Ask Jacob

You may need to repartition it through the Partition tab in Disk Utility.

To repatriation a drive, select the drive (not the indented Volume) that you want to erase and click on the Partition tab. Change the Volume Scheme popup menu from “Current” to “1 Partition.” Click the [Options...] button and set it to use the “Apple Partition Map.” Then give it a name and click on the [Apply] button. One more click to say that you understand all data will be lost on that drive and then it should work fine for your Mac computer.

It will not work on PCs after that though, it will be a Mac drive.

- Jacob

Time Machine is great but it does have its limits. You can only backup your boot drive via Time Machine so setting that external drive to protect your main 640 GB boot drive is the right setup. Then using the Apple software RAID 1 (Mirroring) on those two 1TB drives is a smart choice. It is not as fast as having a hardware RAID 5 configuration but it is very reliable. Many of the small servers I setup have been protected by a software RAID 1. I have lost drives but never any data.

The one advantage Time Machine has over RAID 1 is that it will protect you from unintentionally deleting important files, allowing you to go back and retrieve those files. RAID 1 will not let you recover from that kind of mistake. It just protects you from drive failure. So be carful when deleting or overwriting data on the RAID 1 volume.

Other than that it sounds like a solid plan.

- Jacob

When moving from PowerPC based Macs to an Intel Mac, I always recommend using Migration Assistant when you first start up the new Mac. During the initial setup you are given the option to move data over from your old Mac. The new Migration Assistant now allows you to do that over a network connection. Below is a link to Apple article on this process. Most applications should run fine on your system. Universal applications will run at full speed and PowerPC applications can run in an emulation mode of-sorts. It is a good idea to download fresh copies of Universal software, if available online to replace older version moved over during the migration.

Network based data migration using Migration Assistant.

In most cases you should be fine. If your ethernet enabled migration is interrupted, it will pickup where you left off so you do not need to guard it during the process.

- Jacob

Changing your Apple computers name will not affect your Time Machine history or cause additional, redundant, backups. When you make the system name change your Time Machine folder is changed to the new name and updates continue uninterrupted. When the TM backup drive is full, it starts deleting old files. These files are considered old if they were changed since the original copy and it is the oldest version of the file. If you had a Word file that you edited on November 1st, 3rd, and 20th you would have three copies of that file. If you ran out of space, Time Machine would delete the one that was saved on November 1st.

Manually deleting Time Machine files would be a bad idea. They are not only copied to a folder, but also linked and indexed. If you delete them from Finder it has the potential to damage the integrity of your backups. It is better to just let Time Machine manage itself. Like the Infomercial guy says, “Set it and Forget it.”

Hope that helps,

Jacob

Only the new Unibody MacBooks have had a FireWire port omitted from the design. The new MacBook Pros have a FireWire 800 port that supports FireWire 400 via an adapter. The MacBook Pro can be booted into Target Disk Mode, just as with previous models. However, the MacBook’s lack of FireWire signals a shift in how Apple expects Macs to migrate, post-Leopard. Time Machine is the new migration and backup tool of choice. Fresh Leopard installs let you restore from a Time Machine backup, regardless of what system that backup was created from. So assuming you have a system that you have been backing up with Time Machine, you just connect your new Mac to the USB Time Machine drive, migrate, and you are running again.

Another consideration is that most modern Macs have Gigabit Ethernet. Two Macs connected via a Gigabit network can transfer data faster than two Macs connected via FireWire 800. I think we will start to see more Ethernet-based solutions from Apple as Gigabit becomes the modern standard.

There are a few technical reasons why you would want to install and then Migrate 10.5, apposed to just cloning, but you can still use the cloning method. All Intel Macs support USB 2.0 booting so you can just start cloning to a USB hard drive instead of a FireWire one. It should be procedurally the same.

The “Trash” is a terrible place to keep any important files, but I assume you know this and it was an accident. Also, this would be a perfect rescue job for Time Machine coupled with an Apple Time Capsule. If you had been using Leopard’s Time Machine you could have gone back in time to when the data was not in the trash and then recovered just those files to your current system. If you are desperate to undelete, then you will need a program like Data Rescue.

With this software you can reboot your system off the CD and then use the undelete scan function to recover as much data as possible from the drive. The main thing is stop using your Apple computer. Every file you get, including this email, could be overwriting your deleted files. Even leaving your computer on could allow those files to be overwritten by system temp files.

Data protection is essential to everyone, not just professionals, but as a professional videographer your data is your money. Mean time between failures (MTBF) is a poor choice for considering data protection. It’s far better to assume a drive will fail at any time, and put yourself in the position that drive loss will not hurt you. We lose drives from our XServe RAIDs here, from time to time, but powermax.com stays up and running as we cycle a new drive in its place. There are many ways to configure a system to have protection.

The simplest date protection setup is to have two drives in a RAID 1 configuration. Essentially you have two identical drives in your Mac Pro getting duplicate information. Disk Utility in your Utilities folder will let you partition two drives together in RAID 1, after that initial setup they will stay in sync until one fails. Any drive will work for this purpose, you just want to use identical drives when creating the RAID.

The costlier and more complicated way would be to use an external RAID 5. This would let you have a portable and secure “Data Piggy Bank” for your video files and projects.

Check out the great LaCie 4big RAID backup and be sure to consult with one of our sales people for the best fitting RAID.

The alternating “?” and Folder Icon indicates that your computer cannot find a bootable Operating system. Not all B&W G3 towers could handle bigger drives, so that may be what is causing the problem. The Rev A G3 Logic board couldn’t handle large drives but the Rev B logic boards can take up to 120 GB drives. Look for the Apple copyright information printed on the logic board and below it will be a string of characters in one of the following two configurations XXX-09XX-A or XXX-10XX-A. The “X” is used in place of unimportant information. 09 indicates that it is a rev A logic board and the 10 means that it is a rev B.

If you have a Rev B Blue and White G3 logic board, then you need to make sure that the drive is set to Master and is the only drive in the computer. It may also be that a more advanced version of the Mac OS is on the drive than what the G3 can handle. You should also download any G3 Firmware updates needed to run OS X.

If you have a Beige G3, and not a Blue & White one, then you are running into the 7 GB boot volume limit. OS X has to be installed on a partition of less than 7.4 GB and that partition must also be on the Master drive on the IDE cable.

Your best option would be to reformat the drive and then reinstall a copy of the Mac OS. To move over your old data you will need to put that 6 GB drive into an external enclosure, like this Macally Storage Cabinet, and use Firewire to bring it over to the B&W G3 or put the 6 GB drive into the Beige G3 as a second drive to copy over the data.

Well practically any FireWire or USB drive would work for you with new or used Mac minis. You could go with a stackable drive and hub combo that looks like it is part of your Mini, like this NewerTech 160GB miniStack or you could get a slick styled one like this LaCie 500GB hard disk drive.

I would also recommend that you upgrade your Mac computer OS to Leopard, if you have not done so already. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard’s Time Machine feature is a perfect background backup utility for you. Every hour, your iBook will be backed up and you could go back to a version days previous in order to recover deleted chapters.

New Mac computers (and some used Macs) come with the application iPhoto pre-installed, and this would be the perfect way for you to import and organize your photos. The fastest way to bring your photos into iPhoto is to first open the iPhoto application. Then insert the photo CD and select the photos you want to move. Hold down the shift key to select large groups of photos. With the photos highlighted, drag them over to the iPhoto application running on the Dock. The iPhoto icon should darken when you are in the right spot. Let go of the mouse button and iPhoto will start importing the photos into the application.

You can also choose “Import to Library” from the “File” menu from within iPhoto. You will need to navigate to the CD and select the photos you want from within the import window.

Practically any FireWire or USB drive would work for you. You could go with a stackable drive and hub combo that looks like it is part of your Mini, like this NewerTech 160 GB MiniStack Hub. Or you could get a slickly styled one (I own this one) like this LaCie 500GB Hi Speed USB 2.0 Drive.

I would also recommend that you upgrade to Leopard, if you have not done so already. Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard’s Time Machine feature is the perfect background backup utility for you. Every hour your Book will be backed up and you could go back to a previous version to recover deleted chapters.

Working with RAID storage systems is a complex subject. The way you interface with the storage is just as important as what RAID type you are using for redundancy. It is essential to note that RAID 0 (zero), also know as a Striped RAID, offers no data protection and should not be considered as a viable backup / long-term storage solution. You are looking for a guarantee that the files your studio makes its income from will survive a drive failure. For that you need to look at a RAID 1 or other complex RAID system.Many RAIDs are selected for Speed, Capacity, and Redundancy. The first two concerns are less of an issue for your needs, this is more important for a video editor or database server. What you really are interested in is the redundancy to protect your files, which makes the available selection much wider. In your situation you have to limit the large list of options down, so connectivity is a great way to do this. The ProStudio RAID by EZQuest is a fine RAID solution for the Video editing crowd but it requires being tethered to a Mac Pro. Depending on how you process images in your studio it may make more sense to have a variety of connections that all systems can connect to when depositing files or retrieving them.

If what I am suggesting is appealing to you, then try looking at one of the LaCie Biggest Quadra 4TB. You would want to run it in a RAID 5 or RAID 0+1. With this setup, practically any computer you use will be able to connect to the drive, freeing you up from system downtime affecting your ability to access your files.

The one thing missing in this setup is concurrent access to the files. This setup is aimed at one computer at a time connecting to the drive. If you have many computers needing to access these files, you will want to look at a file server instead. A custom ordered Mac Pro with an internal RAID and OSX Server installed would work well for that purpose.

I hope this gets you started, as you can see it is much more than a simple “this is the best RAID” conversation. It may be worth talking about your options with one of our sales consultants. Anyway, I hope this helps!

Leopard will import from a Time Machine backup. After you install Leopard on the drive, you will be asked if you want to import the data from an old Mac or a Time Machine backup. It is nice and clean way of moving your data to a new drive or computer.

The types of drives suitable for Time Machine use have varied over the Leopard development process. Figuring out what may work in the future is tricky. If you have multiple internal drives, you can designate one of them as a Time Machine drive. Any FireWire or USB 2.0 drive can also work as a Time Machine drive. The one prerequisite for stable performance is that a Time Machine drive should be formatted as a Mac OS Extended volume, with a compatible partition table. The type of partition scheme you need to use changes based on the processor type. If it is an Intel-based Mac, then the drive should be a GUID partitioned drive. If you have an older PowerPC Mac, those drives should use the Apple Partition Map. The partition scheme is selected from the Options button in the Partition Tab of Disk Utility.

Because of the partitioning of those drives, it can be difficult to get them to work with other computer platforms (i.e. Windows). In most cases it’s best to keep a Time Machine drive dedicated to backup work. You can, however, have many computers use the same Time Machine drive. You can also do that sharing over a network, wired or wireless. The first step is to designate one Mac to connect to the Time Machine drive. This can be FireWire, USB 2.0, or an internal drive.

Set up the drive as a Time Machine drive via the Time Machine section of the System Preferences. Then go to the Sharing System preference and enable File Sharing. In the File Sharing’ details section, click on the “+” button under the Shared Folders section. Select your Time Machine drive and you will then see it on the list of shared items. From your other computers on the network you can connect to the shared Time Machine drive; the same as you would any other network drive. Make sure you save the user name and password in the keychain when you connect. Then you can use the System Preferences on that computer to designate the shared drive as a Time Machine drive.

This is a great solution for people with desktop and laptop Macs or a household of Macs. It may not be the solution that you need, because it will require at least two Macs running Leopard, but I hope it helps.

I understand now what’s happening. When Lacie drives come from the factory they are formatted in a PC format, which Macs can read and write to. For best performance you should always reformat new drives in a Mac format. You do this by opening Disk Utility and selecting the LaCie drive from the left hand column. Then click on the Erase tab and change the "Volume Format" to "Mac OS Extended" (AKA HFS+). Clicking on the Erase button will reformat the drive. You will lose all data on the drive when you format, so make a copy of what you need. Instead of using the LaCie program, however, I would recommend you use Carbon Copy Cloner.

You are right to question Retrospect’s performance and design. It is a processor hog and can require a lot of skill to set up. It’s an old application that has only received a minor face-lift for OS X. All that being said, it’s the only competent game in town in order to do what you want. An expanded Workgroup version of Retrospect, installed on the XServe, will be able to backup all your client eMacs in dated incremental segments. You can pick the date to restore, but still avoid filling the 250 GB hard drive with redundant data. I have asked around about alternatives but every other option costs more and is not quite what you need.

I have one hardware-based solution that could simplify the process and give you the added security of off site backups. “Broken Mirror” backups are used in many businesses to provide dated backups that can be stored off site. It will require a change in how your computer lab operates. You would need to setup “Portable Home Directory” services on the XServe. This would mean that the XServe would host all user data. Then you would need to create a RAID 1 or “Mirror” RAID set of that 250 GB hard drive. All the User accounts would be kept on that Mirrored RAID and always have the latest user data. Then when you want to create an archive copy of that data, you break the RAID 1 and remove one of those 250 GB hard drives. Then you replace it with a new 250 GB hard drive and repair the RAID 1. You can end up burning through a lot of drive modules this way but it will protect your data the best without the need for software backups.

It is probably best to use the imperfect Retrospect because of the alternatives’ cost and complication.