backup

Connected Data (makers of the Transporter backup drive) are merging with Drobo. Hopefully this is good news, but I kind of prefer it when companies compete.

Want to figure out how much it will cost to retrieve a backup from Amazon’s new Glacier service? So simple: Next we subtract your free allowance from the peak hourly retrieval for the month. To determine the amount of data you get for free, we look at the amount of data retrieved during your peak day and calculate the percentage of data that was retrieved during your peak hour. We then multiply that percentage by your free daily allowance.

There are two different ways I maintain complete local backups of this site. One uses a web application integrated with Dropbox and SFTP and the other uses Transmit on my Mac. Being a static Pelican blog, a backup means that I just grab copies of the files, so it is fairly easy to automate and schedule. Backup Box I’ve written about Backup Box before. It’s similar to IFTTT but is focused specifically on moving large numbers of files around the Internet.

ChronoSync and ChronoSync Agent are the best backup system I have.1 This looks like a good update By way of MacMegasite Dropbox is NOT a backup ↩

Amazon recently sent me an email describing some new features of their S3 service. They include: Folder Upload Find Objects by Quick Search Broader Access (use the Amazon S3 Console on platforms that don’t support Adobe Flash) Amazon S3 is still a bit too geeky for most people but these new features sure seem to target mainstream users. I honestly do not think Apple's iCloud will replace Dropbox. Neither, do I think it is designed to function like Dropbox.

Great bit of info about what it’s like to restore from Carbonite after a crash. If you read my post about my backup strategy you may have noticed that I do not use a cloud backup system. That’s because I have never met someone that has restored from one of these services after a fatal HD failure. I guess I can keep waiting.

I’m serious about backup.[1] Here’s my current setup: Primary Machine I have an iMac (from early 2011) with an internal 256GB SSD boot drive and an internal 2TB spinning platter secondary drive. The secondary drive contains my iTunes, Photo and Documents folders. My Dropbox folder is also on the secondary drive so that the SSD is really just for the OS and Applications. Secondary Machines I use a Mac Mini (from early 2010) as a server for FTP, WebDAV and iTunes.

If you are like me, then Instacast is constantly running on your iPhone. I no longer download any podcasts for syncing to iOS or AppleTV. I have Instacast on iOS and the AppleTV 2 has streaming of "favorite" podcasts. However, now I need to remember to regularly backup my podcast subscriptions from Instacast. If I lost my iPhone it would take quite some time to remember what the names of all my favorite shows are.

The Mac Power Users podcast had some great routines for getting ready for a new operating system. Go listen and take notes. Here are a few that I add to my own list of critical files. Files to keep handy AppleScript, Python, Perl and Ruby Scripts Keyboard Maestro macros Hazel scripts Screenshots of critical preference panes Bento database export (I still hate that it is stored in the library folder) TextExpander Snippets Mail Archive TextMate themes Must have applications 1Password installer and registration code Dropbox installer nvAlt installer LaunchBar installer SuperDuper installer PathFinder installer Lists to prepare Safari Plugins Applications to install (easy if you use 1Password to track serial numbers) With this combination of material, I can get any new machine or clean OS up and running just how I like.

An astute commenter on the last post pointed out that while the transfer rates are a lot cheaper for S3 now, the monthly storage cost is not. To figure out how much your backup will cost, visit the AWS Calculator. If your backup storage needs are less than 5GB, it might be free for the first year.