[X4U] Hard Drive Recovery How Ridiculous

[Geoffrey Loeffler]

This is what still makes X flat out stink. You can not easily just  
back it up .
Now yes, I will be flooded with this works and that works and oh yes  
time machine and it's so easy.

Well in practice, I don't think so, and I use a lot of methods  
including .Mac or Mr Cloud, or whatever they decided the silly name  
was. I also watch the average people who use the Mac and backing up  
is not part of their use pattern, why, it is not easy and intuitive.

I was reading a TidBits article http://db.tidbits.com/article/9639  
and there are 99 programs to back up your mac, according to the  
author, who wrote the eBook Backing Up Your Mac. Which I also own.  
Gee I wish we had  10% of that in good office substitutes and word  
processors

That is absurd and shows the poor state of doing something that was  
so simple. Better hope you do not have to restore from the back up  
either, that can be an expedition in futility. Now I know power users  
will jump in and go no problem , I just do this and it's done. What  
about the average user or the switcher. This is a trail filled with  
deep holes just waiting to break your back up logs as the data is so  
strung out over a so many folders.

Now how hard was this in Mac OS 7 to 9, I had back ups coming out my  
ears. Simply drag and drop and it's done, you can boot off it and  
everything is there and ran just fine. What happened. How did the  
best back up turn into no back up.

It's so complicated that the Apple answer is to attach a hard disk to  
copy every keystroke, and that is not fool proof, because it's still  
a hard drive and has all the built in problems of any hard drive back  
up. More because it's powered on all the time. So while offering some  
protection and  I can see some good things for the future, why is it  
still so difficult that this is the best Apple can come up with.

Please something simple that works both ways, copy and restore. Until  
they fix this complication, it is a disaster just waiting to happen,  
to the majority of users who do not back up regularly and odds are  
that is the majority of users. They rely instead on the crummy  
quality of the hard drives coming out today.  Which is not to good. I  
bought a new one, Hitachi that was dead out of the box. Odds of that,  
the store was not surprised, said oh it must have been a bad run.  
That makes the 3rd HD  failure in 2 weeks and before that I have not  
had one in 20 years.

Then when you do lose the data , look at the cost to recover it could  
run in the thousands.  Absolutely absurd that in 2008, when they have  
harnessed such power in computers, back up is not drag and drop  
either way. It shows that we have made leaps in hardware speed, but  
in software, well they keep upgrading the programs and getting $200  
$300 every upgrade, but do they really do anything easier, no, just  
make a market for buying 10 pound books, on how to learn to  run a  
program easier.

For sure none of the back up programs are complete, easy and work  
both ways with out problems. Please Apple, go back to the basics. on  
this one.

Geoff