Mac Forum / General / General / October 2008

First upgrade to Leopard.

Then get the largest drive you can afford. Partition it into two volumes, one
the same size as your internal drive and the other whatever is left. Run
SuperDuper! once a day to back up to the same size partition. Run Time
Machine to the other.

This setup will give you the ability to quickly recover from a crash of the
internal drive and will allow you to step backward in time to recover from
those "oops I deleted the wrong file" or "I really liked what I had in this
document last week" kind of mistakes.

How serious are you about recoverability? The barely-counts solution
that's disturbingly popular (but is definitely better than nothing at
all) is a FW hard drive that's at least as big as your internal and
SuperDuper! or equivalent. It's very cheap but also doesn't really
protect you against anything more than system component failure.
Slightly less cheap, but much more robust is to get 2-3 drives. Cycle
through them, and always keep one someplace outside your house. If you
work in an office, for example, keep one locked in your drawer at work
and just bring them back and forth with you when you're cycling them.

Entities that *really* care about their backups - like companies for
whom data loss is not merely inconvenient but can put the company out of
business and get the execs sued - use tape based solutions. They are
more expensive than hard drives and somewhat less convenient. They're
also much less prone to mechanical failure during transport and have a
storage life that will outlast the computer that replaces your current
machine's replacement.

The really critical component of any backup regimen, though, is the
user. You have to do it. And you have to test it from time to time.

I made the mistake of buying a Newertech Ministack from OWC.  I could
have bought the enclosure alone, but I chose one with a disk included.

Thirteen months later the light didn't come on when I switched it on.
The first logical troubleshooting step would have been to try the disk
in another enclosure.  If the disk had been bad, I could have bought a
new one immediately.  If it had been good, I could have kept it safe and
sent the enclosure for repair.

That's when I saw the fine print.  Because I'd bought the disk with the
enclosure, opening the enclosure would void my warranty.

If I sent it off, how long would it be gone?  What if I had a disk crash
in the mean time?  If they sent a replacement instead of the original
disk with my files, I could lose years' worth of priceless files.

Because I had not anticipated sending the disk anywhere, it had auto
logon.  If I sent it away, I'd have to trust everyone with access to it
not to copy it.  For example, personal information in the disk might be
used to pilfer bank accounts.

The third drawback was the possibility that someone would drop the disk,
leading to premature failure.

I found that the external power supply had failed.  As it was
short-circuit protected, this was probably the only problem.    I
contacted tech support.  I explained my reluctance to ship the disk
unnecessarily.  I asked advice and got none.  After four days the tech
offered to sell me a power supply, but I'd have to pay for it even if I
sent in the defective one.

They offered a 3-amp version instead if the original 2-amp supply.  The
Ministack required an unusual connector, so this suggested that a lot of
customers had experienced failures.

With the new power supply, the Ministack worked four hours.  When it
failed the power supply was still good.  I shipped the Ministack and
original power supply back under warranty.  It came back with a new
2-amp supply and a paper with check marks showing that it had passed all
tests.  Before I connected it to my computer, I switched it on.  The
drive did not spin up and the light did not come on.  Still, I plugged
it in to my USB hub.  It damaged the hub.

I informed OWC that before I connected it to my computer, I had switched
it on and there was no light or noise.  Then, because their paper said
it worked, I had connected it to my USB and damaged my hub.  They said I
could send it back, but it probably wouldn't do any good because they
thought the problem was something else on my USB.  I repeated that the
Ministack had failed to come on when it wasn't connected to anything but
the power supply.  They repeated that sending it back probably wouldn't
do any good.

If they had told me at the outset that they did not intend to honor
their warranty, they would have saved me a lot of time, trouble, and
money.  I'll never again buy anything from Newertech or OWC.

I put my disk in a Macally PHR-100AF enclosure.  If anything goes wrong
someday, I can try the disk in another enclosure.  The disk is suspended
with rubber mounts.  There is no fan, which keeps everything clean and
quiet.  I've found with a temperature probe that the disk inside doesn't
get hot even when backing up 20 gB.  PHR models are made for various
disk interfaces and computer interfaces.  I chose Firewire so I can use
it as a boot disk if I want.