[P1] Mac.com

[david]

On 1/7/03 4:45 AM, "Charles Martin" <chasm at mac.com> wrote:

> b. A new Apple utility called Backup, which allows me to backup my user
> info (and other stuff) to my .Mac web space (EXTREMELY handy -- offsite
> backup is a very-overlooked feature), as well as do "normal" backups to
> CD-R or DVD-R. It's got a long way to go to beat Retrospect, but it's
> pretty good in and of itself.

In my experience, the Backup/.Mac combination should be considered early
alpha and Backup/CD should be considered beta. The official definition of a
program is: 'a house where bugs live' but a backup program should be as free
of them as humanly possible. Backup has significant problems.

item: backups to .Mac are very unreliable in both directions. My iBook was
scheduled to backup daily at 7am eastern time (as unprime as I can make it)
and at least 2 days of 7 the backup fails. I've gone as long as 12 days
straight without a successful backup. I've found that the *only* way to get
a backup to .Mac is plug the iBook in; if I access the net via Airport I
guarantee failure. At Apple's website discussion I saw many people having
the same experience and some people talking about backup's failure to
restore the drive afterwards. So I tested that. Oops - it took me four
attempts to restore my data from .Mac and my success came on Sunday morning
at 5am. I'm certain that web traffic is the most likely reason for the
failed attempts.

item: having discovered how flaky backing up to .Mac could be, I decided to
test backup with CDs. More reliable but in 5 tests over a 2 week period I
made 3 coasters. The only coasters I've ever made with my iBook are from
using backup. Subsequent testing with my wife's iMac showed similar results.
All the successful CDs were able to restore BUT in testing my iBook and my
wife's iMac Backup froze (once on the iBook and twice on the iMac) but a
second attempt at restoring worked.

Backup is no longer part of my safe hex plan.

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All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost;
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davidwb at spymac.com