Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with osx and backup

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?

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?

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!

How do I stop my external hard drives from changing disk IDs when I reboot on OS X?

triolus — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:08:06 -0800

How do I stop my external hard drives from changing disk IDs when I reboot on OS X? I have a simple rsync script that I just made for my OS X machine to backup data on my two main drives to two drives in an external enclosure. I wanted the script to mount and unmount the drives so that they wouldn't clutter my desktop and to keep them "hidden".

The problem is that the disk ID under /dev changes everytime I reboot. Sometimes the drive mounted at /Volumes/backup1 will be at /dev/disk3s3 and sometimes it will be at /dev/disk4s3. Other times it will be at /dev/disk2s3.

Is there anyway to keep the disk ID static, or to just mount by the directory name? I'm running 10.5.8, with the latest updates. My script uses the `diskutil`command to mount and unmount the drives. Oh, and AFAIK, Time Machine only works with one drive as a backup.

How secure is Time Machine backups?

Leech — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:07:57 -0800

How secure is Time Machine backups? I'm worried about security of the data stored by Time Machine. I'm worried about security of the data stored by Time Machine.

I have a WD My Passport external HD that I use with Time Machine for my complete backups.
But I'm worried if I lost the external HD or someone stole it.
Is the data accessible? Or it's encrypted in some way?

Is there a way to automatically encrypt it?

Because I travel a lot and I think it probably could be a big problem if it's accessible to anyone that connect it to a mac (because it's formatted to mac).

Thanks.

Baby got too much back

lukemeister — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:53:41 -0800

How can I consolidate all my pictures, music, pdf files, etc. from multiple drives? I have about 10 external drives containing photos and so forth. Different drives contain some duplicates, but the individual drives do not. Say I want to copy the files from DRIVE1, DRIVE2, etc. to UBERDRIVE, which has room for everything. My first thought was

cd /Volumes/DRIVE1; find . -name "*.jpg" -exec cp {} /Volumes/UBERDRIVE/Pictures/ \;

and then repeating the process for DRIVE2 and so on.

I tried this for DRIVE1, and it seems to be really slow. (It's taken 10 hours thus far to find 100,000 jpgs on a new MacBook Pro.) Also, I think my current procedure will overwrite files with the same name, even if they're different files.

Does anyone have a better approach? Thanks!

I'm running Leopard, but I also have machines running Vista, XP, and Fedora 10.

Back my Mac up online

c:\awesome — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 10:46:37 -0800

What's the best software for automated online backups for OSX? I have a Dreamhost account with unlimited storage and transfer, and I'd like to use that as a place to remotely backup the data on my Macbook Pro (mostly photos from iPhoto). MobileMe is a ripoff.

You'd think there'd be a nice piece of software that runs in the background and allows me to set a few directories to be synced, and any additions to those folders are automatically reflected online. True? Something that uses SSH or FTP, maybe?

I know about rsync but I'm stupid and I want a GUI.

What are my options?

How do I protect my backup drive?

truth1ness — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:47:12 -0800

How do I secure my backup hard drive that I copy my computer's content onto? I use SuperDuper on my Mac and copy my whole bootable disk image to a backup drive connected to my computer. Now, my computer is pretty well protected, I have passwords to get into any account and on my screensaver. When logged in as one user, you can't access files in another user's folder.
However, it seems like the weak spot in my security is the hard drive that I back up to. When I access the drive and look at the files, I'm able to get into every folder and see everything and never have to access a password. Someone could take my hard drive and have all my information.
So how to I protect my backup hard drive? Is there a way to password protect its contents, encrypt it somehow, etc? Is it something I would do in SuperDuper or do I need another program? Would turning on Mac's built in FileVault encryption on my computer protect me (I've never used it so I'm not sure how it works)?

Mac server backup software

jmd82 — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 07:36:12 -0800

Getting some Mac servers and looking for suggestions on backup software. I'm completely new to the Mac scene, but we're converting from a Windows to Mac environment which will eventually host 700 or so clients and am getting some Mac OSX servers we'll be using as file & print server, iCal, wiki, etc, initially, but host more applications as this project grows.

The problem is that from what I've gathered, Retrospect is one of the few cheaper enterprise Mac solutions (as in under $2000 per edu license), but apparently hasn't been updated in quite some time and is mainly used for just data backup, not SQL/db/user profiles/system state/etc applications like Backup Exec or True Image.

So, any suggestions for backup software on Mac servers?

(I've also read previous mac backup questions, and they were all more along the line of personal backup data or SOHOs, whereas I'm looking more for disaster recovery capability to restore everything in one click, which again, sounds like Retrospect isn't ideal for).

MacFilter: Upgraded my hard drive using SuperDuper to clone, but Time Machine backed up the entire drive after the swap. How to prevent this?

kenliu — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:47:38 -0800

MacFilter: Upgraded my hard drive using SuperDuper to clone, but Time Machine backed up the entire drive after the swap. How to prevent this? I used SuperDuper to clone my internal laptop hard disk onto a larger hard disk in an external enclosure. The cloning process went fine, and I swapped the internal drive with the cloned one. Works great.

Unfortunately, next time I ran Time Machine, it backed up the entire contents of the freshly cloned drive onto the TM drive, thus eating up ~80GB of my TM drive. Now I need to replace my internal drive again (the replacement was too power hungry) but don't want TM to eat up another 80 GB.

Any way to prevent Time Machine from trying to back up the cloned drive?

OS X Time Machine backup with USB disc as one source

superfurry — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 03:45:40 -0800

OS X Backup Filter. I use a mac mini with it's limited had disc space, so also use an external USB drive to store big stuff like my iTunes Library, Lightroom Catalog, and Downloads. I need automatic backup help. I also have a second USB disc attached for backups, but since Time Machine can't use a USB disc as a source, I can only use Time Machine as a method of backing up what's on my internal hard disc on the mini, and I need to do all backups of my external disc manually. As you can imagine, since it's manual I very rarely do it but at the same time the data on the external drive is much more sensitive. So I need a way to automatically backup everything from both internal and external discs, to another external disc. Any ideas ?

Requirements:
Needs to be automated/provide scheduled backup capability
Can backup both internal and external USB/FireWire disc sources to external USB/FireWire destination.
A Time machine hack/plugin etc would be preferable
Free would be preferable, though I would be willing to pay for a reliable easy to use app

Help Me Secure My External Drive

ecab — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 12:40:27 -0800

Is there a way to make my external hard drive only accessible to me without too seriously decreasing the ease of use when I am using it? This might be a basic question, but I'm not too brilliant with this sort of thing.

I have an external firewire drive connected to a MacBook Pro running OS X Leopard. I've been using Time Machine to backup the drive regularly and I also store other random stuff on the external. I like this functionality, but I don't like the fact that all of my data will show up to anyone who plugs in my drive can see all my data. What are my options for making the data only available to me while still being able to use the drive essentially as I have been before.

Help me configure the ultimate Mac OSX backup solution.

drgonzo2k2 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 19:04:57 -0800

Help me configure the ultimate Mac OSX backup solution! I just received two very nice external firewire hard drives for Christmas. My plan is to place my music collection on one drive and use the other drive to have a perfect copy of all my music in case the original fails. As I add to my collection every couple of days or so, I'd really like to automate this to create regular backups. My plan was to have both drives connected and powered on, with the backup drive unmounted. The OS would mount it when needed to do the backup and then unmount it again when it was finished. I thought I could accomplish this with SuperDuper! and its scheduling function, and for the most part it works. The only problem is when my wife logs in the system mounts the backup drive. Then spotlight wants to index it, and if I log in it seems to get stuck in this weird phase of mounting and unmounting.

If anyone could tell me step-by-step how to make this work and have the drive ONLY be mounted when it is needed to perform a backup, I would greatly appreciate it. If I can get this to work I'd like to do the same thing with my system drive and a 3rd firewire drive that I have.

best backup drive option for Leopard?

lackutrol — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:10:48 -0800

Best backup drive for Leopard, and options for multiple computers? I've ordered Leopard, I'd like to back up both my Macbook and my iMac G5 before I install, and I think I might actually keep my computers backed up once I have Time Machine. What's the best value on an external drive that can handle all these things? Also, could I have one partitioned drive that I shuttle between computers and would that be a somewhat bad or terrible idea?

I need to backup a website to DVD.

asuh — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 19:06:46 -0800

What's the best software and method for completely backing up a website to DVD? I need to archive a website completely to DVD. My dad's cousin passed away and his website is still online so his widow wants a complete backup of his writings and comments.

I have tested software for both Windows and OS X including SurfOffline and Blue Crab but there are usually invalid links, missing images or no @import css files. Once I find the right software, I want to burn the backed up website to DVD and have a cross platform autorun for the index file (so that you don't have to open up Finder or Explorer to find it).

What solutions are there for offline website backups and cross platform dvd backups?

I'm having a recurring problem backing up my mac.

kdern — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 05:38:54 -0800

I'm having a recurring problem backing up my mac. One specific file seems to be causing the problem, but I can't find it anywhere on my mac. Help? I use SuperDuper to back up regularly to an external hard drive. I often get an "input/output error" from a specific file on my mac (diff each time), which I easily fix by just deleting the offending file from my mac, assuming the file is corrupted). This usually works fine for me.

But now I'm getting errors on this file:

/usr/lib/./libncurses.5.4.dylib

Which I can't find anywhere on my mac OR on my external HD.

I recently did an "archive and reinstall" of OSX 10.4.8, and then updated to 10.4.10. I tried erasing the external HD and doing a fresh backup, but today I got this error:

| 07:26:36 AM | Info | /bin
| 07:26:36 AM | Info | /usr
| 07:27:46 AM | Info | WARNING: Caught I/O exception(5): Input/output error
| 07:27:46 AM | Info | WARNING: Source: /usr/lib/libncurses.5.4.dylib, lstat(): 0
| 07:27:46 AM | Info | WARNING: Target: /Volumes/Portable Hard Drive/usr/lib/libncurses.5.4.dylib, lstat(): 0
| 07:27:46 AM | Info | Attempting to copy file using copyfile().
| 07:28:27 AM | Info | Attempting to copy file using ditto.
| 07:29:09 AM | Error | ditto: /usr/lib/./libncurses.5.4.dylib: Input/output error
| 07:29:09 AM | Error | SDCopy: Failed to recover from copy error for file /usr/lib/libncurses.5.4.dylib: Operation not supported
| 07:29:09 AM | Error | ****FAILED****: result=256 errno=22 (Unknown error: 0)

Help? What is this file, and how can I remove it from my mac?

Backing up Mac niternal drive containing BootCamp partition

jaimev — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 09:32:25 -0800

Best way to backup an internal drive of a MacBook, containing a Boot Camp partition, to an external drive? Internal drive is 160Gb. External is 250Gb disk with Firewire interface. Boot Camp partition was formatted as a 32GB FAT32 running XP. I was planning to use SuperDuper to duplicate the OS X partition into the external drive. Then boot from the external drive, and use Disk Utility to save the entire FAT32 partition onto a .dmg file on the external drive. Will this work? Is there a better way?

or maybe that one with the fox, goose, and grain.

bartleby — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 11:36:17 -0800

Please help me with a Hard Drive "Tower of Hanoi" puzzle. I have to move some stuff around on drives & partitions, and I may be confusing myself & making it seem more complicated.
Somebody set me straight or give me a best practice, please. Super-smarties can skip the details and go straight to the ">>>" part below, answer it in one step, and show off. :P

I have a LaCie 160 GB external HD split into two equal-sized ~80GB partitions.
There is a bootable OSX 10.3 clone (used CarbonCopyCloner) of an old system taking up one half (pre-Tiger-transition backup, allows me to rarely run some old OS9 stuff). The other half is overflow file storage - photo albums, document scans,torrented video files, etc. that take up only about a quarter of the space.

I have it connected to an 80GB OSX 10.4 PPC Mini (via the Mini's single FireWire 400 jack) that's my current un-backed-up system.
I would like to repartition the 160 GB external drive as a single partition, bootable clone of my Mini to back up to, incorporating the overflow files as well, with some free space left for more. I love the idea, and have used it to save myself before when HDs have gone bad, of backing up to a bootable clone. HD goes bad? Switch your startup disk to the clone and you're back up with no other transition worries. Problem is, I can't transfer that clone file by file from one HD to another - it has to go as one big piece, no?

But I'd also like to keep a copy of the 10.3 clone around as well, because.... that's the kind of person I am. I'll just buy, say, a SmartDisk 80 GB FW400 external drive and keep it in a drawer unless/until I need it. I don't need to buy a FireWire hub just for this project (or do I?), or to keep the several external drives connected at all times.

Question is, how do I copy the 10.3 Panther clone from one external drive to another - especially since my Mini only has one FireWire 400 port?

Let's say that I can just back up the overflow files on the LaCie to DVD until the larger moves are done and get one 80GB blank partition on the Lacie HD.

>>>Which gives me a starting position of:

1)LaCie
80GB Panther clone
80GB Free (blank)

2)Mini
80GB Tiger system

3)SmartDisk
80GB Free (blank)

HELP ME PLEASE get to my desired end point of:

1)LaCie
160GB Tiger Clone (+overflow files+free space for more)

2)Mini
80 GB Tiger System

3)SmartDisk
80 GB Panther clone<<<

The Lacie is a triple-interface model, so could I connect the Lacie to the Mini via USB, and then connect the SmartDisk to the Lacie via FireWire, and then instruct it (how?) to move the Panther clone from one drive to another?

Or am I going to have to move my Tiger OS from the Mini to the open partition on the LaCie, then move the Panther clone to the Mini, in order to move it again to the SmartDisk? Then clear the Panther off the Mini, put Tiger back on, repartition the LaCie, and proceed from there?

I'm sure I'm missing an/the easy step here.
Please hope me.

Mac Backup sucks, but does it work?

pzarquon — Fri, 12 May 2006 00:37:16 -0800

Let it be known, first, that I devoured past posts on Macs and backup tools, and see a lot of things I want to try. However, I used Apple's own Mac Backup 3 application (a .Mac tool) prior to learning here that it sucks. So, for those who have also similarly (if inexplicably) used Mac Backup, I have a question. How do I know if it worked? I started Mac Backup. I created a custom plan so I could do a one-time full backup of a folder on my Mac filled with 10,000+ photos to DVDs. I said "Make backup now." It did its little dance, and said it would take 37 or something CDs, or 4 DVDs. Then, I followed the instructions as it burned the first one, told me to label it, burned the second one, told me to label it, and so on.

But after the third DVD, it reported it was done with that disc (as before), but didn't ask for that fourth disc. And the history simply showed "backup completed successfully." So, did it? Did it just overestimate that it needed four DVDs? Or did I somehow skip it or break something? Immediately after using Backup, my Mac didn't recognize a blank DVD I inserted until after a few tries.

I would've thought that putting one of the burned DVDs into my Mac would helpfully say, "Disc 1 of 3" or something. But there's simply "Disc 1." So I can't tell how many DVDs Backup thinks the plan includes.

Any ideas? Besides, "Don't use Mac Backup"? I'll probably use another utility or go with external Firewire drives, ultimately, but I want to know if these DVDs I made are any good! Thanks in advance.

How to partition an external hard drive for use with OS X and Windows, and booting OS X too?

evariste — Fri, 12 May 2006 00:10:35 -0800

I need help using my external USB hard drive with Mac OS X, and there's more inside. You see, I have this 200GB USB hard drive, currently formatted as a single FAT32 partition. I'd been using it with my Windows XP desktop. Now I have a MacBook Pro and I need help figuring this out. The MacBook is named Olivia and the Windows machine is named Snowball. The FAT32 volume is named Torquemada.

Is there some partitioning scheme that will let me have Torquemada in "GUID partition table" mode* so I can have a bootable OS X image on 80 GB of it, and at the same time have the other 120 GB be FAT32, and therefore useful for moving files between Olivia and Snowball? Or does the one preclude coexistence with the other?

If I have my OS X install DVDs, and I have a Torquemada formatted to boot OS X, how do I actually get a bootable OS X on there? Once that's in place, say I wanted to boot Olivia off Torquemada instead of her internal drive, what key do I hold down to tell her so?

*whatever that means.

How to go from "this_" to "this" ?

Robot Johnny — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 08:59:45 -0800

Batch unzipping and file renaming on UNIX or OS X? All_ my_ files_ look_ like_ this!_.gz I recently lost all files on one of my domains, but was able to recover everything from my server's backup. However, all the files now have an underscore appended to the end of the filename (index.html is now index.html_, for example). All the files and all the folders are like this.

And some of them are gzipped, so some files are now filename.cgi_.gz.

What's the quickest, easiest way to unzip everything and remove the _ from the end of the files, including those within nested folders? Is there a shell command I can use? (or a way to do this using Automator on OS X if I copy everything from my server to my computer?)

Why are my daily scripts running more than daily?

KirkJobSluder — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 21:49:05 -0800

Why are my daily scripts on OS X running more than daily? Being the paranoid sort, I have an rsync backup script that should run every night under OS X Tiger, but there are some problems I've found with every method I've tried.

cron: Does not work if the macintosh is sleeping, but would be my preferred method for scheduling jobs in the early morning hour when I'm sleeping.

launchd: Runs on it's own clock. As far as I can tell, scheduling a task for 3:15am is meaningless if the computer sleeps.

anacron: runs the script just after midnight and every time I wake up the system. Since my purpose in waking up the system is to get some work done, this is obviously less than desirable.

At this point, I suspect my best option is to never put the system to sleep and go back to cron. Or setup a wakeup call for my system in the power preferences just before the cron job is scheduled.

Second question: will excluding a backup directory in spotlight preferences prevent the automatic mdimport indexing of that directory every time the backup script runs?

Best basic strategy for 25-gig backup?

cgt — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 06:16:35 -0800

I'm looking for a basic, personal Mac-based backup plan. I've got 25 gigs of data - files and media - on my Mac that I want to keep backed up, every week at least. I've used .Mac's Backup program, but that's too slow for this size of backup (and doesn't seem to have that capacity). Currently I manage to burn DVDs; but only every few months, since it takes a really long time, and the backup stretches over five or six disks.

Finally, I know the solution a lot of people use is simply to get an external hard drive. My concern there is that it's not holding much of a history - if the hard drive fails, all my backup data is gone. Contrasted to the DVDs - if one DVD fails, I still have the others (and the disks from backups before that).

Should I then get multiple hard drives and rotate between them? Is that what Mac users "in the know" use for their personal backups?

Finally, whatever the solution - is there software that would easily allow me to designate which files/folders should be on each backup, and which shouldn't?

Help me backup and sync my files!

rossination — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 21:02:37 -0800

How can I backup and sync files on my mac? I have an iBook running OSX Tiger, a 256mb thumb drive, and a bit of space on the university servers that I can FTP files to. I'd like to be able to have all the things (documents, mainly) in one folder be mirrored to the other two areas; in other words, if I make a new file in "AUT05->POLS212->Locke" on my mac, I'd like that same file to then show up on the thumb drive (when I plug it in, of course), and on the server. This doesn't need to be automatic, but it'd be nice if it could happen with the simple press of a button.

Fetch lets me sort of "mirror" the files to the server, but this doesn't solve the problem of the thumb drive. The dotmac backup and sync options look nice, but I don't need space on .mac, and I don't want to pay a hundred bucks a year for it. Can't this be had for free/cheap?

what is the best, most cost-effective way to backup multiple hard drives?

thewiseacre — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 05:34:53 -0800

I have three 160 gig hard drives full of Apple Lossless music that I've ripped from my CDs. I want to keep these drives backed up, obviously. Is the most cost effective route to just buy a 500 gig (or ideally, one TB) drive for this purpose? Are there enclosures that hold multiple hard drives that would be appropriate (and cost effective) for this use? With the deals out there, it seems cheaper to buy more 160s than a 500 gig. I'm on a Mac G5.