Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with backup

UPS and battery reference on the large scale

thewalrus — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:04:11 -0800

I would like to learn more about large-scale UPS systems, particularly the battery strings used in traditional RBOC/Telco applications. These are the sort of beasts that use huge strings of 6V 220aH deep cycle batteries, or even large numbers of 2V 400aH batteries on very strong earthquake-resistant shelving wired up to create a 48V mega-battery. Can anyone point me to the most definitive reference materials on the subject?

Second time's the charm?

The Winsome Parker Lewis — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:58:36 -0800

Please help me rearchitect my Apple-specific wireless home network and iTunes library! Eleven paragraphs of geeky details within (sorry!). I have a big (~100GB) iTunes library I've been accumulating over at least a decade of ripping all my CDs and, in more recent days, my DVDs as well. That project is still ongoing and may never end. I've invested a lot of hours in encoding and cataloging my physical media, and I want to keep it safe for, well, forever. I'm motivated by a teeny bit of paranoia that my discs will scratch and I'll lose something. I keep a tidy house but I guess you could call me a data hoarder. ;-)

This summer I decided to free up room on my MacBook (occupying that much disk space just for iTunes was pretty ridiculous). I bought a WD My Book Mirror Edition and moved the library to it. I configured RAID mirroring for the dual drives so I'd have a backup in case one failed. Before the move, I regularly backed up the library onto my Time Capsule (using Time Machine) along with all my other non-iTunes stuff; the RAID mirroring made that seem redundant so I deleted the backup and excluded it from all future backups. Also, instead of connecting the MyBook straight to my computer, I plugged it into the Time Capsule USB port so I could carry the laptop around the house and still use iTunes wirelessly.

I was really proud of this setup until a couple issues reared their heads:

Latency. Playing music in iTunes over this network works mostly fine apart from the occasional stutter. There's also often a very long delay (30 seconds or more) between when I tell a new song to play and the audio actually begins. Similar delays between when I "get info" on a file and the info window appears. iTunes beachballs frequently now, completely unresponsive while it does... stuff. If I wait, it eventually takes care of whatever it was doing and becomes usable again. So annoying.

Latency's an even bigger issue when watching movies. By default, the Time Capsule was configured for 802.11b/g/n compatibility and movies were unwatchably laggy. I found that forcing pure 802.11n improved performance a lot and movies ran almost as smoothly as music, with only occasional, forgivable hiccups and long delays for play/pause, scrubbing, etc. The downside of killing 802.11b/g compatibility is that my iPhone 3G can no longer use the network, as it only goes up to g. I really miss that functionality, for things like Airfoil Speakers and iTunes Remote.

Another issue is the unfamiliarity of maintaining a network drive that's out of sight, out of mind. Whenever I want to use iTunes I have to mount the drive (I run a script to do it automatically at logon). Whenever I leave the house I have to unmount it. I've forgotten a couple times and disconnected improperly. There were also a couple times when I had trouble getting online and reset the Time Capsule, forgetting that the disk was mounted. Which leads us to the next sad, sad paragraph...

This past weekend, tragedy struck. I think it was related to an improper disconnect while data was being written. Suddenly iTunes refused to read the drive at all. Time Capsule reported a "problem" with the drive. I plugged it into the MacBook and ran Disk Utility. It failed to verify or repair the disk and said I would have to format it. What's worse, the mirrored drive was identically corrupted too. I lost my whole library and the supposed "failsafe!" Crap! I really botched this one up.

I'm investigating data recovery options. I should be able to restore my files. Not sure how this is going to play out but it makes my heart ache. Any suggestions for cheap-as-in-free ways to get my library back in working condition would be appreciated.

But what I'm really asking for in this question is the best way to prevent this from happening again and in a way that works better than my first attempt. Assuming the drive is not mechanically broken and I'll be able to get my files back, how can I redesign my network to do all of the following:

Access my iTunes library wirelessly
Minimize latency
Keep a backup of the library that's actually safe and won't give me any more headaches
Use my iPhone on the network
Require no additional hardware purchases if at all possible

I can't think of a single way to fulfill all of those requirements. Maybe it's impossible. But you are smarter than me, I trust. If it makes a difference, the MacBook is a late 2007 Santa Rosa model, 2.2 GHz, running Snow Leopard. Let me know if I've left out any other details that could be helpful. Thanks!

How to automate backups on my ftp server?

stupidsexyFlanders — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:29:34 -0800

I have some wordpress sites hosted at bluehost that I want to keep backed up. Can you help me automate this? Detailed needs inside. What I've been doing is going to the bluehost control panel every few weeks and manually downloading, first, all the files on the ftp server. Then I'm separately downloading all the dbs. Then I'm throwing them all in a folder on my local machine and have Carbonite back them up remotely. I keep five backup sets, and delete the oldest when I add a new one.

I would like to automate this 100% if possible -- maybe have some kind of script that every week zips up the backups into a one big file on the ftp server, which I can then use SynchBack Pro to mirror to my local HD on a regular basis?

The solution would have to compress all the dbs and a defined portion of the ftp file structure into one file named 120509.* (itself inside a folder called /backups). The following week, same exact thing, except the files are compressed into 121209.*, etc. Each week it should look in /backups for a file named with a date older than 5 weeks and delete it.

Then I would use Synchback every week to pull down the contents of /backups on the ftp server to my local drive, which I will tell Carbonite to pull up remotely.

What do I do to automate the compressing and saving and sequential naming and date-based deleting on the ftp server?

I've never used cron or SSH and only done super basic stuff using phpmysql. I've read through these two askmes and while they did include code snippets that seemed like what I needed, I don't know what to do with them or how to modify them to do what I specifically need. So speak very slowly. Thanks!

Help me recover a deleted MySQL database on osx

special-k — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:19:16 -0800

Where does MySQL store actual data in Snow Leopard? How would I retrieve a deleted database from a Time Machine backup? MySQL was crashing repeatedly on my Snow Leopard. On the advice of an Apple genius, I nuked the existing install and all its associated directories. I didn't worry much because I do database stuff on my work computer and only keep copies on my laptop.

Turns out that there was one particular database [now nuked] that I spent a whole week cleaning up on my laptop. The desktop only has a really old version of this particular database.

I have regular time machine backups. How do I pluck this database out and restore it?
I cannot for the life of me figure out how to get to the data without going through mysql. Someone suggested looking in /usr/local/mysql/data

I can get to the mysql directory but have no permission to enter the data directory. I could recreate much of this work but it will take forever and I'd rather not. Can someone help?

Best simple Windows backup software?

fishmasta — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 21:37:05 -0800

Looking for good easy-to-use Windows backup software. I'm looking for a backup solution for my dad that will be as easy to use as possible. He's not very computer savvy so the simpler the better. Basically I'm looking into something similar to Time Machine for OS X that will automatically update his backup drive every time he plugs it in with an option to restore from his backup should anything crash. He's currently on Windows XP, but is looking at getting a laptop (which presumably will have Windows 7 installed), so something that will function well across both would be best. Thanks!

Help me come up with best Mac based server and backup solution for a small business.

jesseendahl — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:27:02 -0800

Help me come up with best Mac based server and backup solution for a small business. Hi,

I have been considering either an XServe or new Mac Pro to replace our aging XServe G4. Either way, I would like to have 8TB (4 x 2TB drives) on-site and 8TB off-site storage. Preferably this storage would be rack-mountable, hot swappable, and eSata. Also, hardware RAID is not really important to me and seems to add a lot of extra costs.

I am currently using SuperDuper for backup since it is a) very fast, and b) retains all permissions and ACLs, which is very important to me. I would like to continue using SuperDuper as my backup software.

The XServe's internal hard drives have to be Apple Drive Modules, which are limited to 1Tb each but have many benefits. See: http://db.tidbits.com/article/10166

Due to the space limitations of the internal XServe hard drives, I am considering using an external rack-mount solution for both the on-site drives as well as the off-site ones.

If I go with a Mac Pro, I would be able to use the internal drive bays for the 8TB of onsite storage, and then only need 4 bays of external rack-mountable hard drive bays.

What are my best bets: XServe with 8 bays external storage or Mac Pro with 4 bays external storage? For the external storage, is it standard practice to purchase "server grade" hard drives for backup purposes?

What brand of eSata card is best for this purpose?

What is the best rack-mountable hot-swappable eSata storage solution?

Last but not least, are there any alternatives to all of the above that I may be overlooking?

Thanks in advance!

How can I use my external hard disk drive to regularly backup my Windows XP laptop?

grouse — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 00:08:43 -0800

How can I use my external hard disk drive to regularly backup my Windows XP laptop in as simple a manner as possible? Ideally, I would want something that works like Time Machine on the Mac—I would really like something I can set and forget. Free solutions are best, obviously, but I'm willing to buy software for this. I've read some of the previous backup questions, but figured there might be new recommendations by now.

Minimizing the hassle of reinstalling everything?

Alabaster — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:03:01 -0800

Help me save time and frustration reinstalling my programs/settings after a fresh Windows install / upgrade / etc. Reinstalling my system after an OS upgrade, system wipe, or on a new PC always becomes an enormous task -- usually taking several days plus weeks of random annoyances ("oops, have to find that codec, oh gee, I don't have Java installed, oh no I have to re-map all of my keyboard shortcuts, etc. .")

I'm thinking of wiping my bloated Vista 64 system and upgrading to Windows 7, but I don't have the time to go through the whole process. (I use Acronis TrueImage for emergency restores, but this won't help with an OS upgrade).

The problems:

* I use LOTS of software regularly
* I'm a tweaker, and have a lot of personalized settings for everything
* Tracking down install files (some on discs around my house, some downloaded, some need to be re-downloaded)
* Many of my programs have been through several patches and upgrades which will need to be gathered and re-applied
* Many programs require online registration/authorization. Some will need to be re-registered because authorization code is tied to system hardware.
* Many programs have a lot of tweaks, settings, plugins, presets, presets, advanced settings, key bindings etc that I would like to retain.
* All those random things like Flash, Java, video codecs, .NET framework, runtime libraries, etc.

Steps I've taken pre-upgrade:
* Backup all data, obviously
* Keep data on a separate partition from programs/OS
* Use portable versions of programs whenever possible to eliminate the need to reinstall
* Save all purchased program serial numbers in one location
* Whenever updating/patching a program, save the patch installer in a folder called "Program Updates"
* Whenever possible, export program settings/presets into a catch-all folder called "Presets" for easy reinstall. Prior to upgrading, go through all crucial programs and export. Make a note of settings which will need manual re-setting
* Use Driverbackup software to gather all of my drivers into one place for easy reinstall. (Is there a similar program for codecs?)

I'd appreciate any advice on:
1.) How I can reinstall all my stuff as quickly/efficiently as possible
2.) How I can maintain my system from now on to make future upgrades/restores hassle-free (I'm curious about using some kind of VM for all but my most essential programs, but I don't know much about this)
3.) If I get lazy and decide to do an in-place upgrade (from Vista 64 Home Premium to Windows 7 x64 Home Premium), will I regret this? Does a Windows 7 install clean up a lot of system bloat and other issues?

Thanks

Help me make my computer backup checklist

Elminster24 — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:21:00 -0800

BackupFilter: My new replacement laptop arrives tomorrow--help me make sure I don't forget anything critical in my backup process when I transfer everything to the new computer because I have to ship the old one back to Dell (hard drive as well). So here's the situation...I have a Dell XPS m1730 that is being replaced by Dell with an Alienware m17x since my graphics cards fried. The m1730 runs Vista 32-bit and the new one (which arrives tomorrow!!!) will come with Vista 64-bit and a Windows 7 upgrade disc. After doing a little research I've decided I'd like to try doing a clean install of Windows 7 on the new machine (versus just the upgrade option) and I have a laplink cable which will hopefully help facilitate data transfer from the old machine to the new one, although if I need to I can temporarily move things to my 1Tb external Lacie drive.

Now on to the question...

I'd consider myself pretty good with computers but I'm a bit paranoid when it comes to making sure I have a backup of everything I need to and that I've transferred things over the right way. Below are a list of key things that I plan on backing up and the specifics that I think I've got covered in terms of how to transfer the data but I'd love some additional opinions to make sure I am not missing anything important that I wish I'll have later. The reason for this is that once I am completely finished, I need to do a complete HDD wipe and send the old machine (including the HDD) back to Dell to complete the exchange and thus will no longer have access to the machine or data. I considered making a disc image of the drive but I'm not sure how useful that would be for recovery purposes if I won't have a similarly configured machine available to load the image onto.

Also, just a general note...the vast majority of the software I have on there, unless specifically noted otherwise, was...*ahem* "acquired" via Bittorrent. So I will most likely have to redownload everything as I did not save the installers.

1. Web Development
Right now I build my websites in Dreamweaver and have several site profiles setup that I need to transfer...not quite sure how to do that. I also have a local server setup via XAMPP.

A. How do I backup my Dreamweaver sites properly so that all the site logins and file paths aren't completely messed up?

B. How do I properly transfer my XAMPP server which houses several several databases from Wordpress installs and multiple sites?

2. Design
I have Photoshop CS3 installed currently. Since I need to redownload it I'll most likely just grab CS4. However I have several brush packs, fonts, patterns, filters, etc. on the current machine. What is the best way to back this up?

3. Internet
I use Firefox 3.0.12 and have a TON of addons and themes. I successfully used FEBE to transfer my bookmarks, profile, addons, themes etc. between machines in the past but I'm worried that it won't work if I try to load the backup into a newer version of FF.

A. Anybody know if FEBE can load a backup from an older version of FF into a new one?

4. Media
I don't have any music I've purchased off of the ITMS or anything but I have a ton of MP3s and iTunes is music software of choice. My photos are stored in my documents and I use Picasa to manage them.

A. Do I need to do anything with my iPod and iTunes on my old machine like deauthorize or anything?

B. Is backing up photos as simple as copying them all and then putting them on the new machine and just importing them into Picasa again?

Aside from those four things, I think the rest of the files on there are fairly straightforward things to copy/transfer--mainly MS Office files and some user data/preferences from games like Savage 2 and Battlefield. Is there anything else I'm forgetting about here that is crucial? I feel like I'm forgetting some important things that I'm going to really be pissed about once I wipe the drive... And speaking of wiping the drive, I don't want anybody getting a refurbished machine with my old HDD in it and accessing my data. What is a FREE guaranteed way to completely wipe the drive?

I understand this is a pretty meaty AskMeFi question so if you're able to provide answers to all the parts you're a rockstar, and even if you can only provide some, I'll take any advice I can get on this as I only get one shot at this and need to do it right. Happy to answer any additional questions anybody has.

Best way to eliminate personal data on Macbook Pro?

UMDirector — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 06:44:02 -0800

After problems with my old laptop Apple sent me a free replacement, whats the best way to migrate my data, eliminate personal info but leave potential problems intact? So my 2007 MacBook Pro has been a nightmare, multiple logic boards, wireless card outages etc. So they replaced it with a brand new current model MacBook Pro. My initial plan was just to dump my time machine backup onto the new machine, but I am wondering if that would instantly slow down the new machine by adding all the old pref files and junk that accumulates over the years to slow down machines? Should I worry about this? Would it be better to do a pile of fresh installs and manually copy music directories and such?

Also I want to send me old machine back to Apple as intact as possible. I would hate for the current wireless card issue to be a software problem and then I do a entire install and wipe and it fixes it. So I want to send it back as is but delete my personal data, passwords, etc. What's the best way to do this?

Backing up a messed up older Mac?

southvie — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 08:59:51 -0800

Best method/software for efficient, non-annoying backup for a slightly older Mac (G4 running 10.3.9)? Trying to back up a ton of Pro Tools sessions and other audio junk from an older G4 running OS X 10.3.9 onto a newish LaCie external drive. From several years of misuse, mismanagement and abuse, there are a lot of duplicate and corrupt files. Simply dragging and dropping the folders in Finder is getting annoying, because every time it encounters a corrupt or wonky file I have to start over and be super-diligent to ensure every single possible file is copied. Trying to get about 200G copied this way is becoming annoying and wasting lots of time.

Is there a better method or application I could use (ideally, free or cheap) to let this run for hours and have it automatically skip, check or even fix any messed up files -- and just have it done?

I'm writing a terrible novel and it would be a huge loss if it disappeared

tylerfulltilt — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:31:48 -0800

Help me come up with some sort of automated way of sending a file to myself in gmail. Writing a novel. Paranoid about losing it. Currently backing it up to two different ipods and a thumb drive after each writing session, in addition to saving it on the laptop drive.

I'm also sending the file to myself in gmail after each session. However, this process gets annoying. Is there any way to create some sort of script or macro or something that I can click with one button to automatically open safari, navigate to my gmail account, fill in the fields, attach the file and and send it to myself?

If I'm asking for something ridiculous feel free to say so.
Using an iBook g4 with leopard installed.

Amazon S3 for log backups?

Anonymous — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:04:16 -0800

I'm looking for a step by step recipe for log rotation from a web server to Amazon S3. Caveat: I am an utter newbie to Amazon S3 and EC2.

I currently have a backup process that works well. It's a cronjob that copies server logs on a nightly basis from an external machine that I do not control to a linux VPS I do control via scp.

The cost of storage is killing me (I keep > 1 years worth of logs) so I'd like to use Amazon S3 as the destination for the logs, while keeping this as unixy as possible.

What are the steps I need to take to do this? Baby steps, please. I'm new to Amazon's S3 and EC2.

I would prefer something like a nightly job where I run:

scp user@example.com:logfile user2@amazons3domain.com:destination

or the rsync equivalent.

I do not need more than 99% reliability. Simple is best. Installing new software on the outside machine is difficult, so a standard scp or rsync method preferred.

I can install software on one of my servers, but I presume it would not be involved in the transfer as I'd take a 3x bandwidth hit (outside machine to mine, mine to s3 x 2: upload from my side, download from theirs)

Over time, I will have more than one outside machine to back up. For now, it's just one.

Reinstall Windows dealing with NTFS permissions

chrisch — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:58:21 -0800

I'm a few weeks away from rebuilding my PC with Windows 7 and need help understanding how to deal with NTFS permissions. I'm a few weeks away from rebuilding my PC with Windows 7. I'm currently using the release candidate of Windows 7 with the following drive configuration:

C:\ - Windows and applications (some data)
D:\ - data drive (including "D:\My Documents\")
Q:\ - external backup drive (Drobo)

All drives are formatted with NTFS and backups of selected directories to Q:\ are done with rsync. I've noticed that some directories on Q:\ are not accessible by the Guest account, meaning that permissions are not consistent on that drive. The machine isn't on a domain.

My plan is to wipe C:\ and reinstall Windows, and leave D:\ and Q:\ alone. My questions are:

- How do I reinstall and prevent ugly situations with NTFS file permissions (i.e., permission denied)?
- Is there a best practices guide for syncing to my backup drive to ease future accessibility from another computer?

Many thanks!

backup --> iPod

Jaltcoh — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:00:25 -0800

Trying to get my music library from my external hard drive back onto my iPod while maintaining my sanity. (Apologies in advance for the lengthy/convoluted question.) I recently started having problems with my iPod and realized I should make sure to have a perfect, up-to-date backup. I started by turning on the iPod's hidden files. If you're familiar with these hidden files, you know that they have randomly generated names like "VCKT.m4a," "BBLC.m4a," etc. (no apparent indication of which songs these are), and they're in folders called "F00," "F01," etc. (Mine go up to F49 since I have over 7,000 songs.) I copied all of these files to my external hard drive. At the time this seemed like a really smart, thorough way to do it.

Then I went to the Apple Store and got my iPod fixed, which involved them restoring my iPod. So now I need to recreate my music library in my iPod using the external hard drive.

I thought this would be pretty simple: plug in the iPod and external hard drive to my Macbook at the same time, then drag and drop all the folders -- F00 through F49 -- from the external hard drive to the iPod, right? Well, I did this, and the cryptically named files do appear in the iPod when you look at the iPod's contents in the desktop. But if you try to use the iPod as a normal music-playing device, it doesn't work -- there are no songs that show up for you to listen to (whether you're looking at it in iTunes or disconnected from the computer).

I again thought I was being smart by seeing what happens when I "open" one of the hidden files. Hey cool, a random song gets copied to iTunes! And it's a normal song -- not "VCKT.m4a" but something I can actually listen to, with a song title in English, etc. Of course, I can then drag and drop this song from iTunes into my iPod. At first I thought this would be the solution: just do the same thing for all the songs.

But there are a couple problems with that, and I'd really appreciate any help getting around them. As I said, I have over 7,000 songs, roughly 70 GB of music. My computer's hard drive has about 4 GB left. So if I were to just open all the hidden files from my iPod into iTunes at once, it'd be a disaster: at best, I'd quickly get a message telling me my computer's hard drive couldn't hold any more. (And I'd be afraid I wouldn't be so lucky -- the hard drive could get filled up and paralyzed. This happened to someone I know.)

So, should I just copy the hidden files one folder at a time? I could do that, but that would mean opening up the songs from "F00," waiting for them to get copied to iTunes, then waiting for them to get copied to the iPod, then deleting those songs from iTunes and emptying the trash, then moving on to "F01" ... and repeating that whole thing 50 times. I'd like to avoid that if I can.

So my questions are:

(1) Is there an easier way to do this? I'd love to be able to just get it started, then sit back and let the computer handle it.

(2) I already feel kind of silly for how much of a minor ordeal this has turned into as a result of my backup method that I (mistakenly?) thought was so clever. Could someone please assure me that there's a way to follow through with this that won't mess things up even further?

(In case it's relevant, my external hard drive holds about 500 GB, I have a 160 GB iPod, and I'm using Mac OS 10.4.11.)

Mac Backup Nirvana with Encryption, Per-File, and Snapshotting

rcs — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:54:23 -0800

Mac Backup Filter: Help me achieve Nirvana with Time Machine, FileVault, and a snapshotting tool. Difficulty rating: FileVault and virtual machine images. I've been trying to get all my ducks in a row with backup from my Macbook. I have enough space to back things up to, and currently have TimeMachine and Carbon Copy Cloner set up.

I'm not tied to any of these pieces of software. For a TimeMachine replacement, I'd be fine with something that ran in the background and had an even moderately friendly interface for restoration. For snapshots and cloning, I'm willing to pay for SuperDuper if it makes any of this easier, or any other piece of software, for that matter. I'm open to things involve a significant degree of hackery to set up as long as they're transparent and mostly fool proof past that.

Problem 1: I'd love to use FileVault, but I really never log out. Is there any good way to get transparent encryption working for myself without changing my daily use patterns? My second concern with this is the fact that TimeMachine doesn't really work well in this situation, from what I've found, lacking the ability to restore individual files. I'm fine with unencrypted backups in this situation.

Problem 2: Unmounting the drives when I take the laptop away from the desk. Is there a method for only mounting the drive for use when TimeMachine's open? I'd prefer something that automatically mounted the drive when TimeMachine was running, and unmounted afterwards, and similarly for browsing backups for recovery. It's the same situation with Carbon Copy Cloner.

Problem 3: VMWare Images. Backing up big binary blobs doesn't strike me as the Best Practice way to do this. I know I can break the disk images up into discrete chunks, but even then it doesn't really solve the problem.

Problem 4: With two different backup schemes (per file, and snapshot) the processes sometimes like to run over each other and slow each other down. A Perfect Solution would avoid this.

Problem 5: The snapshot/clone looks like it's using rsync on the backend, which chews up way more time generating the file list over the drive than it does comparing files or actually backing up. Is there a way around this? I can't imagine that in the days of things like inotify the only way to get changed files is by checking every file.

Any even partial solutions to any of these problems is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

How can I backup my iPhone messages?

Biru — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 04:08:20 -0800

How can I back up message threads on my iPhone (3G, O2-UK) into a text file or PDF? An ideal solution would be that offered by Syphone though it does not appear to support the latest versions of iPhone software. I'm sure there must be a successor to this programme, though I'll be damned if I can find it.

Help, please?

RAID and backup system for Mac Pro?

shinynewnick — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:08:11 -0800

Best RAID / Backup system for HD video on a Mac Pro? I was in the process of building myself a nice little external RAID enclosure with four 1 TB drives, when I started digging into the articles and realizing that RAID isn't backup.

Now I have these 4 1 TB drives, a couple of 500 GB drives, 1 TB internal, and 640 GB system drive for my Mac Pro. So I'm looking for the best way to set up these drives in my workflow for producing HD video.

Here are my basic needs:

1. Reliable Daily backups - Daily backups of all my work. I'm still thinking of using the RAID esata box as a RAID1 setup, to prevent downtime if a drive goes down.

2. Long term backups - When a project is finished, moving the data off the working drive and onto two separate hard drives for storage. I'll buy additional 500 GB drives for this purpose as needed.

3. Speed isn't crucial, as I'm not working in uncompressed HD.

Time Machine seems to be a great built in system, and I'd like to take advantage of that. I'm also signing up for Carbonite for online backup of as much information as I can.

Any thoughts on the workflow and the best way to automate the system would be greatly appreciated.

Corporate backup is big and complicated.

gregr — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:58:33 -0800

I'm going to upgrade the corporate backup environment where I work in 2010, and I need help sorting through all of the backup hardware/software providers. I've had DataDomain, FalconStor, ExaGrid, and a bunch of other companies give presentations about their backup solutions, but they are all running together in my head. Does anyone have hands on experience or suggestions about which company to go with (your suggestion doesn't have to be one of the companies listed above)? Price is important, but I know this is going to be expensive. Details about the environment and the desired feature set inside. I would like the following things in the new backup environment:

Disk to Disk Backup

Deduplication

Site to Site Data Replication (probably replicate the small sites backups to two main sites then replicate the two main sites between each other.)

Easy Addition of More Storage

Easy to add Another Site

NO TAPES

Detailed information about our current environment:

We have a total of 6 sites spread across the USA. Three small sites each have a file server, a domain controller, a backup server, and and a tape library. The remaining three sites each have 20-80 servers. There are a mix of SQL servers, Exchange email servers, websites, domain controllers, etc. We use Symantec Backup Exec, and all of the tape hardware is LTO-3. All of the sites have VPN tunnels connecting back to the main sites. The three small sites have business cable internet, the two biggest sites have symmetric 10 megabit internet, and the third biggest site has 2x T1s.

Please no suggestions to use open source software/hardware unless I can get a support SLA of ~4 hours.

Smartest way to restore a mess of files to a newly formatted drive?

kitcat — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 08:29:39 -0800

I'm going to wipe my hard drive and reinstall Windows XP. But my files are in a huge mess and I'm scared I'm going to screw something up. This is my first time reformatting my hard drive on my 4 year old Dell laptop. I have my XP cd and I know how to find and reinstall the right drivers. But backing up and restoring my files to the new system has me nervous. I've pretty much decided to use Mozy, but can anyone tell me what the restore process looks like?

The thing is, there are all kinds of files on my laptop that are unfamiliar to me and they are strewn willy-nilly accross many folders. The folders do not have sensible names, either. These are files with code and scripts in them, audio files, image files, yada yada. The code files scare me especially - some I created myself and don't remember, but some seem to belong to open source applications and the like I downloaded as .rar files and that got scattered around.

Please help me figure out how to deal with this mess. Should I attempt to 'tidy up' before I backup the system (please don't scold me for not backing up sooner - I had been, but Mozy kept crashing my system) - or should I back everything up first and then work to restore only those files I think I need? Will Mozy allow me to 'look at' my files and choose the order in which to restore them? Will it let me sort everything by file type?

Any and all advice is deeply, deeply appreciated.

How to completely clear Apple Address Book in preparation for recovery?

odinsdream — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:22:22 -0800

Recovering Address Book data. Apple Address Book phantom entries keep returning, even after deleting the data files and prefs lists. Where are they coming from? How can I get the original data back? I'm trying to help someone recover their address book data after they upgraded from Tiger to Snow Leopard.

They started with around 200 address cards. After the Snow Leopard upgrade they have 20. These 20 don't seem to have anything in common with eachother.

Several online resources indicate that I could use the file:

~\Library\Application Support\Address Book\AddressBook.data.previous

...by deleting the AddressBook.data file, and renaming the above to sit in its place. I've sifted through the AddressBook.data.previous file with an editor. It's 1.9 MB, and appears to contain all of her 200 cards.

I haven't been able to get the replacement working, though, because of this oddity:

1. Close Mail, Address Book, iCal.
2. Delete the entire ~\Library\Application Support\Address Book folder, and delete all of the ~\Library\Preferences\com.apple.addressbook* files.
3. Re-open Address Book.

Result: Those 20 cards are back. The Address Book comes up empty first, then these cards magically appear. The Application Support\Address Book folder now contains data related to these cards, where before it didn't even exist.

MobileMe sync is disabled. There is no other Sync option in the Address Book preferences Accounts area. Where are these cards coming from?

I have a feeling that if I solve this part, I could probably get the recovery working, but I'm stumped.

Older Gmail Messages Into Thunderbird

davidstandaford — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:42:32 -0800

How do I backup my gmail account and get all of my older gmail messages into Thunderbird on Windows XP? I'm trying to backup gmail using Thunderbird and it's not downloading older messages. When I installed Thunderbird and set it up with my gmail account it downloaded messages going back to 6/22/2009 4:08 AM. I have no idea where Thunderbird got that date from.

I have emails much older than that and when I tell Thunderbird to get messages it only downloads the newer ones. How do I get Thunderbird to backup all of those older gmail messages onto my computer.

If there is any other information I can provide that would help I'll update in comments.

Switching to & consolidating verything on a new external HD

amillionbillion — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 11:38:39 -0800

I'm switching to a new external hard drive. How can I consolidate all my files onto it? My current external HD is a Sony bootleg I got in China. It's been solid but I'm nervous. I want to switch over to a 500GB WD Passport.

8 months ago, I cloned my internal HD with Carbon Copy Cloner onto a partition on the "Sony" and have never updated it. I also backed up all my media files onto a separate (not bootable) partition. I then deleted a lot of my files from my internal HD (which is only 60GB). Since then, I frequently move (not copy) new files from the internal to the external's backup partition to free up space.

In short, I haven't been as systematic as I should've been and am not sure anymore what files are on the external HD's backup partition and not on the clone, which are on the clone and not on the internal, which are on all 3, etc etc. It's a mess.

Is there some app/program (or relatively efficient process) that can recognize "the difference," help me merge and consolidate everything, and transfer it all onto my new drive? Ideally, it would all be on a new clone on the new drive (so that I can boot from it when I get a new computer), as well as on a separate new backup partition for easy access.

(With CCC, you can opt to add to your clone without deleting anything from it. However, even if I were to update the clone using my current internal HD, it would be missing a whole chunk from the past 8 months (the stuff I added just to the backup partition, then deleted without cloning). And I don't have enough internal HD space to add *everything* back on, then move it onto the new drive, and am too broke to expand my internal HD for now.)

Also clearly I have been going up the cloning and backup process all wrong to create such confusion, but am not sure how I should do it from now on.

Thoughts and suggestions? (I hope my question makes sense!)

PS - tangentially related: When I do get a new computer and boot from the clone, could I access all my old apps without needing the original registration/serial #s?

Sync 2 IMAP Servers?

4chrisd — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 07:21:40 -0800

How do I sync two IMAP folders? I currently use Gmail for all my e-mail (personal & work). I currently have about 4,000+ messages archived in Gmail and I'll continue to add 300-500 per month. I also have a IMAP account with my webhost and I was wondering if there was any type of application or script that would connect to the Gmail IMAP servers and backup/sync all of my mail so I know that in addition to being in Gmail's cloud....it is also on my IMAP server in case something happens. Thoughts?

Rsync to Merge Disk Images?

kristi — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 23:18:10 -0800

Should I use rsync (instead of rsnapshot) to pare down Mac disk image backups? I've used SuperDuper to make several disk image backups of a boot drive.

Let's say they're called backup-090107.dmg, backup-090114.dmg, backup-090121.dmg, and so on.

I want to merge all these into a single backup directory, RETAINING incremental backups. So if file-a.txt changed on Jan 16 2009 (between backup-090114 and backup-0090121), I'd end up with a copy of how it was on 090114 and also a copy of how it was on 090121.

I tried rdiff-backup but gave up on it due to insane slowness. (It takes SuperDuper 5-6 hours to back up 60-70 GB over USB2; rdiff-backup was taking about 16 hours to back up just the 7GB applications directory. Yikes.)

I've started looking at rsnapshot, but I don't think that's what I want for this initial merge ... although it might be what I want for any subsequent backups, once I've got the disk images merged.

So:

* am I correct in thinking that rsync is best for merging these dmgs?

* would the following commands do what I want to do - so I end up with a single copy of any file that hasn't changed, plus incremental backups of each file that HAS changed?

rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded --xattrs --exclude=/this/ --exclude=/that/ \
/Volumes/backup-090107 /Volumes/BackupDrive/big-old-merge-directory/backup-090107/

rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded --xattrs --exclude=/this/ --exclude=/that/ \
/Volumes/backup-090114 /Volumes/BackupDrive/big-old-merge-directory/backup-090114/

* should I switch to rsnapshot after merging, or continue using rsync? If I continue with rsync, would I use something like

rsync -a --delete --numeric-ids --relative --delete-excluded --xattrs --exclude=/this/ --exclude=/that/ \
/MyHardDrive /Volumes/BackupDrive/big-old-merge-directory/backup-todaysdate/

Extra bonus points for lists of directories you like to exclude, or pointers to pages that list appropriate OS X (10.4) directories to exclude. (I DO want to back up even big directories; I don't need to back up the unnecessary or dangerous - for example, I know most folks exclude .Spotlight-V100.)

Once I've merged the backups (and verified them, of course), I'll be deleting the disk images to free up space for future backups. (And I'm doing full, bootable backups to a different drive; this is just my attempt to get good incremental backups.)

Many, many thanks!