Category Archives: Mac Related

Time-consuming Backups

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It was bound to happen one day, I couldn’t trust my backup system anymore as it was giving errors. So I’ve been busy for at least a week sorting out my digital footprint. Just like I’ve been busy sorting out boxes for months it keeps surprising me how much stuff a person collects over time. I have two external hard drives in raid that I’ve been using to make backups for years now, but the time had come to change to an upgraded version which I bought a couple of weeks ago, a NAS with two 4TB harddisks. Copying over the network seemed to come with some hickups as well but I’ve managed tonight to sort all the information (2TB of ‘stuff’) on the new NAS.

In the past I’ve made use of TimeMachine but I stopped using it a couple of years ago to manually make backups instead. TimeMachine keeps making copies of the same files over and over again and since I had a couple of crashes over the years I ended up with several copies of system folders and copies of a folder structure of things that I wanted to keep. I’ve been going through each and every folder to delete duplicates and arrange a new filing structure. Some months ago when I started to sort out those boxes I’ve thrown out each and every item that I nolonger used, either giving it to charity shops or putting it in bin bags to have it collected and destroyed.

I was surprised by the -insane- amount of ‘stuff’ that I had managed to collect over time as I wasn’t using most of it anymore or I simply nolonger needed it. Cleaning out each and every box made me feel better and better as it was lifting a weight from my shoulders. Decluttering is the most effective thing to do to me, making space around me and also in my head. But I didn’t expect the amount of digital clutter and I found out that I felt less comfortable deleting system files and backups I had made because of crashes, tho I’ve managed to delete about 180Gb of dublicates by manually comparing files. Yes a total drag but I kept in mind that I only had to do this once ;)

I always got the impression that all my photo archives would take most of the disk space but boy was I mistaken. It was good having to go through each and every folder to see what was in there and if I really ‘needed’ it still. Most of it I got rid of anyway and the largest folders where the ones containing software and those system backups. Folders with 200.000+ files in them, old system folders, folders that nolonger had any use since I’ve bought at least four other computers after making the first backup and changed OS about three or four times as well. I guess the largest is my music collection but since I’ve started buying from iTunes this issue has become more organised.

Sorting my digital history was a total pain but I’m happy that I’ve managed to finish it within a time span of two weeks on and off. It was something that had been dragging my heels for years. I was extremely reluctant to act on it because of the time-consuming copying and checking, but as the other backup system slowly became unreliable I was forced to do this after all those years and I feel relieved now the job is mostly done. I still have some really old IDE disks to check but these are so old, I don’t expect to find anything spectacular on these that is worth saving. Still… I need to see what’s on them before I will use brute force and destroy all the sensitive data ;)

The challenge now, is to keep things organised and tidy… but when I think back of all the aggravation caused by having to go through many folders containing 200.000+ files I’m pretty sure I can keep an eye on that to make sure!

Murphy Has It Coming

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I feel I’ve been wasting my time lately with all sorts of things that seem to pop up out of nowhere. I had one bad issue after another over the last three weeks. First of all my computer died and as you can imagine I was not happy about it because I have invested quite some money on extra hardware and software to upgrade it and keep it running smooth. It was still the perfect computer to me until it unexpectedly gave up on me one day while I was busy studying and working.

I heard this loud tick, my monitor went black and I could hear the fan slowly coming to a halt. I knew straight away that it was the power supply so I did some research online and found out, it had been a hardware issue waiting to happen. Apple knew about this since they released this computer, they’ve managed to sell faulty products for three years… Of course I checked to see if there was a repair program, there was, but it closed in January this year and knowing Apple I shouldn’t expect extras…

I did call though… and on top of all the crap, I had to deal with an extremely annoying person, who kept telling me that I didn’t register that computer with Apple. She had that tone in her voice like she was almost accusing me of stealing the piece of hardware. Later, after I’d spoken with a really nice person at the Apple dealer who’d explained to me how to check my registry, I found out that I was indeed registered. It only confirmed the fact that I’d been trying to have a conversation with a right cow.

I’m still thinking about making an official complaint, it was something the manager at the Apple store mentioned to me. It just doesn’t sit well with me and I don’t wish to be treated like that especially not by a company that has become extremely arrogant over the years. To be honest, I was so pissed off, I was ready to swap to PC… that should tell you something *wink*… It’s solved for now, I’m using my good old Powerbook: it doesn’t have enough power to do anything else besides email and internet.

But it works until the proper stuff is in. Of course it took me ages to transfer most of my files to one of my removable HDs. Lucky me I could borrow some gadget from my brother to connect a harddisk through USB to another computer to transfer stuff but I still need to find a case to put these old harddisks in so I can continue to use them. Something like this would be awesome… Anyway… when I finally had setup a proper work space I found out that my business domain had been hacked *bring it on!*

So I’m still cleaning up the mess… I had to delete websites and reinstall them, it’s the kind of stuff you don’t want to do when there are more urgent issues to deal with. I’m supposed to study the next couple of months to update my webdesign knowledge. I started reading some O’Reilly books on CSS, Drupal, Flash, CMS, SEO etc. and it has come to a grinding halt ever since I ran into these horrid problems. On top of that -since I haven’t got a start date yet with the new employer- I still have to apply for jobs.

I actually received a phone call last week from the owner of an architectural design agency who wanted to meet me and have a chat. I’d applied for a job the week prior to his phone call but the job was no longer available. He said he was impressed with my CV though and invited me to meet up with them. I’ll have to visit them this Thursday and in a way I’m really looking forward to this. I know they use Drupal to build websites while they’re also in need of Drupal freelancers: 1+1=2? *wink*

We’ll see… for now I have plenty of work to catch up on so if you wonder why I’m quiet again that is your answer. So if you will excuse me, I have someone called Murphy to deal with, I think I’m going to pwn him…