Backups (not for Dummies)

According to Guy Kawasaki there are three types of computer users:

  1. who backup
  2. who learn to backup after a HD-crash
  3. who think their HD is never gonna crash again

This article is for person in category 1 and 2. I really can’t help you if you belong to number 3 ;-)
If you work in a company and don’t have to take care of your data, good for your, but still, what do you do with your data back home?

My basic tips are:

  1. Do backup
  2. Make sure your backups actually work
  3. (Bonus) Don’t keep all data in the same place

Pretty easy, isn’t it?

As a minimum: use Apple’s TimeMachine!

As always in this blog: I do what I preach, al those tips and ideas are what I do and have been doing for years to keep my data safe. The technique was originally developed long before there was Mac OS X 10.5 and TimeMachine and while TM might do the trick for many people you might find some tips here for your own backup workflow. My desktop setup also contained a RAID0 set for speed reasons which meant twice the chance of data loss. As it was a productive system, even when this happened, i wanted to be able to get right back to working within minutes.

So part 1 of my strategy was a identical clone of my hard-disk. Automatically done every morning every morning right before I show up for work. I know there are free tools out there for that, but for over 5 years I have been using SuperDuper and it hasn’t failed me once. I did so many clones, backups and restores that I can fully recommend it to all my friends.
The great thing about a backup in the morning is, if I have an epiphany in the night that I actually wrecked something I was working on that day, I just show up 20 minutes earlier and copy it back before the backup starts. :)
If I install any new software, be it an Adobe update or a Mac OS X update, I always first make an full clone and keep that for 1 or 2 weeks, you never know what problem you might run into while working, even if the update installs fine. (And if you install an update on the day of its release, you can’t be helped either ;-) ).
If you haven’t done this before, I highly recommend after your first successful clone, to make sure, that you can actually boot from it. Turn your mac off and right after turning it back on, hold down the “alt”-key and the bootmanager should show you not only your internal disk, but also the newly created clone. Select it and test if your Mac boots.
You can also just do regular (weekly, monthly) backups and use TimeMachine for continuos backups of your files.
Especially for mobile Macs, but also for the case of burglary or a fire: make sure to have your data not just in one place. If someone breaks in an takes your Mac and your externals discs, a backup isn’t worth anything if it’s gone, too. So for example put a external disk in your sock drawer (good against a fast break-in) or drop it off at your parents place which pretty well protects you against “elementary damages” as insurances like to call it. You don’t even need an external enclosure for your backup HD. Instead I just use an USB to SATA adapter (around 30 bucks) I connect my drives to and then put them back into their packaging. To recover more quickly _if_ something happens I normally have a partition on my backup-disk that contains a clone of my Mac OS X install DVD, the latest updates of Mac OS X and installers of my software. This way, even if I should experience a full crash while on the road I have anything I could possibly need with me. (Also great, if you have a flakey DVD-drive)
Then there is also the internet for backups. Services like Backblaze enable you to store your data somewhere far, far away in a datacenter, even with your own encryption-key. While with most connections the initial backup takes ages, why not use the available bandwidth at night? Of course it’s not necessary to backup your full disk to such a service. A System can be reinstalled, installer DVDs are lying around somewhere and music can be re-ripped or could even be re-bought, but your pictures, home-movies and project data is lost shouldn’t you have a backup somewhere. Just make sure for yourself how much that personal stuff is worth to you.

So, to sum it up:

Clone your HD regularly, clone it before updates, make sure backups work, but backups offsite.

Mouse Lazyness

Yes, I am lazy. More often than not I have one hand already on the keyboard. SO instead of moving the mouse to the buttons in dialogs. I have “Full Keyboard Access” turned on.

Keyboard Preferences

Mac Software Collection

As more and more of my friends switch to the Mac and – of course – ask for software recommendations, instead of just resending an email, here is my list. It’s the software I use daily, for which I purchased licenses and without which my Mac wouldn’t help me half as much to get the job done. If you don’t find something for your specific need here, I suggest taking a look at versiontracker.com and doing a search there. In some cases there are cheaper or free alternatives to what I use, but this list is not about what is available, but what I recommend.

The first thing people seem to worry about: playing movies.
 The combination of Perian (for playing almost everything in QuickTime-Player), Flip4Mac (for Playing WMV files) and VLC (for everything else and if Perian and Flip4Mac fail) should take care of all your needs. To get DVDs into my Mac I use Handbreak.

To stay in contact with people on MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, etc I almost exclusively use Adium (probably because most are on ICQ) and of course there is also Skype.

For small image-editing needs there is Pixelmator, though I actually spent most of my time work-related in Adobe products. (Which I do not recommend if you value your sanity.)

Every now and then I encounter a file that is not compressed as a ZIP and then I fall back to TheUnarchiver.

Because Flash is the most annoying thing on the Internet and responsible for most program crashes I use Click2Flash to get rid of most annoying stuff on the web ;-)

Instead of carrying around an USB-stick I mostly put files simply into my Dropbox to have them available and sync them to multiple computers. It’s also great for collaboration with different people as a central repository and you get 2GB for free.

The there is the esoteric Quicksilver. A good description here and a beautiful HUD-like-skin for it is here. What is it? I mainly use it as a launcher (just type the first letters of an applications to launch it). Yes I am to lazy to move the cursor to my dock or open the application folder. Along these lines DefaultFolder greatly enhances the open- and save-dialogs if you work with lots of files everyday.

To keep my data save and have a boot-able backup I have been using SuperDuper for a couple of years now. It just work’s! The best backup strategy is worthless if you never tested your backups, but with SuperDuper I often migrated my data to newer and bigger hard-disks and it never let me down.

Though I am not big into customization (I’ve been using the same desktop picture for years!) and have set the colored bubbles in the top-left of each window to “grey”, but I do change my icons with Candybar.

While not completely adhering to GTD (Getting Things Done), I use Things to keep my ideas and ToDos in check.

For webdev you’ll find my 99% of the time in Coda for coding and managing and CSS-Edit for visual css-editing (as the name implies). If for whatever reason I just need an FTP client it’s Transmit. For getting screenshots of websites I mostly use LittleSnapper (because it keeps the picture linked to an URL and takes screenshot of the whole page, not matter how long).

To keep track of time spent on different projects I rely on TimeLog as it not only records the time, but also ads it to iCal so I can see when I did what and not just have a sum at the end of a month.

To get my Mac to open different applications when I connect different cameras, I use Cameras. Makes life way easier if you have more than one digital camera (like an iPhone or iPod).

DeliciousLibrary, while initially started as a book cataloging app, now catalogs almost everything. With the terrific interface and the ability to scan barcodes it’s almost fun to input all your books. The really nifty thing is also cataloging your gizmos together with serial number, should you ever need it. (For example in Case of an insurance claim!)

If you really need this new ‘nix distro and want to get it via bittorent, at least do it in style with a native client: Transmission

The last app for this list is Tweetie, a beautiful Twitter client.

So, this list should get all recent converts a good starting point for getting productive with your Macs. Feedback is appreciated via phil@off-and-on.com Have fun!