Tag: backup

Drobo FS Lion Time Machine Fix

2012-01-07 rolfje 10 Comments

Many Drobo FS owners out there who upgraded to Lion were unpleasantly surprised by the fact that their Drobo no longer behaved like they used to. After months, drobo released new firmware, but it didn’t improve things all that much. With the new firmware, the Drobo FS:

is slow or entirely unresponsive, Time Machine backups don’t finish at all or take days
doesn’t show up in the Finder of Lion Macbook owners connecting through wifi
has a transfer speed of 20MB/s, even when connecting through GB Ethernet, regardless of OSX version (tested with Snow Leopard, Lion)

If you have one or more of the problems listed above, you will be pleased to hear that there is a “fix”, although it may not be what you were hoping for.

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Hardware

Replacing Dropbox with Spideroak

2011-07-03 rolfje 38 Comments

After lies about Dropbox Employees not being able to see your files, then proving that they do not do regression testing on their security, the latest change in terms of service really was the last drop. So I dropped dropbox.

I had become dependent on Dropbox to transfer files between my private and work machines, having my notes, configuration files and (encrypted thank god) password databases handy at all times. Searching around, there is really no other service like it. Although lots of products claim to have the same functionality, the “share this folder between all my machines” feature which dropbox proviced is really unsurpassed.

I had to find an alternative solution which would meet the following criterea:

has to be a single, native folder, instantly syncing with all other machines
has to be free or *really* cheap, minimum 2GB
has to use an encryption technology where no one else can ever read my files, not even the hosting party, not even at gunpoint
has to have client software for Windows, Mac and Linux
accessing data on my iPhone would be a nice bonus.

After some browsing around, there are two solutions that come close, one is Wuala, and the other is Spideroak.

For one additonal GB of storage for life, use my referal link to register at SpiderOak. Read the whole article to add another 5GB to that.

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Software

Move Time Machine data to a Drobo

2010-12-30 rolfje 20 Comments

If Santa treated you particularly well this season, or you have put some of your savings to good use, chances are that you have a brand-new Drobo looking at you right now. Meanwhile, your Mac is happily making Time Machine backups to that trusty old local USB disk. So you want to use that new Drobo for Time Machine backups, but don’t want to loose history? Here’s how (baby steps, no tools required, screenshots included):

Apple, Hardware

A Bigger Time Machine without Changing History

2008-09-07 rolfje 104 Comments

I had a 160GB drive holding my Time Machine backups. Because I wanted to backup external disks, and still wanted to be able to travel about a year back in time, I bought a 1TB USB disk. Stephen Foskett wrote a great article about how he migrated his TimeMachine backup to a larger disk, but it’s lengthy and misses one essential step.

I decided to give you the short version, this blog post describes how I migrated Time Machine to the new disk without losing any data in 11 easy steps.

Apple, Software

Clone Windows HD on Apple OSX machine

2008-06-06 rolfje 21 Comments

Last week, lightning struck at my parents apartment building (literaly). Other damages aside, my dad’s PC also died.

The guy at the PC repair shop warned my dad that “we may need to wipe the HD, do you have a backup”? Ofcourse, all data was backed up daily and “off-site” at my house so all important data was safe. But just in case, we wanted to make an exact disk image of the drive, so that we could easily restore it when the PC returns from the store

Apple, Microsoft, Software

File does not exist?

2008-04-22 rolfje No Comments

For those people who have had problems accessing their files today, I remind you of the very old saying:

“A file does not exist until it exists in two places”

Naturaly, this means on two different physical places, preferably miles apart.

Software

Time Machine to the Rescue

2008-02-21 rolfje 4 Comments

Hi, I just wanted to share with you that I actually recovered a mail item which I had written in Thunderbird for Windows with Time Machine. Yes, Apple’s Time Machine.

Apple, Software

Backup Guru? Give me a break

2007-12-11 rolfje 2 Comments

Today I listened to a podcast called “For Mac Eyes Only”, in which people were complaining about how Time Machine does not work “the way they want it to”. I think this is utter crap, and I will explain why.

Apple, Software

No Such Thing: Harddisk Warranty

2007-10-24 rolfje No Comments

A while ago the drives in my fileserver (PPC Mac Mini) began dying on me, one after one. The disks were somewhat old (approx. 4 years) so I replaced them with 2 new Maxtor 500GB USB drives, and restored all data from my backups. The server came up and looked and worked like it had never died, but now had more diskspace.

After a few months of trouble free operation, one of the Maxtor disks seemed to have died this morning. I had kept the receipt, so I thought I’d get the drive and bring it in for repairs, because after all, this is well within the warranty period. While disconnecting the drive, it occured to me that I could never bring that harddisk in for repairs, particularly if I was not able to access it.

Hardware

AFP breaks when messing with your Public folder!

2007-10-04 rolfje No Comments

Hi, just a quick reminder to myself and users of the AFP protocol (Apple File Protocol) who are wondering why it is not working. For some strange reason, if you start messing (deleting) the “Public” folder of any user which is on the system providing the AFP share, you will break the AFP protocol.

Apple, Software