Backing up

Michael_K_Sr · 04-09-2008, 10:38 AM

Lest anyone thinks it's worth taking a chance that your hard drive will never fail, we've had three MacBook hard drive failures in two weeks. Make sure you're backing up, especially with the Seagate drives found in the MacBooks.

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Keith Plucker · 04-09-2008, 11:35 AM

Wasn't there a story not too long ago about a defect in some Seagate drives that were used in MacBooks causing data loss?

Here is something on it:
Seagate's MacBook Hard Drive Destroying Data -- Apple -- InformationWeek

-Keith

ErichH · 04-09-2008, 12:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Michael_K_Sr

Lest anyone thinks it's worth taking a chance that your hard drive will never fail, we've had three MacBook hard drive failures in two weeks. Make sure you're backing up, especially with the Seagate drives found in the MacBooks.

You'd think after the 2nd, a bell would go off on the oem drive and a better replacement would follow.

Among my local guys, there's a constant mistrust of ANY stock drive, even if it doesn't show signs of a bad run. Most of us have experienced 1 or 2 bad losses. That's the best learning experience.

Michael_K_Sr · 04-09-2008, 01:00 PM

Quote:

Wasn't there a story not too long ago about a defect in some Seagate drives that were used in MacBooks causing data loss?

Yes...that was my point. People that said poo-poo over the report because it was authored by a data recovery service and are not backing their data up are probably living on precariously borrowed time.

Andrew Pratt · 04-09-2008, 04:06 PM

Given how easy Apple has made doing backups with Time Machine people have almost no excuss not to backup now.

Joe Casey · 04-09-2008, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Pratt

Given how easy Apple has made doing backups with Time Machine people have almost no excuss not to backup now.

Whereas Time Machine is a great concept, it's sorely lacking in the implementation department. It's very intrusive and does not provide for turn-key recovery. Hourly backups are great if you're running mission critical applications, but to not let the user modify any settings whatsoever other than turning it on or off and choosing the target disc are short-sighted. It needs user adjustable parameters for frequency of backup, bootable disc mode, file/directory settings etc that are commonly available on other off-the-shelf backup products. I still use Carbon Copy and .mac Backup and can't see any benefit to Time Machine whatsoever.

Maybe future updates will make it a little more user-friendly.

DavidJ · 04-09-2008, 05:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Casey

Whereas Time Machine is a great concept, it's sorely lacking in the implementation department. It's very intrusive and does not provide for turn-key recovery. Hourly backups are great if you're running mission critical applications, but to not let the user modify any settings whatsoever other than turning it on or off and choosing the target disc are short-sighted. It needs user adjustable parameters for frequency of backup, bootable disc mode, file/directory settings etc that are commonly available on other off-the-shelf backup products. I still use Carbon Copy and .mac Backup and can't see any benefit to Time Machine whatsoever.

Maybe future updates will make it a little more user-friendly.

I couldn't agree more with your comments regarding Time Machine. Why not include an advance tab or button with a warning when you change the various settings? That way the ease of use is left unchanged, but those of us who want more control or find the hourly backups intrusive can make changes.

DaveF · 04-09-2008, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Casey

Whereas Time Machine is a great concept, it's sorely lacking in the implementation department. It's very intrusive and does not provide for turn-key recovery. Hourly backups are great if you're running mission critical applications, but to not let the user modify any settings whatsoever other than turning it on or off and choosing the target disc are short-sighted. It needs user adjustable parameters for frequency of backup, bootable disc mode, file/directory settings etc that are commonly available on other off-the-shelf backup products. I still use Carbon Copy and .mac Backup and can't see any benefit to Time Machine whatsoever.

Maybe future updates will make it a little more user-friendly.

Thinking like Apple and normal home user, I ask: Why?

I'm curious if you've even used TimeMachine?

The home user of an iMac or Mac Pro buys a 500 GB hard drive for $130, plugs it, turns on Time Machine and never thinks about it again. They've got ongoing backups, with one hour granularity. And now, as never before, you can recover from short-term mistakes easily. Made file changes that you wish you hadn't: you can recover that single file quickly. Time Machine is anything but intrusive -- you don't even know it's running unless you watch the Menu Bar icon spinning. And by all accounts, recovering an entire system from TimeMachine is fairly easy.

Certainly, I'd appreciate more flexibility. But as is, Time Machine is a great tool that most people would really benefit from.

Joe Casey · 04-09-2008, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaveF

Thinking like Apple and normal home user, I ask: Why?

I'm curious if you've even used TimeMachine?

The home user of an iMac or Mac Pro buys a 500 GB hard drive for $130, plugs it, turns on Time Machine and never thinks about it again. They've got ongoing backups, with one hour granularity. And now, as never before, you can recover from short-term mistakes easily. Made file changes that you wish you hadn't: you can recover that single file quickly. Time Machine is anything but intrusive -- you don't even know it's running unless you watch the Menu Bar icon spinning. And by all accounts, recovering an entire system from TimeMachine is fairly easy.

Certainly, I'd appreciate more flexibility. But as is, Time Machine is a great tool that most people would really benefit from.

Well, I have four Macs at home, so I guess that makes me a home user. And yes, to quell your curiosity, I have tried to use it. I find it extremely intrusive in general, not to mention absolutely useless with a portable machine (ever close a MB/MBP during an unwarranted hard-scheduled hourly backup?). As to short-term mistakes, my 10-year old on an iMac has yet to require one hour granularity. Maybe that's something one acquires with age.

BTW, regarding '...recovering an entire system from TimeMachine is fairly easy', this is not the case compared to a clone.

It was one of the features that I was very excited about when it was announced, and I upgraded the day it was released. It may be of value to a certain type of user, but I find it very poorly executed.

Carlo Medina · 04-09-2008, 11:49 PM

I don't have a Seagate drive (my 2.33 C2D MBP came with a Fujitsu 120GB 5400RPM, and I've since swapped it out with a Hitachi 200GB 7200RPM drive) and I still back up regularly.

I agree that Time Machine is a good, but flawed concept, in that it doesn't make a bootable backup.

I personally use the newest version of Carbon Copy Cloner 3.1. It has done a fantastic job, and it defragments while copying. I usually clone once a week. Takes about an hour for 100GB of data via Firewire 400 to an external drive. Every month or so (depending on how much my system has fragmented) I clone and then boot from the clone and clone back to my internal HD. Have had nothing but great success in doing that.

Darren Lewis · 04-10-2008, 05:53 AM

Interesting discussion. I must admit that since getting Leopard I've gotten "lazy" and just let Time Machine take care of the backups.

Although my iMac has a 750Gb drive, I'm not using anywhere near that amount so my external 320Gb USB2 drive is fine.

Should I also use SuperDuper (which I used to use on Tiger) to do system backups every week or so?

If so, should I invest in a second external drive - ie have one drive for TimeMachine and another for SuperDuper? The Time Machine drive has a single folder called Backups.backupdb on it, and is running at about 80Gb full at the moment.

Thanks in advance.

DaveF · 04-10-2008, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe Casey

Well, I have four Macs at home, so I guess that makes me a home user. And yes, to quell your curiosity, I have tried to use it. I find it extremely intrusive in general, not to mention absolutely useless with a portable machine (ever close a MB/MBP during an unwarranted hard-scheduled hourly backup?). As to short-term mistakes, my 10-year old on an iMac has yet to require one hour granularity. Maybe that's something one acquires with age.

BTW, regarding '...recovering an entire system from TimeMachine is fairly easy', this is not the case compared to a clone.

It was one of the features that I was very excited about when it was announced, and I upgraded the day it was released. It may be of value to a certain type of user, but I find it very poorly executed.

How is it intrusive? Can you elaborate on this? We have it on a G5 desktop system and on a recent MBP, and without exaggeration, neither my wife nor I notice it running on either machine.

As for how easy it is: certainly it's simpler to revert to a clone of the harddrive. But how easy is it to recover five corrupted photos in iPhoto's library from a full system clone? In Time Machine it took me about 10 minutes to dial back to before my photos were mangled and restore them.

As for not being bootable, this is where I note that home users aren't runing Mission Critical apps, so who cares? So it takes a few hours instead of a few minutes to recover in the case of a catastrophic drive failure...I'm just thankful to have a backup.

TimeMachine is not the end all of backup. My wife also uses .Mac to backup key files online. And I plan to buy and run SuperDuper! to complement TimeMachine. (Darren -- I think SuperDuper! is a good idea to use with TM. They both ultimately do different things that go great together.)

I hope Apple improves the interface (I'd like to recover directly from the Finder. I'd like to see more powerful integration with individual applications.). And more settings would be useful for the more sophisticated users.

But again, for most users -- who never have and never will otherwise set up a backup program -- TimeMachine is a no brainer. Plug in an external hard-drive and they're done. I'd urge anyone who doesn't yet have a regular backup system -- and backing up some files to CD when it crosses your mind every 9 months doesn't count -- to buy an external hard drive and start Time Machine today.