One Canuck's Radio Weblog

  Sunday, 19 February 2006

.< 4:41:09 PM >
If You Forgot to Backup...

Data loss. It happens to the best of us. The most technical among us, in fact, often feel so smug with our skills that we forget to backup for months on end. Sometimes for years. I can't even begin to count the number of IT directors I've helped who've lost it all.

Well, I have all my users backed up to a server, and the server itself is backed up to tape. But I never realized that anything on my computer was that important...

Doh. Double-doh.

Today's is a lesson in how to recover precious data. We all have something on our computers that's important to us, otherwise we probably wouldn't have the computer in the first place.

< 4:38:23 PM >

iTunes 6 has a feature that enables you to convert your existing QuickTime videos to iPod-compatible movies. This is a great feature that a lot of folks don't know about. Previously, you either had to buy third party software or upgrade to QuickTime Pro to easily rip to this custom .m4v format.

The process in iTunes couldn't be simpler. Use the "Add to Library..." command to bring your movie into iTunes. Then click once on the movie to highlight it, now choose "Advanced > Convert Selection for iPod." iTunes with rip your move to the appropriate iPod configuration, then save it as a copy in your Library, leaving the original untouched.

< 4:22:20 PM >

Well, now that we have a possible candidate for another Mac trojan (not a virus, not a worm, not an exploit, and not good code) I think now's as good a time as any to cover some basic Mac OS X Security so that people not familiar with such things have more than an ice cube's chance in Phoenix at keeping secure.

Mac OS X is a secure operating system in that it's multi-user and has limits on what some user accounts can do. If an account is setup as a basic user, that user can only hurt himself, not the whole system or other users. However, in the interest of being "friendly" to new users, Apple leaves of a lot of the secure bits off for the first user created and this means that trojans like this week's can cause some pretty nasty problems on your system.

< 4:20:46 PM >

< 3:39:30 PM >

Why is backup such a pain? Mainly it's because we have to interrupt our workflow in order to do it, but for a good number of people it's about remembering to backup or to be connected to the medium to backup to. Even if you remember to backup and set it up and set it going, your computer is unusable during that timeframe (both because of the system activity and because you don't want to change files, if possible).

It's time to take the pain out of backups. I'll discuss some solutions for both of these problems and I'm sure some of them will fit your workflow. First, however, I'll talk about the types of backups - especially the kinds you don't need as a consumer.

< 3:39:15 PM >