Macintosh Upgrade to OS X Leopard: Great Backups

This week I upgraded my MacBook to Apple's newest operating system, called Leopard. It was a typical Apple experience: it just worked. Everything proceeded as expected. I'll upgrade my desktop Mac when I return home in another week and a half.

Much has been written on various web sites about the new improvements in Leopard, so I won't repeat them all here. If you are interested in the new features, look at http://www.apple.com.

There is one new feature, however, that all genealogists should notice. It is the automatic backup software, called the Time Machine.

Many people need automated backup software, but no one needs it more than genealogists. All computer systems will fail someday, even Macs. Having current backups becomes very important when your computer melts down. Did you spend hundreds of hours entering all your data, family stories, research notes, and more? Are you prepared for a loss of your computer's hard drive? All your hours of labor could disappear in a second or two.

Of course, the most common computer failure is human error. How many times have you accidentally deleted a file, only to need it again later? With Apple's Time Machine, you can travel back in time and retrieve the file. You can even select which version you want. For instance, if you update a file every day by adding new data and deleting some old data, you can later travel back and retrieve the file as it existed yesterday, three days ago, two weeks ago, or two months ago. Assuming that Time Machine was installed and operating at the time of deletion, with Leopard you can retrieve data that you deleted a long time ago.

After upgrading to Leopard, you first connect a USB or Firewire external disk to your computer and then click on "Use as Backup Disk" in the pop-up screen that soon appears. That's all you need to do; the Time Machine will start backing up your files. To be sure, there are a number of preferences you can change, should you wish to do so. You can specify which files or folders you don't want to back up. However, the standard defaults will work for most people. All backups are made automatically, once every hour, as long as the computer is turned on. All backup data is stored on the external hard drive.

If you later lose a file or an entire hard drive, you can use Time Machine to recover everything back to a previous point in time.

Time Machine is a great backup solution, although not perfect. No single backup solution solves all problems. For instance, with Apple's Time Machine, the backups are kept in an external hard drive that is physically close to the computer. The backups produced by Time Machine will be useless if a major disaster strikes and destroys the building and all the contents in the building. Such disasters would include fires, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and more. As always, you need at least two sets of backups with one set stored off-site some distance away.

Actually, for any computer system, I generally recommend no less than THREE sets of backups. Apple's Time Machine is an excellent first choice, with backup data stored near the computer for convenience. For a second set of backups, I would select Mozy or any other automated backup system that sends the backup data across the Internet and stores it in some distant server. That solves the problems of local disasters.

My third set of backups are smaller; I only copy critical word processing and other files to a CD or DVD disk about once a month and then take them to the office, storing them in a desk drawer.

Time Machine is great, and I suggest that all Mac users start using it. However, keep in mind that it is a partial solution, not all-encompassing.

It's ten o'clock; do you know where your data is?

Comments

[Computer Science Student]

Dick,

Unfortunately, Apple's Leopard is seriously flawed.

People using Leopard are losing data!
The web is full with complaints about Mac OS Leopard destroying data on copy....
...and Apple still has not fixed this major bug.

[theKiwi]

Actually it's not a loss of data on Copy, but rather a potential loss of data on a Move that I have read about in several places.

As I understand the situation you have to be doing a Move (NOT a copy) and have the target disappear (unplug a USB or FireWire drive, or lose a network connection) during the Move - then you find that the data is neither on the origin or the destination. See

http://www.macintouch.com/leopard/movebug.html

for example.

I don't know how common this is in general useage - in 20 years of Macintosh use I don't think I have ever Moved files from one volume to another - I think I always copy them, then if necessary afterwards delete them from the source.

Roger

[vaporland]

Computer Science Student is parroting the anti-Apple bloggers. For the majority of Leopard users, there have been few problems.

Compare Leopard with Vista, which took seven years to release and is still causing problems for the majority of users. I use Vista at work and it has problems with the Microsoft Sharepoint server we use for document storage. No word from MS when their product will "just work" with their other product.

My Mac Book Pro runs Leopard and XP flawlessly...

[Big Apple]

Sigh. Vaporland is trying to abuse Apple's bug to slam Vista?
Vaproland, this is not about Vista.
Nor is everyone telling the truth about Leopard some "anti-Apple blogger". Get real.

The blog is about Leopard as an upgrade for Mac users.
Unfortunately, CS student and the Kiwi are right. Leopard has a very serious bug.
A bug so simple and so serious that you must wonder how well the rest of Leopard has been tested.
It is certainly wise to avoid Leopard until this has been fixed.

[theKiwi]

>It is certainly wise to avoid Leopard until this has been fixed.

It is certainly wise to avoid MOVING files from one volume to another using Mac OS X 10.5 until this is fixed, but I'm sure the vast majority of users just use the Apple default which is to COPY files from one volume to another which is not subject to this bug.

If you don't MOVE files (as opposed to COPY files) from volume to volume this bug is not a good reason to avoid Leopard.

[Tim]

In 14 years of using Macs, I have never "moved" anything (was it even possible prior to Leopard?). I copy the files to the second volume, check to make sure the files are on the second volume and usable, then delete the files from the originating volume. That is the only safe way to do it.

Moving files rather than copying them is dangerous to begin with. This "bug" simply demonstrates the folly of using that method at all. And why would anyone unplug the drive they are moving files to, while they are moving the files? I haven't investigated Leopard, but this doesn't sound like a real "serious flaw" when there is no reason to ever be doing what you would have to be doing in order to experience these problems.

My computer is old and can't handle Leopard, but I can't see a bug that I would likely never encounter as a reason not to upgrade if I could.

[Dick Eastman]

The so-called "flaw" is a joke. Macintosh is no more buggy than any other operating system, less buggy than one operating system I could mention. I am sure all operating systems have a few bugs and the latest Mac release is no different than the others. However, the various message boards are now showing that Macintosh's latest version has no major problems. Just like Microsoft and the various Linux vendors, Apple certainly will be releasing various bug fixes from time to time.

For a list of the significant identified bugs or problems in the new Macintosh release, look at http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2007/10/28/peer_review_leo_1.html

You will note that none of them are major problems.

- Dick Eastman

[theKiwi]

>In 14 years of using Macs, I have never "moved" anything (was it even possible prior to Leopard?).

Yes it's been possible for a while, or even a long time - possibly forever? (I don't know though).

To do this you hold down the Command key while dragging a file from one volume to another.

I guess it's kind of analogous, but the opposite of holding down the Option key while dragging a file from one place to another on the same volume to make a copy of it in the target.

Roger

[theKiwi]

This bug, and a number of others are listed as fixed in Mac OS X 10.5.1 which was released yesterday.

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx1051update.html

And also yesterday, or was it the day before, Mac OS X 10.4.11 was released, which includes a lot of fixes, and Safari 3

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411comboupdateppc.html

for PPC Macs, or for Intel Macs

http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx10411updateintel.html

Cheers

Roger

[Peter]

It's too bad that the Mac/PC rant has turned up here. Millions of users are happy with their PCs and tens of thousands of users are happy with their Macs. So what is the problem? Each has its problems (yes they do) for some users.

I think Leopard is just supporting lazy users with the "time machine" gimmick. Backups should be done anyway. You could if you want, back up various versions of documents (as XP and Vista do when tracking is turned on) instead of depending on the Time Machine.

So now, Leopard runs on Intel and will run Windows inside or separately. For those of you with the technical geek inclination, you can get Windows to run various Mac OS versions with a bit of hacking.

Apple is a hardware company and makes their money from equipment (Macs, iPods, etc) not their OS. But you need their OS to control their equipment. I think their OS deliberately contains code to prevent the OS from running on an Intel PC.

So what? I use what I like. Happens to be a MS compatible machine which I built five years ago. Use your Mac in peace and happiness. It is not the machine you use, it is the work you do on it. Get on with genealogy. Peace.