Maybe I'm just stupid, but my Mac is pissing me off.

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
So my mac has been acting funky lately. I can't repair permissions, midi has stopped working, lots of beach balls. I've decided the only thing to do is wipe my hard drive and start over. I've got a copy of Tiger and iLife 06, oh and also a new 250gb firewire drive to back everything up to. I copied my system drive to the firewire drive and I moved my itunes folder to the firewire drive and consolidated my itunes library so that seems to have everything copied over. Now I'm copying my iPhoto library over.



Why am I bitching? Well this just seems way too hard. Unless I'm dumb I can't figure out a way to either just find all of my mp3 files or picture files so that I can copy them over without the extra folders that Itunes and Iphoto create and there doesn't seem to be a simple way to just back up these critical apps. I also don't feel secure that I'm copying everything and I'm afraid that if I screw up iPhoto and itunes won't be able to locate everything when I reinstall. Would it be so hard for apple to put in an option to back up all this stuff? Maybe I'm just a dumbass, but it seems like this should be easier.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 15
    Have you tried making a new account and seeing if your problems happen there?
  • Reply 2 of 15
    No, I didn't try that, but sometimes you just need a fresh start......
  • Reply 3 of 15
    Have you looked at this?

    www.apple.com/dotmac/backup.html
  • Reply 4 of 15
    Ummm ... well, backing up your pictures and MP3 files is actually quite easy on a Mac. All of your music is stored in your iTunes music folder and all of your photos are stored in your iPhoto library. Now, if you have pics or musc that you haven't loaded into those programs, my advice would be to sport light .mp3 and .jpeg, .jpg, or whatever endings you usually have on files (it's usually MP3 or AAC and JPEG for me...) and pull them over. Unless you've gone willy nilly and stren files about your hard drive, it should be easy to find them all in a couple of locations.



    Also, you could always do an archive and install from the Tiger disk, and archive everything to the FW drive then move what you want to the new install later. The good thing about Tiger is it makes starting over a relatively painless process. Let me know if this didn't answer your question or wasn't what you were shooting for and I'll take another stab at it...
  • Reply 5 of 15
    Is that new? I've been wanting apple to do somehting like that. I'll definitely check it out. I'm about halfway through redoing my computer. Have to install a couple of more applications and then move my itunes and iphoto libraries back from the firewire drive over to one of my internal drives. Then I'll set up some kind of back up routine so that they are backed up weekly onto the firewire drive.
  • Reply 6 of 15
    Quote:

    Originally posted by trick fall

    Is that new? I've been wanting apple to do somehting like that. I'll definitely check it out. I'm about halfway through redoing my computer. Have to install a couple of more applications and then move my itunes and iphoto libraries back from the firewire drive over to one of my internal drives. Then I'll set up some kind of back up routine so that they are backed up weekly onto the firewire drive.



    I believe archive and install is new with Tiger. You might be able to set a weekly backup routine with an Automater script, but I haven't used Automater, so I couldn't help you with that. Try searching the Apple Support Database for information regarding this. I know .Mac also lets you back up your information through Backup.app, but I'm not a .Mac subscriber so I couldn't give you any more info there. But anyway, my best advice is to check out the system after you move everything back over and see how it runs and then go from there. Let us know how it goes...
  • Reply 7 of 15
    You hard drive seems to be going...
  • Reply 8 of 15
    Maybe someone can help me remember this, but recently there was an update (one of the, i'd say, last 3) where suddenly no one could repair permissions anymore and all that sort of thing was happening.



    There is a fix on it (and on apples discussion boards, but also either on here or applenova). Do a search for it on here or applenova b/c I was having the same problem (along with alot of others who had done the update) and couldn't repair permissions, etc. Doing the fix that's in those threads fixes the problem...NO HD WIPE REQUIRED



    I think it was an itunes update or something b/c my GF was having the same problem and she's on Panther.
  • Reply 9 of 15
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hardeeharhar

    You hard drive seems to be going...



    Yeah, that might be it. This happened to me once with a PBG4 500Mhz, and I had the same sort of SNAFU problems. The one thing that I noticed was that my HD started to get louder when it was going.
  • Reply 10 of 15
    Well I upgraded to Tiger and all seems good. I don't have any data on my system drive so I'm not too worried about the drive going.
  • Reply 11 of 15
    mr. hmr. h Posts: 4,870member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by trick fall

    Well I upgraded to Tiger and all seems good. I don't have any data on my system drive so I'm not too worried about the drive going.



    For backups, try Carbon Copy Cloner at a very reasonable $5, or free if you're a student.
  • Reply 12 of 15
    What I usually do for a system restore is backup the following folders to my hard drive



    Documents

    Movies

    Music

    Photos

    Sites



    Then I also do a backup from iCal and Address Book and keep my email on the server.



    Then I do a clean install of the latest OS



    Run Software Upddate



    and then copy the folders over, replacing the new ones, and "revert" back to my backed up iCal and Address Book files.



    Done and done.
  • Reply 13 of 15
    994 million

    (edit: oops, wrong thread)
  • Reply 14 of 15
    A second vote for Carbon Copy Cloner



    My iMac was getting a bit sluggish for my taste. So I used CCC to clone the entire hard disc onto a firewire HD. Used system disc to wipe imac, reinstalled tiger, rebooted - it asks if you want to copy info from another mac (and recognises the firewire disc as such) and did so seamlessly. Bit of software update, and job's a good un



    return of the snappy
  • Reply 15 of 15
    I would recommend Super Duper! from Shirt Pocket software ( www.shirt-pocket.com ). This will back up everything to your firewire drive and will make the external drive bootable as well.



    The program costs <$30 and the download from their site is fully functional.
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