Posts tagged “backup”.

Newton quote of the week: obvious advantages

October 7th, 2009

“To be useful as a PDA, the Newton should anyway be always close. It is instant on, and the Notepad is capturing notes indexed by time. As a recording device, the Newton is unbeatable, and it has some pretty obvious advantages over the index card method: Backups are possible, storage is almost infinite, you can carry the whole system with you all the time, and you can search and extract more easily.”

– Eckhart Köppen, from the NewtonTalk list.

Using Automator to make scheduled backups

July 13th, 2009

automatorbackup

Backup isn’t backup, the saying goes, unless you automate it.

Backup experts also say you should keep a second, off-site copy of all of your important materials. If your house burns down, or zombies darken your door, that melted or masticated external hard drive isn’t going to be worth squat. Better to make a backup to a cloud-based system or a drive you keep away from your home.

A recent, goofy hard drive glitch got me thinking about both scenarios: the need to make an easy, automatic backup, and the need to archive it to some remote location. Since I don’t have OS X 10.5, with it’s compulsory Time Machine backup system, I needed to make my own backup strategy using the tools at hand on OS X Tiger.

So here’s how I used two OS X 10.4 applications, Automator with a dash of iCal, to develop a backup system that fits my needs.

More… »

Flashback to Copland.

October 23rd, 2008

Apple\'s Copland Assistant helps with backups.

I’m all about the classic Mac’ing around these parts. That’s why I thought Jason Snell’s “A Time Machine trip to the mid-’90s” article for Macworld.com was so darned cool: he lets us know about some of the never-to-see-the-light-of-day features of Copland, Apple’s vaporOS.

I remember reading about Copland and Pink and all the other weird OSes Apple was planning, but it was cool to see the operating system screen shots. Love that ’90s styling – takes me back to the Packard Bell computer my dad bought (and I ruined).

Check it out for a neat comparison on features in Copland and today’s OS X Leopard.