Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Apple Saves The Day!

This is topic Apple Saves The Day! in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 10-02-2003, 01:30 PM:

I recently had to erase the hard drive in my 14" iBook to install the OS (10.2) afresh. I did a backup of my Documents folder and all of my email but forgot to save my Address Book and my iPhoto collection.

I signed up for a .Mac account which has a 100MB iDisk and a Backup program. This was so long ago that I forgot I had that set up; a friend had to remind me. My Address Book had been saved to the iDisk by the Backup program.

My iCal calendars (and also the Address Book and web browser preferences) had been saved to my iDisk (and all of my other Mac computers) by an application called iSync. All I had to do was launch iSync and download them from the iDisk.

Sadly, my entire iPhoto collection could not fit on the 100MB iDisk so a lot of photos are lost. On the brighter side, I had emailed copies to friends and was able to partially reconstruct the photo albums by going through my Sent Mail folder.

This is wonderful!

And now there's a Beta of Backup 2.0 available for download and this allows you to use a local hard drive as a backup target. I have a little external FireWire drive devoted to this now. A copy of my entire drive (minus the OS) gets saved on a recurring schedule (Daily, in my case). The backup occurs in the background and it seems that only the files that have been changed will be updated on subsequent passes.

Whatever computer you are using -- Backups are key! [thumbsup]

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 10-03-2003, 01:13 AM:

You can make a computer out of an apple?
I've seen those science projects where you can make a battery out of a potato.

Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 10-03-2003, 03:44 PM:

HEY! I made a post in here and it vanished! Wher'd it go??

Anyway, it was something to the effect of Apple Rocks or somesuch.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 10-03-2003, 03:46 PM:

quote:
Whatever computer you are using -- Backups are key!

A little bit of brain also helps.

Posted by William Hooper (Member # 71) on 10-06-2003, 02:29 AM:

Damn, Michael must be able to find *no* beer that he can imbibe over here.

Posted by Nicholas Roznovsky (Member # 861) on 10-06-2003, 02:58 PM:

iBook, iPhoto, iDisk, iCal, iSync - and then Backup 2.0?

Why not iBackup 2.0? That would be iFantastic, or at least more iConsistent.

It's nice that Apple provides such options (or iOptions) given the fact that you can't just go in and slap another hard drive into your rig for backup like PC folks have been doing for years.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 10-06-2003, 06:28 PM:

quote:
Nick wrote:
given the fact that you can't just go in and slap another hard drive into your rig for backup like PC folks have been doing for years.

Ummm, yes you can. You can have up to 4 internal drives (it comes complete with 2 ATA buses built in). The newer G5's only have one ATA bus so you can only have 2 drives, but you can always add a few external firewire drives as well. I have added drives to my last 3 Macs (a G3 six or seven years ago, a G4 three to four years ago and now a dual G4). The drives are tremendously easy to install, and they take about 30 seconds to a minute to format for Mac use. Easy!

The Mac also has a utility where you can back up to 15GB worth of data onto a MiniDV tape using any camcorder with a firewire connection (even Digital8).

Posted by Nicholas Roznovsky (Member # 861) on 10-07-2003, 12:34 AM:

My apologies - I admittedly stopped looking at Macs quite a few years ago. Plus, I try to stay a good decade behind the times in general. Then there's my policy of only stating an opinion when I have no factual basis to support it. I may have to rethink all of those positions in the future.

It's good to see that Apple finally let go of their need to make computers that couldn't be customized or optimized in any way whatsoever. Part of me though still longs for the simple appeal of playing monochromatic "Oregon Trail" on the ancient Apple II-Cs we had in the computer labs at school.

That utility allowing data to be saved to Mini-DV tapes sounds pretty cool. (I hope it's called iTape or something like that.) My first real PC clone had a wonky tape drive that worked intermittently. I'm sure the firewire transfer works a lot better.

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 10-07-2003, 01:01 AM:

I want a bumper sticker that says

iThink therefore iAm

Posted by Nicholas Roznovsky (Member # 861) on 10-07-2003, 01:09 AM:

I'm waiting for iGlasses - the peripheral that allows you to store data in liquid form.

Of course, it might cause some problems - "I think I drank my term paper and saved the beer." [Big Grin]