http://www.tidbits.com/ Public confession time—a part of Adam’s backup strategy wasn’t fully thought out, and the end result was a situation that caused him to lose photos imported into iPhoto for two months. Read on for the gory details and for how to avoid your own clone wars. en-us Copyright 2010 TidBITS Publishing Inc. Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:13:15 PST Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:13:15 PST editors@tidbits.com (TidBITS Editors) editors@tidbits.com (TidBITS Editors) http://www.tidbits.com/images/tb_logo_152x55.png http://www.tidbits.com/ 55 152 TidBITS badge http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_7011 Thu, 30 Dec 2010 09:13:15 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_7011
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060930150059172]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6960 Wed, 15 Dec 2010 14:20:56 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6960 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6959 Wed, 15 Dec 2010 14:06:44 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6959 I can totally support the modus of using a disconnectable external harddrive. I keep one Carbon Copy clone on a Freecom drive and a Time Machine backup on another drive in our weekend home. CCC + Time Machine is a very sensible double backup strategy.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6955 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:44:33 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6955 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6952 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 09:47:55 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6952 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6951 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 09:18:43 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6951
In the end you get what ask for. If you want a reliable clone, don't fiddle (i.e, increment, etc.) with it. If you want to fiddle, make sure you use another backup method and another backup volume in addition.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6950 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:12:44 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6950 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6949 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:08:07 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6949 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6948 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:01:38 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6948
nohup /bin/bash -c "sleep 30; diskutil unmount \"$4\"" &

seems a bit cryptic. Does this command indirectly always refer to the volume that SuperDuper has just backed up, or does it have to be changed in some manner for other peoples' backups?]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6947 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:01:36 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6947 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6946 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 07:29:59 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6946
Incremental backups are indeed something DU doesn't do, but CCC and SD offer. But why would you want to do that? Think about it. A clone is an exact bit-by-bit copy. By its very definition you do not want to modify it through an incremental procedure.

Backups can be incremental (like Time Machine). But cloning should never be incremental. The extra 'functionality' offered by CCC and SD are the very cause of much of the trouble these tools have given people.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6943 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 06:19:50 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6943
The problem with a RAID 1 mirror, in comparison with a duplicate made on a schedule, is that any mistakes or logical corruption are immediately and automatically transferred to the mirror, rendering it useless as a backup. RAID is great for protecting against physical damage to the source drive, so it too can be part of a backup strategy, but isn't a backup on its own because it's so easily corrupted with bad information from the source.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6942 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 06:16:43 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6942 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6941 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 06:13:53 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6941 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6940 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 05:17:11 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6940 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6939 Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:26:04 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6939
Instead, people could opt to use Apple's built-in and rock stable cloning tool that comes with every OS X installation. It does the same (minus incremental, which you don't want on a clone anyway), but it does it reliably and for free. Thanks to block copies it's also much faster than rip-off hackware like CCC or SD.

/Applications/Utilities/DiskUtility > Restore

(select 'erase destination' to make the clone bootable)]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6928 Mon, 13 Dec 2010 15:29:16 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6928 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6573 Sat, 30 Oct 2010 03:48:37 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6573 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6566 Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:52:57 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6566
However, I was presented with it at some point, and I selected it, and once I did that, iPhoto remembered it in the com.apple.iPhoto.plist file, so regardless of whether DoppleZeus was in the Privacy list or not (and even after I deleted the Spotlight index on the volume manually just to be sure), iPhoto remembered that I had once selected it and made it available thereafter.

All of these capabilities make sense, but they can combine to undesirable behavior.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6565 Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:17:35 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6565 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6555 Thu, 28 Oct 2010 05:31:26 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6555 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6554 Thu, 28 Oct 2010 05:23:11 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6554
You might want to try to go into iTunes, and restore your iPhone from a previous backup (I think located somewhere in ~/library/iTunes or something). You might be surprised to find that your photos are still there in THOSE serial backups, even though you erased the pics from the iPhone every time you imported into iPhoto.

This should work unless 1) you cancel or prevent backups of your iPhone whenever it is connected or 2) you also have THAT library somehow on your "backup" drive.]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6551 Wed, 27 Oct 2010 16:42:11 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6551
To protect against easy mistakes (deletion of a file I should have kept, etc.), I have TimeMachine automatically backing up to a Drobo box -- but my absolute last-ditch defense is a pair of 2 TByte external drives. One's always in a desk drawer at work, the other one's in transit.

When one's at home, I connect it at bedtime and start up "Super Duper" to clone my iMac's drive. When I get up in the morning, I disconnect it and stuff it in my briefcase. This way, I can't get confused about what photo library I'm using, and I've got protection against home catastrophes.

Worth considering...]]> http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6548 Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:39:19 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6548 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6547 Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:24:57 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6547 http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699?rss#comments_6546 Wed, 27 Oct 2010 14:23:51 PST http://db.tidbits.com/article/11699#comments_6546 I'm wondering if you might experience a problem if you needed to mount your DoppleZeus disk to recover a file which would then trigger CCC to start a backup - one that you may not want to occur at that precise moment. I ask because something similar, but not identical, happened to me today. I was in the middle of restoring some files from my cloned backup when I stepped away from the computer for a moment. SuperDuper started (it's set to start at a specified time) and copied my corrupted drive onto my backup. Fortunately for me I had a separate Time Machine backup so no harm.

Just wondering

Charlie]]>