My Life on External Hard Disks
When I was a PC user, I rarely used an external hard disk for anything. Most Windows backup programs allowed one to use CD's, DVD's, or tape; only a few allowed you to hook up to an external hard disk and, even so, there was no way to boot up on it. Just the opposite is true in the world of Macs. I'm much happier, now.
At the moment, I have eight external hard disks in the house. Four are used to backup our Macs. I made each of them by hooking up an external hard disk using a Firewire 400 interface and then using OS X's Disk Utility to first “erase” and then “restore” them. For those of you not familiar with that, the Restore function allows you to clone any hard disk Disk Utility can see to any other hard disk it can see. It makes backing up a hard disk ridiculously easy. Additionally, if your external hard disk has a Firewire 400 interface, you can boot your Mac from it by hooking it up (turned on, of course) and pressing the “Option” key as the Mac boots. You'll be presented with a grey screen containing icons for every bootable hard disk in the machine (and Macs can have several). You simply use your mouse to click on the one you want and then click on the arrow underneath and pointing to it. That disk becomes your StartUp Disk until the next reboot when whatever is selected in System Preferences will takeover unless the machine is told otherwise (with the Option key, again).
It's true that using this technique means that all the backups I do are full backups. If you want to do incremental backups, then you'll need third party software. Most external hard disks come with that. And I have tried the Maxtor software that came with a couple of the external disks I'm using, but it's never performed well enough to make me change my stripes. It's just so easy to use OS X's Disk Utility; start it up and walk away or go to bed. In a couple of hours, it will be done. I routinely back up 300 GB hard disks using this technique.
Since I haven't used any kind of software compression, individual files on the backup hard disk can be retrieved by simply accessing them. Folders can simply be copied back from hard disk to hard disk.
Additionally, I use the same basic technique to back up the boot disk in my Mac Pro. The machine can hold four hard disks, so I use hard disk #4 as the backup by cloning the boot drive to it. In the event the boot drive fails, I install a replacement in the boot drive's bay, boot up on the clone, use Disk Utility to copy the clone to the replacement, and then boot back up on the replacement.
I go a step beyond all this while running my MacBook Pro (MBP). It serves as both my on-road computer and my everyday desktop. There's no way its 120GB hard drive can hold all of the data I've compiled and need access to. Secondly, it's only a 5400 rpm drive. So, when I get home, I hook up the MacBook Pro to a 20 inch Apple Display, a Logitech keyboard, a power brick, a sound system, and a Maxtor Touch III 320GB Firewire 800 hard disk. I turn the MBP on, hold down the Option key on the keyboard, and select the Maxtor's icon on the display. (Most of the time, the display powers on by itself, though I do sometimes have to turn it on as part of the overall “power-up”.) From then on, using the machine is almost indistinguishable from using a desktop; and it has the advantage of being expandable from both storage and display standpoints. It also gives me the most bang for my buck since it is essentially doing the work of two systems.
I use a Maxtor Easy Touch III 300 GB Firewire 400 hard drive to back up the Maxtor/ Firewire 800 drive. I back up the hard disk at least once a month and sometimes twice.
The two other hard disks in my home are on my network. A 160GB Seagate hard drive is mounted in a D-Link DSM-G600 Gigabit Ethernet Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive case; and I use it primarily to temporarily stow files and folders I want to transfer to machines not currently turned on. I also use it as a short term backup solution. The initial setup had a 160GB Maxtor drive in it, and it worked great for about eight months until the Maxtor started acting flaky a few weeks ago. Now, the case still transfers okay but the fan has become a bit more noisy. I'm thinking about replacing the case soon. The other hard disk is another Maxtor Easy Touch III drive which is connected to our Apple Airport Extreme N Base Station. It has only a USB 2.0 interface and is very slow compared to either the Firewire or Gigabit Ethernet disks on the network. (For the life of me, I don't much care for Apple's acquiescence to USB 2.0. I don't care what the theoretical transfer rates of it are, it has always been slower than Firewire 400 and much slower than Firewire 800 in everyday use. Firewire is the superior interface. But the market is driving toward the cheaper, more ubiquitous thing; and, eventually, that's what we'll all be saddled with!) I keep it because I can format it using the Mac's HFS+ file system, and that makes copying folders of materials more likely to succeed. The Gigabit hard disk uses an EXT-X file format (currently, EXT3) which often chokes on some Apple naming conventions. Besides, that Easy Touch only cost me $50!
This type of set-up has another inherent advantage for those of us living in Hurricane Country. If a storm threatens and I can't take everything, all I need do is grab my MacBook Pro and its one external hard disk, and run. I can replace machines and software; but some of the data (like photos and videos and my written works) is priceless. It's nice to be able to hold it in my hand and move on.
At the moment, I have eight external hard disks in the house. Four are used to backup our Macs. I made each of them by hooking up an external hard disk using a Firewire 400 interface and then using OS X's Disk Utility to first “erase” and then “restore” them. For those of you not familiar with that, the Restore function allows you to clone any hard disk Disk Utility can see to any other hard disk it can see. It makes backing up a hard disk ridiculously easy. Additionally, if your external hard disk has a Firewire 400 interface, you can boot your Mac from it by hooking it up (turned on, of course) and pressing the “Option” key as the Mac boots. You'll be presented with a grey screen containing icons for every bootable hard disk in the machine (and Macs can have several). You simply use your mouse to click on the one you want and then click on the arrow underneath and pointing to it. That disk becomes your StartUp Disk until the next reboot when whatever is selected in System Preferences will takeover unless the machine is told otherwise (with the Option key, again).
It's true that using this technique means that all the backups I do are full backups. If you want to do incremental backups, then you'll need third party software. Most external hard disks come with that. And I have tried the Maxtor software that came with a couple of the external disks I'm using, but it's never performed well enough to make me change my stripes. It's just so easy to use OS X's Disk Utility; start it up and walk away or go to bed. In a couple of hours, it will be done. I routinely back up 300 GB hard disks using this technique.
Since I haven't used any kind of software compression, individual files on the backup hard disk can be retrieved by simply accessing them. Folders can simply be copied back from hard disk to hard disk.
Additionally, I use the same basic technique to back up the boot disk in my Mac Pro. The machine can hold four hard disks, so I use hard disk #4 as the backup by cloning the boot drive to it. In the event the boot drive fails, I install a replacement in the boot drive's bay, boot up on the clone, use Disk Utility to copy the clone to the replacement, and then boot back up on the replacement.
I go a step beyond all this while running my MacBook Pro (MBP). It serves as both my on-road computer and my everyday desktop. There's no way its 120GB hard drive can hold all of the data I've compiled and need access to. Secondly, it's only a 5400 rpm drive. So, when I get home, I hook up the MacBook Pro to a 20 inch Apple Display, a Logitech keyboard, a power brick, a sound system, and a Maxtor Touch III 320GB Firewire 800 hard disk. I turn the MBP on, hold down the Option key on the keyboard, and select the Maxtor's icon on the display. (Most of the time, the display powers on by itself, though I do sometimes have to turn it on as part of the overall “power-up”.) From then on, using the machine is almost indistinguishable from using a desktop; and it has the advantage of being expandable from both storage and display standpoints. It also gives me the most bang for my buck since it is essentially doing the work of two systems.
I use a Maxtor Easy Touch III 300 GB Firewire 400 hard drive to back up the Maxtor/ Firewire 800 drive. I back up the hard disk at least once a month and sometimes twice.
The two other hard disks in my home are on my network. A 160GB Seagate hard drive is mounted in a D-Link DSM-G600 Gigabit Ethernet Network Attached Storage (NAS) drive case; and I use it primarily to temporarily stow files and folders I want to transfer to machines not currently turned on. I also use it as a short term backup solution. The initial setup had a 160GB Maxtor drive in it, and it worked great for about eight months until the Maxtor started acting flaky a few weeks ago. Now, the case still transfers okay but the fan has become a bit more noisy. I'm thinking about replacing the case soon. The other hard disk is another Maxtor Easy Touch III drive which is connected to our Apple Airport Extreme N Base Station. It has only a USB 2.0 interface and is very slow compared to either the Firewire or Gigabit Ethernet disks on the network. (For the life of me, I don't much care for Apple's acquiescence to USB 2.0. I don't care what the theoretical transfer rates of it are, it has always been slower than Firewire 400 and much slower than Firewire 800 in everyday use. Firewire is the superior interface. But the market is driving toward the cheaper, more ubiquitous thing; and, eventually, that's what we'll all be saddled with!) I keep it because I can format it using the Mac's HFS+ file system, and that makes copying folders of materials more likely to succeed. The Gigabit hard disk uses an EXT-X file format (currently, EXT3) which often chokes on some Apple naming conventions. Besides, that Easy Touch only cost me $50!
This type of set-up has another inherent advantage for those of us living in Hurricane Country. If a storm threatens and I can't take everything, all I need do is grab my MacBook Pro and its one external hard disk, and run. I can replace machines and software; but some of the data (like photos and videos and my written works) is priceless. It's nice to be able to hold it in my hand and move on.
posted by Andy Foster at
8:28 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home