Memory sticks for Time Machine - perhaps

[Dave2002]

I may have another try with the 512 Gbyte camera card. I don't think the failure of TM was due to the card - so maybe if I can get the system tiied up it'll work. I should also test out the write/read speeds. I thought I'd given up on this idea, up to the point when I looked at the error messages.

[Dave2002]

I have now, seemingly, got TM to work with the 512 Gbyte card. Whether it might be reliable enough to be useful - who knows?!!!

It took a heck of a long time to do the original back up, so maybe the card isn't particularly fast. I think it was about 24 hours - I left it on all night, and started the morning beforehand.

The portability is the main attraction of this attempt. The camera card sticks out a bit, but it's not too bad.

[Beresford]

. After talking to several people who run multiple machines in studios and for performance I realised that very few people rely on Time Machine and switched to making cloned bootable copies of everything which means I can take a complete copy of the whole computer around with me.

Do you have one clone, which you overwrite (weekly?), or a grandfather / father / son etc set of discs? It does seem to be the most reliable method, unless.......

I once worked (briefly) in a software development company - Plessey (PDP-11 mini in Coral-66) - where the junior programmer was given the job of backing up all the new work to a separate hard disc, in a grandfather setup. Once he did it wrong way round, and managed to overwrite a week's work of twenty people.

[Dave2002]

That's a great definition of Time Machine in my experience

I think you are right - but it did save my machine very recently. I couldn’t believe it - and it took ages to get the system restored. I had connected a hard drive for TM back onto the laptop a day or two earlier, and there was a usable backup for TM to reinstall “all” the files. The MBP wouldn’t boot after I tried to install a driver for a Zoom microphone/video camera/webcam. It went through the opening sequence - then got stuck just before the very end when I expected to see the password logins.

Re the memory card idea - don’t try it, or rely on it. I tried with a cheapish memory card - now returned for a refund/credit voucher. It was very slow - though did work for a while. Eventually it failed. Use an SSD which should be much preferable.

I wouldn’t say don’t use TM at all, but it is clearly preferable to rely on periodic complete system backups, using Superduper, CCC or similar. I shall probably use my refund voucher for another SSD, when I get round to it.

One problem remains. Apple in its infinite wisdom seem to employ “Geniuses” not only in their stores, but also to write software. The mail did not restore easily with TM, and trying to open up Mail shows that it wants to download 15 years worth from Gmail. Why on earth they would write code like that I don’t know. I can’t get to anything which will prevent that from happening, or attach to a different mail server. I let it go last night, but it still failed. I suppose I might be able to get a work round by logging into Gmail on another system, and force moving or deleting any unwanted mail**. Unfortunately the Mail client was also connected to another server, so I might have to do that for two different ISPs. Not clever.

This has had the side effect of enabling more space on my MBP, not necessarily a bad thing, as I deleted some less important and/or recoverable stuff, so currently I have around 30 Gbytes spare. I have also discovered that I should be able to limit how much email servers like Gmail will deliver, to avoid overloading smaller systems, though I suspect it’s a bit arcane and might require work at both ends of the link. Probably most people don’t bother to investigate that - as too tricksy. Sadly I might have to do that with more than one mail server, and they probably don’t all use the same interface commands.

** Another possible work around might be to clone the whole system as it is but to a much bigger drive. Then use that bootable version to allow Mail to do its thing on another machine. THen sort the Mail out. Then copy back. How tedious!

[Anastasius]

....
One problem remains. Apple in its infinite wisdom seem to employ “Geniuses” not only in their stores, but also to write software. ...

Systems Designers/Analysts and Programmers these days when designing systems never ask the two most important words IMO...."What If?"

For example, we recently lost landline and internet for a few days courtesy of a council digger. The Humax PVR user interface then ran like a dog because it was continually trying to connect to the internet rather than try, say, every five or ten minutes.

However, every cloud and all that. I'd used my mobile as a hotspot (yup..pricey, I know) and both our Macs could access the internet via that. Trouble was the rest of the house,workshop, printers etc were all connected via the Mesh network and a few ethernet cables and I could see no easy way of getting the hotspot to drive that. A quick call to the excellent support team at Zen and I was off to source a mobile dongle to plug into the main router. Now, if we lose the ADSL, it will automatically swap over to mobile data.

And if that doesn't work (the dongle is PAYG and so I'd need an easy way to top-up) I discovered that I can also use my phone to drive the main router using USB Tethering.

Sorry...a bit off topic.

[Dave2002]

Systems Designers/Analysts and Programmers these days when designing systems never ask the two most important words IMO...."What If?"

Sorry...a bit off topic.

No problem. Many years ago I heard of a story - may have been true. The concept was automated systems, and how they would interact, and the person who told it was (and probably still is quite well known as a computer scientist). Basically it goes like this. Early days of automated systems and communications.

There is a fire in a building. The automatic system turns the sprinklers on, and dials the number for the Fire Brigade.

Unknown to the developers, the Fire Brigade also had a new system. This answered the automated call, and returned a voice message "The number for this service has now changed ......." The first system, then gave up and tried again.

The two systems kept "talking" to each other for some while, as the building burnt down. Nobody had thought of that situation.