How to protect a Mac?
October 27, 2005 4:06 PM Subscribe
What are the best tools to protect a MacOS computer from disaster?
I am about to go and help out a kid who recently lost a hard drive's worth of digital video. The hard drive completely crashed and was unrecoverable. I am going to help him setup his computer and environment to better protect his data and his system from this type of thing in the future.
I have worked in IT for 10 years, and have a solid grasp of disaster preparedness. What I am unsure of, though, is what to recommend for a home installation that takes into account the quantity and size of the data involved, without being too complicated. I will talk about power protection, backups and things of that nature. But what I need to know is if you have a favorite tool or process that works on MacOS 10.4 that I should bring to the table for him and his family.
I am about to go and help out a kid who recently lost a hard drive's worth of digital video. The hard drive completely crashed and was unrecoverable. I am going to help him setup his computer and environment to better protect his data and his system from this type of thing in the future.
I have worked in IT for 10 years, and have a solid grasp of disaster preparedness. What I am unsure of, though, is what to recommend for a home installation that takes into account the quantity and size of the data involved, without being too complicated. I will talk about power protection, backups and things of that nature. But what I need to know is if you have a favorite tool or process that works on MacOS 10.4 that I should bring to the table for him and his family.
A friend who does similar things backs up everything to a linux file server running SATA RAID 1. It was put together for about the same cost as a good firewire drive.
posted by SpecialK at 4:16 PM on October 27, 2005
posted by SpecialK at 4:16 PM on October 27, 2005
... and she simpy automated the copying of files to the backup server every few hours with applescript.
posted by SpecialK at 4:16 PM on October 27, 2005
posted by SpecialK at 4:16 PM on October 27, 2005
1) DiskWarrior. Rebuilds disk directories instead of repairing them, which not only fixes directory corruption but also gives you about 80% of the benefit of a full defragment in a fraction of the time. Comes with a SMART monitor utility that will warn you when the drive is getting close to failing (for internal drives only, sadly).
2) Data Rescue II. Recovers files when the directory's kaput.
3) Retrospect. Takes a bit of configuration to get it set up properly, but once you have it makes backing up totally automatic. There are others that are easier to use but Retrospect is a true backup utility (i.e. it keeps old versions of your files), not just a volume mirror utility.
These (and the built-in Disk Utility) are what I rely on for all my Mac recovery needs.
posted by kindall at 4:17 PM on October 27, 2005
2) Data Rescue II. Recovers files when the directory's kaput.
3) Retrospect. Takes a bit of configuration to get it set up properly, but once you have it makes backing up totally automatic. There are others that are easier to use but Retrospect is a true backup utility (i.e. it keeps old versions of your files), not just a volume mirror utility.
These (and the built-in Disk Utility) are what I rely on for all my Mac recovery needs.
posted by kindall at 4:17 PM on October 27, 2005
You can save $100 and skip Retrospect - rsync is free and already installed, and rsnapshot is free and easy to install (it's just a Perl script) and will let you schedule incremental backups to an external drive or over ssh to any server on the Net.
posted by nicwolff at 4:28 PM on October 27, 2005
posted by nicwolff at 4:28 PM on October 27, 2005
apparently the rsync that ships with Tiger is not fully aware of the metadata fork that certain files use in HFS+. It looks like you may have to steer clear of using rsync until they get that fixed....
posted by bug138 at 7:36 AM on October 28, 2005
posted by bug138 at 7:36 AM on October 28, 2005
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by jaimev at 4:11 PM on October 27, 2005