Today, the replacement hard disc for my iMac came in. I am now booted from the utility partition of the USB2 drive, and am restoring the backup to the primary drive. After that, I am going to think about running all of the software updates. This will be a prime way to test my theory that this particular backup system will be acceptable as a method to use to test new system updates for a few days before deciding whether or not I really want to commit to that update.
Another possibility for backup -- later on -- could be to get an ethernet/usb2 disk that I can back up to over ethernet from one or maybe even multiple computers, and then yank out and hook up directly to the machine with USB2 if I ever need to restore from the drive. we'll see whether or not I ever do that though. For now, the 200gig drive over USB2 will work.
For what it's worth, the "iSight" based iMacs are very complicated. -- Needlessly so. You must remove the front, then lift out the LCD panel (which is a pretty big and delicate part) before being able to access the cool bits of the motherboard, the hard disc or the optical drive.
p365d9
13 years ago
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2 comments:
I've been in a few newer Macs, and that complicated setup is rather common. Apple is trying to cram a lot of stuff into a tight space. Alas, that compromises serviceability. But at least you got an at-home service call so that you could see what it involves.
As for backups: while the hardware is important, I would argue that the software is more important. Good software will make your life easier by scheduling backups, doing incremental backups and file compression so that everything will fit onto a single disk (thus allowing for unattended backups), verifying data integrity, indexing stuff so that you can find your data when you need it, and other tasks. And when it is easier to make backups, you are more likely to do them.
Hardware is of lesser importance. The key thing that you have to ensure is that your backup media doesn't fail at the same time or prior to your hard drive failing. And if you're regularly verifying your backup media that shouldn't be a problem.
Yeah, serviceability is compromised, but dang if this isn't one of the tiniest computers I've owned, with the biggest display.
As usual, I've failed to recognize half the problem, and I'd say you've pointed it out there. Luckily enough SuperDuper is at least a good backup program, but presumably there could be something better, like the paid version of superduper, which for the most part, does all of that. I'll have to check about verifying the backup disk, but presumably I could either do that with superduper, or I could find some other app to do that.
One thing I'm looking forward to is finding out exactly what the Time Machine function of Leopard does. My impression is that it does file versioning and history, as well as a full system backup, but others have indicated that that's not its purpose, or even part of its functionality.
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