Tag Archives: backups

How To

How to backup and restore your Mac and PC

I had a conversation yesterday about this very topic that made me realize it’d make a great article. So here’s how to backup — and if needed, restore — both your Mac and PC in a pretty much foolproof sort of way.

Before I start, let me clarify three things.

First, using backup software does not necessarily mean you can restore your entire computer in case it crashes, gets infected with a virus, or the hard drive dies. Keep that in mind! Backing up your files means just that: you’re backing up your files and can restore them, not your computer. The question you need to ask yourselves is: “Does my backup software let me restore my entire computer (operating system + my files) or just my files?”

Second, you’ll need a good backup device. It won’t do to have both your computer and your backup device fail at about the same time, or you’ll be nowhere. So make sure to get a good external drive with plenty of space (I use these) or to use a device that’s built to secure your data against hardware failures (like a Drobo, which I also use). Apple has just released a wireless backup drive called Time Capsule, which should work nicely with Macs.

Third, I’d rather not get into arguments about how some piece of software is better than that piece of software. The point is to make things easy for those of you that are confused by all the pieces of software out there. In the end, you use whatever software works for you, but remember that this is what I recommend. I don’t want to bog people down with doing their virus checks with Whodalala and their spyware checks with Whodalulu, and… I think you get my point. An all-in-one solution works best, especially something that you install and then runs automatically. I believe strongly in automating these sorts of tasks and making it easy for the average person to use the software, and I’ve written about this in the past as well.

How to backup and restore a Mac

Mac OS X Leopard’s Time MachineThis one’s really easy. Get Mac OS X Leopard and use Time Machine. It’ll do both file-level restores and full restores. It backs up your computer automatically every hour, and the first time you run it, it’ll do a full backup of everything on your computer. It’s great, I use it too, it works. In case your Mac should go kaput, you can restore it in its entirety after it gets fixed by booting up to the Leopard DVD and choosing “Restore System from Time Machine” from the Utilities menu. Should you only need to restore files, you’ve probably already seen the cool demo video and you know all about that.

Carbon Copy ClonerDon’t have Leopard? Still on Mac OS X Tiger? It’s okay. Use Carbon Copy Cloner. It’s wonderful, it’s free (you should donate if you find it useful though), and it can do full and incremental backups and restores. (Incremental means it’ll only backup or restore the files that have changed since the last backup or restore.) It works with both Tiger and Leopard, so you’re fully covered.

How to backup and restore a PC

This one’s a little trickier, but you just have to remember two names: OneCare Live and Norton Ghost.

Microsoft OneCare LiveOneCare Live is made by Microsoft and will do most everything PCs need: defragmentation, virus checks, spyware checks, firewall, and backups. What’s more, the software will remind you if you haven’t backed up or ran scans lately. It’s an all-in-one piece of software that I’ve used for over a year, and I like it.

A nice thing about its pricing is that it lets you use one license on up to three computers and manage the OneCare settings from a single machine. This means you can install it on your children’s PC and your wife’s PC and manage their security settings from your own machine. You can even schedule all three to back up to a central location like a network drive or a Windows Home Server.

The thing to keep in mind about it is that it does NOT do full backups and restores. It will only look for your files (documents, spreadsheets, movies, photos, etc.) and back those up to an external device. That means that unless you want to be stuck re-installing the operating system and applications every time your computer crashes, you’d better have something else to work alongside OneCare.

That certain something else is Norton Ghost. I’ve used it as well, and it sure works as advertised. Many system admins swear by it, because it makes their jobs a lot easier. The way to use it is to get your computer all set up and ready to go (with the OS, apps and latest patches and updates all installed), and BEFORE you start using it, ghost it. You can either boot up from the Ghost CD and clone your entire hard drive to an external device like a USB drive or to DVDs, or you can run the Ghost application right from the operating system, with your computer functioning normally while it’s getting cloned.

Once you’ve ghosted your machine, keep that ghost image safely somewhere and do regular backups with OneCare Live. If your PC should ever crash, you can boot up with the Ghost CD and restore it from its ghost image, then do file-level restores with the OneCare application.

Just remember, it’s important to ghost your PC at that critical point after you’ve gotten everything you need installed, but BEFORE you get it infected with something or installed stuff you’ll want to uninstall later, otherwise the ghost image will understandably be pretty useless to you.

Hope this helps!

Standard
How To

When it comes to home computers, k.i.s.s. and forget it

I’ve been learning a hard lesson these past few weeks, as my parents go through a time of computer trouble, and since I’m the one who purchased their computer equipment and set up their network, it’s up to me to get things right again.

What’s the lesson, you ask? As encapsulated in the title of this post, and as I’ve been yelling it at myself in quiet moments, it’s: keep it simple. 

Here’s how their setup looks:

  1. Cable internet connection
  2. Wireless router
  3. Vonage box hooked up to router, in turn hooked up to phone w/ answering machine, and multi-function printer/fax/copier/scanner
  4. Same multi-function printer/fax/copier/scanner also hooked up to router because it’s networkable
  5. Older desktop hooked up to router, another printer through parallel port, and to the multi-function machine through the network
  6. Laptop with wireless card, using the wireless router, configured to the networkable multi-function machine through the network

Where should I begin? Gee, let me start with WPA. Why? Because that’s how I had their wireless router set up. And every time something happened with the connection, they either couldn’t find the passphrase, or for some reason the laptop’s card didn’t feel like connecting to the router. Lesson learned: ditch encryption, just set up MAC filtering. That way, they can connect on the go, and don’t have to bother with WEP or WPA, which is a real hassle unles you’re a geek. Plus, with MAC filtering, unless someone can spoof a MAC address, they can’t connect to the network. And if they can spoof a MAC address, there’s a good chance they know how to get in even if encryption is enabled. Yes, I know the traffic can be sniffed if the encryption isn’t enabled, but who cares? Even WPA encryption can be sniffed and decrypted with readily available utilities. So why bother with it?

As I banged my head against the wall, I rued the day I set up their multi-function machine through the network. Why? Because if you have to delete it and re-install the printers, or you have to re-format the OS (Thanks, Windows, for the crappy OS, and thanks, driver manufacturers, for the horrible, latrine-worthy job you do writing those drivers – for all devices, not just printers!) you can never find the machine on the network so you can re-configure it, and you spend hours re-setting it to factory defaults through the printer’s LCD menu, then hunting for it on the network. Have you ever tried to walk someone through a printer’s LCD menu when you can’t remember the options, and they’re not familiar with it? It’s not fun. Lesson learned: install through USB, and set up local printers.

Quick question: if you unplug your printer’s or computer’s network cables from the wireless router, can you plug them into the IP telephony router? I guarantee you your parents or friends won’t know the difference, and they’ll plug them into it, then wonder why they can’t get on the Internet or connect to their printer. Lesson learned: forget IP telephony devices like Vonage. It may be cool for us youngsters to brag about how we slashed our phone bill by switching to Vonage or just using Skype, but it’s not cool for your parents when they can’t receive phone calls or faxes. (Yes, I’m talking to you, Vonage, with your awkward and arcane programming steps (or rather, button dances) so I can get my printer to send/receive faxes through your connection! Forget that!) Just set your parents up with a dedicated fax machine, plugged into a wall phone outlet, then sit back and relax, because they won’t call about it! And it’s the same with the phone! Leave it plugged into the wall! Forget saving $5 or $10 a month just for IP telephony. It’ll cost you and your parents much more in stress when their phone doesn’t work.

When my parents lost data because their laptop crashed and had to be reformatted, I realized the value of setting them up with automatic, regular data backup, the kind that just works. You know, you don’t think twice about setting up backups in the server room, but somehow you think the data on your laptop or desktop will take care of itself… Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t come with an easy backup program. Lesson learned: buy a big external hard drive, and set up automatic, regular backup jobs to it. It’s preferable to get a drive that comes bundled with a backup utility. Have any of you used the Windows Backup utility? What a stinker! How do you edit scheduled jobs? First, you can’t edit their every aspect after you’ve created them, and second, who’d think to look under a completely different app, called Scheduled Tasks, to find them there? Really, would anyone other than a geek know that? Why in the world aren’t the jobs available for editing within the Backup utility? It’s just plain dumb design.

As I had to re-educate my parents about the various ways of doing things on the computer, I came to realize (duh!) that I should have spent more time training them at the outset. Yeah, it seems like a no-brainer now, but back when you’ve just spent a couple of days transferring all their stuff and settings from the old computer onto the new one, do you really feel like spending another half day training them on the new machine? No, you just sit them down in front of it, point out the highlights, and tell them to enjoy it! Well, you pay for it later. Lesson learned: spend time training the user at the outset – you’ll avoid problems down the road. And define simple pathways for them, stuff like:

  1. This is where you save your documents.
  2. This is where your email archive gets stored.
  3. This is how your email account is set up. Make sure the settings stay this way!
  4. This is how to back up your bookmarks.
  5. These are the passwords and simple access instructions for the firewall, router, computer accounts, etc.
  6. This is where the photos get stored. Use this application to manage them. Download the photos from your digital camera this way…
  7. This is where the music gets stored. Use this application to manage it. This is how to sync the iPod…
  8. This is where the videos get stored. Use this application to download the videos from your camcorder to the computer. Here’s a simple way to make a DVD from a video…

It’s stuff like this that saves you countless headaches. If you need to, make screen-capture movies and put them on a “how to” DVD for them. Or write instructions, with screenshots. But make it simple, or you’ll pay for it!

Finally, as I troubleshooted why the laptop kept crashing because of obscure driver errors (everything was up to date, and the latest driver versions were installed), I learned the following three things:

  1. Buy a good brand. Don’t get a cheap brand. My parents have an Averatec laptop. That thing clonked out from the start. It was supposed to be able to output video to a TV through an S-video port, and it wasn’t even able to do that. When I called Averatec support, their advice, right off the bat, was to reformat the laptop. Great, the panacea fix used by all lazy tech support people! Then, after the 1-year warranty expired, it started to crash unexpectedly, even though there were no viruses and no spyware on the computer. It didn’t have any weird applications installed, either, just mass apps like Office, Firefox, iTunes, Picasa. So, don’t buy Averatec.
  2. Get an extended support plan. Don’t get cheap when you shouldn’t! Get that support plan, and make sure it includes accidental damage coverage, as well. You’ll be thanking yourself when you have someone to call if the hardware goes bad, or you need help with the system.
  3. Don’t buy Windows. Sounds harsh, doesn’t it? But it’s true. People who aren’t geeks need a simple operating system that’s not fragile – one that doesn’t crash or is susceptible to hundreds of thousands of viruses and malware. Windows may be good for developers who are shackled to it by the work they do (like me), and it may work fine at the office, (where you have a Help Desk department, and you’ve got an industrial-strength firewall and anti-virus thin clients pushed out to all the client computers, with the latest virus definitions,) but it’s not good at home – not for people who are at a loss when they need to tell a bad file apart from a good file. The choice becomes pretty simple: Mac OS! Just get a Mac for your parents, or tell your non-geek friends to get one. Then, when they don’t call you to complain that it keeps crashing, you’ll get some time to pat yourself on the back.

I hope this helps you streamline your work as you set up your parents’ or your friends’ machines. I sure wish someone shoved this under my nose when I started to set up my parents with new computer equipment.

Standard
Reviews

A review of BackupMyBlog

Michael Arrington from TechCrunch posted a review of BackupMyBlog, a new service that backs up blogs on a daily basis. He said something that really piqued my interest at the end of his review. He suggested FeedBurner ought to be offering this sort of service. Now that’s an idea!

Incidentally, I posted the latest podcasting figures from FeedBurner yesterday, and in that post, I compared the feed security one gets from using their service with locking up important documents in a thick safe. Now I realize I was thinking pretty much the same thing, except I couldn’t put my finger on it. Yes, I couldn’t agree more. That would be a true value-added service from FeedBurner. It’d be a one-stop shop for one’s feed needs. It makes sense. The only question that remains is whether or not FeedBurner should offer a podcasting backup service as well.

➡ Updated 2/17/08: I ended up not using BackupMyBlog, and FeedBurner never introduced a backup service. The thing is, backing up websites and blogs is pretty easy once you know how to do it. The people who want to back them up have a vested interest in doing so and already have ways to do it. The ones that aren’t already backing them up are the ones using free services to host their sites, and those people aren’t very likely to pay for a backup service. That makes the whole incentive to develop such a service diminish to zero.

Standard
How To

Catch that hard drive before it croaks

Tom Krazit, writing for CNETNews.com, describes a piece of software called HDDLife Utility, that monitors the health of hard drives and lets you know how much longer they’ll last. This lets you plan data backups, so you’re prepared and most importantly, you don’t lose it! See link for details.

Standard