Effective Backups and Time Machine

Backing up Your Valuable Information

One of the most important things you should do to your data is duplicating it. When I refer to duplicating… I refer to backing up your data. The entire idea of a backup is redundancy. Your data should be backed up on as regular a basis as possible.

Digital Information is Physical Information

There is one thing that Computer/Digital Data cannot survive, that is physical destruction. If your hard drive or other storage media suffers an actual physical demise, there is virtually no way that the data that existed on the media (while it was viable media), can be recovered. Obviously this refers to complete destruction, say as in a fire or other catastrophe in which the physical media is reduced to a clump of metal/charcoal or some form of shredded metal or storage media. Although possible, data recovery may be extremely difficult even if conditions are more favorable. The point is, you may save yourself an extreme amount of headache by simply synchronizing your data with a location remote to the primary physical area of your information.

Location, Location

The area you synchronize your data to, should be as far away from the primary location (the location the data is generated) as possible. This will aid in a situation in which a destructive force is generated that covers a large geographical area. If your primary residence (point of data generation) is in Tampa Florida and Tampa is destroyed by hurricane “charlie”, the last thing you want is for your backed up data to be stored elsewhere in Tampa, or even elswhere in Florida.

A More Ideal Backup

A more Ideal situation would be to have your backup in an area that is not subject to the same destructive forces as your area is, perhaps somewhere more to the top/center of the map (in the case of Tampa). This may provide a better location as these areas are less subject to forces generated or governed by a close proximity to large bodies of water, or plate techtonics (variables Tampa is also subject to). Of course there are many other variables to consider, and the more distinctly, remote locations your data is replicated to, the better.

Backups for Immediate Reconstruction

The other backup system you should have at your disposal, is a backup I refer to as the Immediate Turnover Backup System. An Immediate Turnover System is no mis-nomer… it’s name is the definition of it’s functionality. What an Immediate Turnover System does for you is, save time. Although backing up your data to remote locations is the best option as far as data security and effective redundancy, creating backups and restoring backups at remote locations can be very time consuming. An Immediate Turnover grants you your data Immediately upon the occurence of a local failure. For instance, if your local hard drive in your desktop machine fails and you have properly configured a local backup, you will have the data that was on your desktop’s hard drive, on a hard drive or other media ready and at your disposal. Of course (as before mentioned) this should not be your only backup as it would provide little redundancy in a local catastrophe such as a fire etc.

Where Time Machine Comes In

You know that local backup I was refering to a few moments ago? Well, that is where Time Machine comes in. In the case where you need a local backup (as does most everyone) an application such as Time Machine is ideal for the job. Configuring Time Machine is a snap. If you wish for a secure backup with minimal configuration, plugging in your external drive and saying yes is pretty much all that’s required.

Time Machine… Under the Hood

When attaching an external drive to your Mac, you may use virtually any HFS formatted drive. Other options that you have include: another Mac with Leopard installed and personal file sharing, a Xsan storage device, or a Leopard Server. Time Machine is sort of a specialty type of a backup. Time Machine basically allows you to go back to any day in the past (given that you had your backup installed and configured on or before that date), and view your system exactly as it was at that point. This is a leap above typical backup software that simply creates a copy of your files but provides no feel for the state of your system at that time. It also features intelligent backup scheduling such as during a system shutdown. Your Backup will pause and resume it’s work when your Mac becomes active again.

Restoring is a Snap

When the time comes for you to do a restore on your Mac, using Time Machine is a snap. Simply select the date and time you would like to recover to, and your machine will be restored to the exact state it was on that given day and time, even on your new Mac.

Your TrueStar Technology Expert