Change in backup philosophy - Mac related

[Dave2002]

I've just spent half a day trying to retrieve files from my daughter's backup external disc (WD Elements). Several programs say the 1Gb disc is empty, but I know that it's not - just the index is corrupted. Made me think about Backup Philosophy - for a PC, but the philosophy is the same as Macs, just the software differs.
I think what I need is an external disc somewhat bigger than the main internal disc, containing a bootable copy of the main disc and all incremental changes to the main disc, updated when I choose, perhaps monthly or when there is something important. Able to extract individual files, so probably not an ISO. Anyway Windows 10 seems not to like ISO files.

Do you have any of the files you are trying to retrieve on other media, or in different versions? How valuable are the files to you or your daughter?

If the problems are due to hardware failure, either solid or intermittent, then the general advice seems to be to do as little as possible with/to the drive until you've worked out a strategy for recovery which might work. That might, for example, include wrapping the drive up in tin foil and plastic, and putting it in the fridge. I'm not recommending, or encouraging this, but just mentioning some of the strategies which some have tried - apparently with occasional success.

If the problems are due to software issues - which may be more likely - such as a corrupted index file, then it's probably still wise to treat the drive tenderly. I think one strategy is to try to get a bit wise disc image onto another drive, and then only use that copy for recovering the files or data.

A slightly more gung ho approach would be to work directly on the drive with problems - hopefully in read only mode. Tools such as Recuva - can do a surprisingly good job of recovering data, and will give you some interesting insights into the way data is stored - and also erased - or not - on each drive. A lot will depend on how valuable the data is, what is wanted to do with it, etc.

If, for example, the drive contains text - student files for a thesis say, then Recuva (https://www.piriform.com/recuva) may be able to reover all or part of the text, which can then be edited again by its author. Recuva is, IIRC, capable of recovering whole files, but also parts of files if the files have already been partially overwritten. There may be other recovery tools which will do the job, but I found Recuva was good enough a few years ago for my purposes.

You do need to decide how much effort is required, and what the value of the data is to you both.

[Anastasius]

Pre 2006? I can't find any reference to models early enough to only have USB1. I did check back as far as 2006. What model do you actually have?

Taken from System profiler

USB Bus:


Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBOHCI
PCI Device ID: 0x0aa5
PCI Revision ID: 0x00b1
PCI Vendor ID: 0x10de
Bus Number: 0x04


IR Receiver:


Product ID: 0x8242
Vendor ID: 0x05ac (Apple Inc.)
Version: 0.16
Speed: Up to 1.5 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Apple Computer, Inc.
Location ID: 0x04500000 / 2
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 100



iMac 24" Early 2009.


I can't comment on the relative speed advantages between FW and USB 2 - it's never really bothered me as most things I do that involve large transfers of data such as a restore I just leave the Mac to get on with it and go and do something else. With Firewire it is vital that whichever drive to get has the Oxford chipset - as I have mentioned before. NB Not Oxford compatible. I have no direct experience of USB 2 or 3 and so have not looked to see if they have any foibles.

Partitioning a FW drive is simple and is no different to you partitioning the drive inside your machine. So you can have partitions with different backups or versions of the OS...up to you. To select which one to boot from is childs' play. Either in Startup disk in system prefs or hold the option key down on startup.

This morning I have tried CCC using the laptop as a Remote Agent. I fell at the first hurdle which required some authentication stuff being installed on the laptop. The laptop (being on Lion) can only run the older version of CCC but the Authentication Package Installer fails...a known bug, I believe, and fixed but in the later version of CCC which does not run on the laptop. I have a support query out to CCC although I suspect the answer will be in the negative a support will have stopped for the earlier version. A shame as I rather like the user interface of CCC.

I'm currently trialling Chronosync. The user interface on this one is right up there at super-techy level and there seems to be a huge opportunity to mess things up. Nowhere near as 'user-friendly' as either SuperDuper or CCC. Out of the box, the good news is that I can backup to the external Firewire drive attached to the laptop (which itself is being 'tested' as I'm also using wi-fi to connect it to my network). The downside is that Chronosync, out of the box, uses Apple File Sharing and it's telling me that it will take 5 days to backup my 300GB hard drive. Chronosync offer their own agent which lives on the laptop but even that is telling me it will take 2 days! The one thing that is not clear with Chronosync is whether the default backup regime is to - first pass - backup the whole drive and then for subsequent backups only copy files that have changed. If that is the case then the sensible thing would be to connect the FW directly to the iMac, backup the whole lot and then transfer it back to the laptop to have the incremental backups done - which shouldn't take too long (unless I start creating huge video files which is unlikely). I have a call to support on that question.

What is of more concern though with Chronosync is that I get a warning saying that file/ownership permissions might not last the journey from iMac to laptop - which kind of makes the thing pointless. Again, I have a call out to support for this.

Sadly SuperDuper appears limited to backing up to local volumes/disks.

[Dave2002]

Taken from System profiler

USB Bus:


Host Controller Location: Built-in USB
Host Controller Driver: AppleUSBOHCI
PCI Device ID: 0x0aa5
PCI Revision ID: 0x00b1
PCI Vendor ID: 0x10de
Bus Number: 0x04


IR Receiver:


Product ID: 0x8242
Vendor ID: 0x05ac (Apple Inc.)
Version: 0.16
Speed: Up to 1.5 Mb/sec
Manufacturer: Apple Computer, Inc.
Location ID: 0x04500000 / 2
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 100



iMac 24" Early 2009.

See https://support.apple.com/kb/sp507?locale=en_GB from Apple which shows 4 x USB 2 ports on the back of the machine.

The IR receiver is something else.

OK - USB 2 is slower than USB 3, but it's not the orders of magnitude slower that USB 1 would be.

The max data rate for USB 2 is 480 Mbps - or about 60 Mbytes/sec. USB 3.0 is approx 10 times that, while
USB 3.1 is approx 20 times faster - these are max figures, of course.

It looks as though FW 800 should be getting on for twice as fast as USB 2, but how it works out in practice
could be open to question. Since FW has largely fallen out of favour there's probably little point in chasing that line
of investigation for most people.

Since 2011 some Apple kit (e.g iMacs) have had Thunderbolt ports. For devices which otherwise only have USB 2 ports
it appears that there are converters from Thunderbolt to USB 3.0 which might help anyone who wants to upgrade USB without
either modifying their machines, or replacing them with newer models with USB 3 (any flavour).

There's one here - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Thunderbolt-...derbolt+to+usb which according to the reviews seems to do the job.

I can't comment on the relative speed advantages between FW and USB 2 - it's never really bothered me as most things I do that involve large transfers of data such as a restore I just leave the Mac to get on with it and go and do something else. With Firewire it is vital that whichever drive to get has the Oxford chipset - as I have mentioned before. NB Not Oxford compatible. I have no direct experience of USB 2 or 3 and so have not looked to see if they have any foibles.

Partitioning a FW drive is simple and is no different to you partitioning the drive inside your machine. So you can have partitions with different backups or versions of the OS...up to you. To select which one to boot from is childs' play. Either in Startup disk in system prefs or hold the option key down on startup.

I have previously managed to boot into a different OS version from an external USB drive either by:

1. Pre selecting the drive in an open OS window for startup in System Preferences, then restarting, or

2. Using an option key or combination during the startup process.

What I don't know is what happens if the external drive has several partitions each containing a bootable version of an OS - which I assume is a possibility. To avoid any problems I have so far only had one OS version on each drive, though that can be a bit wasteful of disk space.

I'll come back later about other issues you mention.

[Anastasius]

.....
What I don't know is what happens if the external drive has several partitions each containing a bootable version of an OS - which I assume is a possibility. To avoid any problems I have so far only had one OS version on each drive, though that can be a bit wasteful of disk space.

I'll come back later about other issues you mention.

Thanks for the clarification re USB....good news!

If you have separate partitions then any partition that has bootable volume simply appears as an option at bootup (when you press the Option key).

ChronoSync have got back to me. A case of RTFM on my part. The product is looking rather promising.

[Beresford]

There may be other recovery tools which will do the job, but I found Recuva was good enough a few years ago for my purposes.

You do need to decide how much effort is required, and what the value of the data is to you both.

Dave2002 - thanks for the advice. Luckily this particular data isn't high value - films rather than music - but next time!
Recuva and similar software don't work, because the external HDD appears to Windows to have no bytes, so does not get allocated a drive name, so the software can't reference it. The "partition table" etc may have become corrupted by me pulling the usb3 wire out a little too quickly. I read that a "quick reformat" will actually leave most of the data intact and accessible - will try when all else fails. If it was the wire to blame (not me of course), the software must be a bit flaky if it leads to a dead disc. But that is my take on the advantages ofApple, (never having owned one) - overall the software is less flaky than windows, but you pay about twice as much.

Cockney Sparrow - Thanks, I will look into Acronis. I had guessed that I could not get individual files out of an image, not with windows tools anyway.

[Anastasius]

And Carbon Copy Cloner is also working to the remote backup.

[Dave2002]

Thanks for the clarification re USB....good news!

If you have separate partitions then any partition that has bootable volume simply appears as an option at bootup (when you press the Option key).

ChronoSync have got back to me. A case of RTFM on my part. The product is looking rather promising.

Thanks for the update re bootable partitions.

One of my friends uses ChronoSync, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. Says it's good.

Re the possible upgrade on one of my machines, it looks as though these are relevant reviews for Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/os-x-10-11-el-capitan-the-ars-technica-review/

I'm just slightly hesitating before bashing on with going to El Capitan, as I don't know how easy it would be to revert or use one of the earlier OSs if I really wanted to. Was it you or MrGG who did a complex revert from one of the recent OSs when it turned out not to be compatible with a whole lot of stuff?

I don't think I've got major issues re El Capitan, though I do have definite complaints against Yosemite - or at least one of the tools on it. I can't understand why Apple managed to screw up Activity Monitor so as to remove the Pie Chart which displays memory allocations. I have found that very useful in the past, particularly when trying to deal with SBBOD problems - http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html This does become an issue on one laptop here which is currently on Yosemite, and it goes into a painful mode with fans blazing when it gets under stress. We've not fully knocked that one on the head yet, though it shouldn't be a backing memory problem, as there's plenty of spare backing memory on that machine.

However, there is a memory tool available from the App Store - Memory Monitor - though I don't think it's as nice as the old Activity Monitor. I don't think Apple have reverted back to the useful Pie Chart interface in the latest version for EC. I don't understand how firms can insist on taking one step forward (allegedly) then taking several steps back.

Reading a lot of the material about updates etc. suggests that Apple are always going to try to ratchet users along the upgrade path, and make it hard to sensibly revert to any previous version. That wouldn't matter if new OS versions were always better in almost all departments than their predecessors, but that's not always the case.

[Anastasius]

Thanks for the update re bootable partitions.

One of my friends uses ChronoSync, plus a whole bunch of other stuff. Says it's good.

Re the possible upgrade on one of my machines, it looks as though these are relevant reviews for Mavericks, Yosemite and El Capitan:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9/

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/os-x-10-10/

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2015/09/os-x-10-11-el-capitan-the-ars-technica-review/

I'm just slightly hesitating before bashing on with going to El Capitan, as I don't know how easy it would be to revert or use one of the earlier OSs if I really wanted to. Was it you or MrGG who did a complex revert from one of the recent OSs when it turned out not to be compatible with a whole lot of stuff?

I don't think I've got major issues re El Capitan, though I do have definite complaints against Yosemite - or at least one of the tools on it. I can't understand why Apple managed to screw up Activity Monitor so as to remove the Pie Chart which displays memory allocations. I have found that very useful in the past, particularly when trying to deal with SBBOD problems - http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/sbbod.html This does become an issue on one laptop here which is currently on Yosemite, and it goes into a painful mode with fans blazing when it gets under stress. We've not fully knocked that one on the head yet, though it shouldn't be a backing memory problem, as there's plenty of spare backing memory on that machine.

However, there is a memory tool available from the App Store - Memory Monitor - though I don't think it's as nice as the old Activity Monitor. I don't think Apple have reverted back to the useful Pie Chart interface in the latest version for EC. I don't understand how firms can insist on taking one step forward (allegedly) then taking several steps back.

Reading a lot of the material about updates etc. suggests that Apple are always going to try to ratchet users along the upgrade path, and make it hard to sensibly revert to any previous version. That wouldn't matter if new OS versions were always better in almost all departments than their predecessors, but that's not always the case.

Simple. Backup your system to a bootable copy. Migrate to El Crappo....see if you like the look and feel..that won't take long for you to decide.

No...no...no.....the latest version of Activity Monitor as in Mavericks is superb...it now shows what they call Memory Pressure and that is all that you need. I keep AM open and tuned to memory and just keep a weather eye on Memory pressure. You'll find that over time it gradually gets worse and so you simply reboot. It does EVERYTHING for you....a no-brainer. It is brilliant.

[Dave2002]

Simple. Backup your system to a bootable copy. Migrate to El Crappo....see if you like the look and feel..that won't take long for you to decide.

No...no...no.....the latest version of Activity Monitor as in Mavericks is superb...it now shows what they call Memory Pressure and that is all that you need. I keep AM open and tuned to memory and just keep a weather eye on Memory pressure. You'll find that over time it gradually gets worse and so you simply reboot. It does EVERYTHING for you....a no-brainer. It is brilliant.

I already tried EC on another machine. Seemed OK, and for what I was trying to do then there were no problems.

I'm not sure about the Activity Monitor thing. Apparently this article helps - http://www.cnet.com/news/activity-mo...icant-changes/ Maybe it'll be OK and I'll get used to it. However, one question which has been raised is about how to track down a program or process which is hogging the memory. This used to be quite easy in the old Activity Monitor - first notice the problem, then look at the specific activity, and stop anything whcih wasnt' needed to release memory. Perhaps it is just as easy with the new AM - but I don't know yet, as I've not tested that.

[Dave2002]

iMac and USB revisited - USB 1 and USB 2

Apparently some of the USB ports on the keybords of earlier iMacs were in fact USB 1 - which is around an order of magnitude slower than USB 2. Eventually Apple upgraded the keyboard ports on most of the keyboards to USB 2 - by around 2010.
The wired metal keyboards are apparently USB2, but users of older keyboards may only get USB 1 performance from the included USB ports.

I don't know what the situation is for the latest keyboards, as many users are now using wireless keyboards, and I don't know whether Apple are still selling wired keyboards, or expecting users to buy them. Maybe the latest wired keyboards have USB 3 ports?

The keyboard USB ports were never great for more demanding applications, such as running external drives, because of power limitations. However, they could be good for incorporating extra storage, such as the San Disk Ultra Fit memory, which is now getting cheaper, and this could be very useful on occasions.

[Anastasius]

You can still see how much memory individual processes etc are taking in Application Monitor. But TBH the new Memory Pressure display is a no-brainer. If it's green, you're fine. Memory management is different (better) in Mavericks. What started me off looking into this was when I noticed the iMac getting very sluggish and after Googling and learning about Memory pressure took a look at it and found it was amber. Not good. The memory hog was Chrome and which I rarely use now.

What I tend to do is keep the AM memory window open and moved to the left as far as it will go. I can just see the bar peeking out from behind other windows (I don't use full screen). You can see the bar gradually increase in height if programs are misbehaving or you have too many programs open at the same time. Once it starts to get to a certain level I'll probably reboot the Mac which I find is a good idea to do anyway.

On the backup front, I have a 500GB external drive which I wanted to use. It needed to be re-partitioned with GID so that it could be made bootable but before I could do that I needed to copy over one large folder with various stuff on to a spare drive. Discovered that there were a fair few readable files and Finder kept stopping the copy when it came to a non-readable file. A real pain as you then had to go back, find the errant file and delete it. I think this is a weak point of Finder. But then I thought why not use CCC which gets over this problem and, yup, it did. However, I was curious to see what state this drive was in especially as the transfer of the large folder seemed to be taking a long time. So I fired up Scannerz....it really is a superb program....and started testing the drive. A few bad blocks but I aborted the test after the number of scan irregularities went over 2000. A scan irregularity is defined as a weak sector taking a long time to be read...in other words that drive is getting dodgy. You can look in the logs and see just how long it was taking to read a sector or byte and times were nearly a second or more. Seriously bad. So I'll be taking a hammer to it and just bought a replacement WD drive that I can slip in. If all goes well then I'll have a couple of remote backup disks available.

[Anastasius]

Out of curiosity I ran Scannerz against the internal drive in the iMac and it passed with fkying colours. You might be interested to see the report that it produced..

Overall Test Results: PASSED
Time and Date of Completion: 15:48:51, Sat. Jan. 23, 2016
Type of Test: Normal
Unit Under Test: 297.5 GB Volume Named: Mavericks , Volume ID: disk0s3


General Results by Test Type:


Sizing Scan: PASSED
Surface Scan: PASSED
Seek Scan: PASSED
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified


Detailed Test Results:


Sizing Scan Errors: 0
Surface Scan Errors: 0
Surface Scan Irregularities: 0
Seek Scan Errors: 0
Seek Scan Irregularities: 0


Relative Performance Indices:


Current Surface Scan Linear RPI: 11.970708
Current Surface Scan Ratio RPI: 2.248509
Current Seek Scan Linear RPI: 2.181127
Current Seek Scan Ratio RPI: 1.534551


Initial Surface Scan Linear RPI: 25.159824
Initial Surface Scan Ratio RPI: 6.247606
Initial Seek Scan Linear RPI: 2.180059
Initial Seek Scan Ratio RPI: 2.408961


This is a comparative scan, and the values of the current test data will be compared to those in the initial scan data set.


The sizing scan completed without any errors.


The surface scan passed, however a comparison of the initial and current surface scan linear RPI values indicates a significant difference, with the RPI associated with the initial scan being abnormally high. This can be caused by the initial tests being done improperly, but it might also indicate a potential problem with the hardware in the system. Please refer to the users manual for more information. The surface scan ratio RPI for the current test is acceptable, however the surface scan ratio RPI for the initial scan is abnormally high. This can indicate that either the initial tests for this unit were done improperly, or there is possibly a hardware problem that needs addressing. Please refer to the users manual for more information.


The seek scan test passed with both the current and initial seek scan linear RPI values showing no significant change. This implies the drive is functioning in the same manner as it was when the initial tests were performed. The seek scan ratio RPIs are both within acceptable limits.


There were no irregularities detected in this test.



The reference to the initial test is one that was carried out a while back. Not too sure why it was high..possibly I had another program running that muddied the waters (you're supposed to have as little as possible running when you do the test).

Be that as it may, I can't speak highly enough of Scannerz which comes as a suite of programs.

[Dave2002]

Memory management is different (better) in Mavericks. What started me off looking into this was when I noticed the iMac getting very sluggish and after Googling and learning about Memory pressure took a look at it and found it was amber. Not good. The memory hog was Chrome and which I rarely use now.

Better compared with Mountain Lion or with Yosemite?

I've started the perhaps long process of systems admin to get my system migrated to something which will run the new Adobe packages. I know that El Capitan will do the job, but I've still got options on Mavericks and Yosemite if they do have any advantages.

I'll try to check out the Activity Monitor on Yosemite - to see if I can make sense of it. I really did like the pie chart of the earlier systems (Mountain Lion) as it gave strong clues as to when there were going to be problems, but reading about it suggests that Apple have developed the memory management system a bit further, so it may be better and more appropriate to Mavericks, Yosemite or El C. Not sure if they all have the same memory management system, and the same Activity Monitor program. Perhaps, as you say, it is all that is needed, and automatic. The new memory management systems seem to have features such as automatic compression - presumably for data which isn't being used much. Hopefully Apple will have designed these newer systems taking into account the different relative speeds of storage devices and the different relative speeds of the actual processors doing any compression operations - and also considering any possible benefit from having more real memory available.

I know you don't think it's necessary, but once I've tidied up the disk storage a bit on the upgrade machine, I'll run a virus check, and if necessary remove any problems. Then I'll do at least one backup - which now is looking as though it'll be Super Duper to a 1T byte drive for a bootable backup , and then a Time Machine backup on a 2 Tbyte drive.

After that I should be able to install a new system, then delete most of the stuff I really don't want to have in the new system. I suppose I could do an additive approach, but I think subtractive might be safer. I'll have a pretty good idea what files I want to get rid of.

Once done which might take a day or so, I should then have a machine with enough space to work in, and then I'll need a plan for how to manage future backups.

I suppose this approach is still a lot cheaper than buying yet another new machine. The cheapest machine I'd consider is around £1500 at list price, and a rather better one is getting on for £3k. Compared with those figures the cost of a few disk drives is relatively small, and I could put off any serious hardware upgrades for another couple of years, by which time I hope that even better machines will be available with good (performance+quality)/price ratios.

[Anastasius]

Better than Snow Leopard - I skipped Lion and Mountain Lion. Your plan sounds good. I'm currently creating a Mavericks boot up disk on a USB stick so I have something to easily start from. You do need a 16GB drive as 8 is not quite large enough.

My Finder on the iMac is playing up. Do you know if you do a re - install if the settings like Mail are left alone?

[Dave2002]

Better than Snow Leopard - I skipped Lion and Mountain Lion. Your plan sounds good. I'm currently creating a Mavericks boot up disk on a USB stick so I have something to easily start from. You do need a 16GB drive as 8 is not quite large enough.

My Finder on the iMac is playing up. Do you know if you do a re - install if the settings like Mail are left alone?

Re-install ...

That sounds a tad advanced. I've got as far as making boot up disks, and booting from them, but I've not actually done a revert back using a bootable backup disk (or even a non bootable backup disk) to overwrite the main drive.

I found an Apple support page yesterday which mentioned several ways of re-installing. One way the machine reverts right back to the originally installed (not the latest) OS. From there one has to work forward through compatible updates if one has the installer files, otherwise the update will go straight to the latest compatible update, which for reasonably new machines will be El Capitan. I think the other way simply goes straight to the latest compatible update, so it would be very hard to revert to an earlier OS version.

There are a few sellers on Amazon who have Mavericks and/or Yosemite installation USB sticks.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/OS-Mavericks-Install-Upgrade-Bootable/dp/B00QRS289U/ref=sr_1_1?s=software&ie=UTF8&qid=1453592218&sr=1-1&keywords=OS+X+mavericks

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B00QRRL6IA/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new

These seem a bit unnecessary to me, but presumably some people find them useful. Some people might have friends who have managed to capture each intermediate install package which makes reverting/installing much easier - if necessary.