As they don't have problems, they start to feel as though they really don't need it, and so stop using it on a useful schedule.

This comment leads me to believe you don't use Little Snitch. I guess the term "rare" leaves a lot of room for interpretation, but be careful of your assumptions.

And even if it meets your definition of "rare", do you want -any- information transmitted outbound without your permission? I don't.

All I'm saying, and I've now had to repeat it in several posts, so it shows how much people are really paying attention, is that it IS better than nothing.

But, that's all. Better than nothing.No matter what, we will never convince many people to go out and BUY something that they can't use for anything other than backup.

Like it or not, most people think that duplicating their files is a waste of money.

Do I agree with that? Of course not!

I have 12 drives in my system, between the ones internal to both of my machines, and the external towers. One tower also serves as the unit for my backup drives. Those are in addition to the 12 primary drives.

So, do I believe in backup? You bet! I also backup onto DVD, and soon, I hope to multi-layer Blu-Ray. I still use my old AIT I used for my video projects.

But, even with this to show my friends, they mostly still don't backup.

With large drives being the norm these days, it will be easier to convince people to simply make a partition to use for backup rather than to convince them to buy another drive.

Again, I hope for the last timenot ideal, but better than nothing.

Instead, I would strongly recommend that you backup your music files to CD, or DVD. That external hd is just as likely to fail as your internal one, though likely it will also be due to corruption, rather than to an actual hd failure, allowing you to reformat it.

Here's what I'd like, since I'm using my MBP (on the road) far more than my desktop Mac right now:

An Expresscard/34 flash memory card.
30+ Gig. (Yeah, yeah ... expensive)

It would be perfect, though, as I could just leave it in the laptop all the time and have Time Machine backup my most important data to it. Saves me from carting around a small external HD, too.

Then you should be more careful to make assumptions.


For my personal experience, it fits my definition of "never". For those who are less educated about which applications to use (and which ones not to), it may be more common, but still very rare.


I think everyone agrees with that.


I agree (that many people feel that way).


Optical discs aren't that great for longevity either, though better than hard drives.

I understand that the backup drive is just as likely to fail, but hopefully the odds of it and my MBP drive failing at the same time are slim.

And for me (and probably most people) to actually be diligent about backups, I want it to be as easy as possible. ("Set it and forget it.") I want to schedule backups and then let the thing run on that schedule. I don't want to have to worry about having a DVD/CD ready in the drive or running out of them. Or storing them or losing them.

If you are so disorganized that you worry about losing your backups to disk, then there isn't much else to say. But, disks are likely to last 30 years, if kept away from glove compartments, radiators, etc.

Hd's on the other hand, can go south tomorrow.

Well, I may be a bit disorganized, but a suspect a few other people with Macs and valuable data may be disorganized also. So I don't think I'm alone in my need for something simple and unattended. And losing CDs was really the least of my worries, hence the last thing I mentioned.

It's much more of a pain to be dealing with CDs in general. I want backups to run in the background without any intervention from me. I like what I have now which is my MBP backs up wirelessly to an old PC on my network. But as I'm running low on space, I'd like to have something bigger. Plus I've heard that Backup.app can be unreliable for restores(!) so I'm looking for better software too.

So like I said, if any of you experts want to make a hardware or software suggestion, don't hesitate.....

Amazing. I agreed that copying a file to a partitioned drive was better than nothing.

The hardware is just about the same for typical amateur users. The good backup systems (translate to "reliable") cost far too much for most people.

Backups, if one expects them to actually work over the long term, use the grandfather, father, son method (or grandmother, mother daughter).

You back up everything on your drives, say, once a month. Remove that from the premises. Bzck up changed data once a week, and remove that as well.

Then back up dayly changes.

Once a month, redo the monthly backup, and once a week, the weekly backup. I do that for my startup drive, and one other.

If you are concerned with safety, that's the only way. You can use 10.5 auto backup for the daily backups, but still need the other two for ultimate security.

But, CD's and DVD's are a medium alternative, because they are so cheap.

SuperDuper is one of the best backup programs around. I don't recall if it's universal as yet.

Sort of, you did.

But then you negated the entire point by ending with:

"With a lot of our students using laptops, the idea of anybody walking out the door with all their curriculm only stuffed in their back packs defies logic and common sense. Certainly not somebody that you would want to guide your IT department."

The understanding is that people are simply not going to carry an external backup drive with them, and corruption is as likely to occur when in the copse, classroom, or lecture hall, as in the dorm.

JupiterOne

I agree.

I personally archive final documents to Cds or DVD's and about 4 times a year will back up whole drives to them. After verification, I then trash redundancies. Incremental backups is virtually impossible and cataloguing such would be a nightmare. Once a year, I back up to tape using my digital movie camera. Slow, but relatively inexpensive. Big problem with either is organization and retrieval. Each extremely time consuming

In any case, I think that we would all agree that up to now, backing up is a mundane process that we would rather have someone else doing. Most important, the costs of secondary drives has been historically high and thus a luxury that many of us found frivilous because we never calculated the cost of our own time restoring a corrupted system.

Now things have changed and it looks like in typical Apple fashion, Steve has developed a solution that just makes it ridiculously simple, easy, fast, unabtrusive and relatively inexpensive. As you and I can well imagine, the fact that we can restore a completely dead system with equal simplicty… is one thing, however, the idea that we will be able go back in time, restore a specific period in time and still be in the present is downright awesome. Let's hope that the many others will understand the new paradigm as I believe you do. Afterall, I think that you are better organized than some would think.

Why in the world would you carry your external backup drive with you? Leave it at your residence. Talk to your prof. Get space on their server. The idea that if you head for the pub directly after class, you don't loose your parents hard earned tuition fees because you tripped over your backpack on the way to the john.

As most IT managers would suggest, backup systems can be done on and left on site, however, the best plan is to have your main backup storage in another location, i.e., in another building.

The point is that it can fail anywhere. took notes from that two hour lecture? Your computer crashed and you lost it? Too bad your "safe" seperate backup drive is in the dorm, or you haven't had time to connect to the server.

An auto backup to a seperate partition would have saved that.

Then, you can do a better backup later.

This is precisely the reason that I'd like the Expresscard solution which I proposed above.

I'm waiting for the Time Machine backlash where all the B1FFs complain about having to buy another drive to use the new feature and also complaining about how much space it takes up.

Too right.

The other problem I've found is that people back up to CD/DVD and then mistreat the backup copy by storing it badly. At least with a hard drive or network share, you can continuously monitor the backup and to condition of the drive.

You can't monitor idiots sticking the backup disks in their desk drawer and then 9 months of shlooshing the contents back and forward putting huge scratches across the disk which they then only notice when you ask them where their backup is?

Which one of those does the Mac Book use?

Agreed. But, those are the very same people who won't back up in the first place.

Anyone who treats valuable data that way, deserves to lose it.

Neither. It'd work fine with a Macbook Pro, though.

Exactly! And those are the people who won't buy an external device for it anyway.

Well, screw 'em ... I want one.

At 'em boy, that's the way!

You have to be kidding.

When a police officer calls for back up, it is because he or she is in harms way. In no case would a call for back up be made for a routine traffic stop.

What is meant by back up is the complete system. Everything included. Not just text files or your favorite pics or tunes. But programs, operating systems, preferences, etc. Companies, major or minor, programmers, ad agencies, media publications, etc., do it all the time. Drive crashes, load up from the backup and you're set to go in minutes.

Everytime I walk out the door with my laptop, I take a copy of every important thing that I did since the last scheduled back up and put it on a key. Key is in my pocket and if the data is extremely sensitive I push a copy on to an external server. But they are still copies. The back up is secured much tighter. Offsite. Under lock and key. Ready to download in the god-forbidden case that I trip over my machine in the pub and have to replace the hard drive or simply retrieve any files that I may inadvertantly deleted.

Upside, if my drive crashes and I have to reinstall, it is a lot simpler and faster to get back to work.

So what is missing? Besides the fact that I am only backing up incrementally now, the chances are that I don't really have a current bootable drive. Sure it has all the old stuff, but to make it work, I would still have to install an OS before I upload from the backup.

From our understanding of Time Machine, it appears that if your drive dies, you get it replaced and you are right back to where you were. Obvious if you have Time Machine set to only work at midnight, you will have lost any input that you made since.

So, if I don't have to install a new system first, update drivers, install programs, set passwords and/or update preferences, a few minutes after hooking up the backup, I am on my way back to the pub, while a poor undergrad sweats all night reallizing the he may still have to retype his thesis because I also fell on top of his backpack when I tripped over mine. I of course could help him, but hey, I am not a student.

In closing, Apple again has done its homework. Research. Innovation. Service. Support.

You could say, there just may be no better backup to have.

I like it. It is Universal. A simple "get info" shows this.


For something like that, is a separate partition even necessary? I have several pieces of software that keep the previous version of a file as backups, either in the same directory or in a pre-determined backup directory of the user's choice.