So I finally bought a MAC

[Ex-Member]

the people that don't have backups ahead of time.......your macs drive has the same life expectency as the drive in a pc.anything that spins 5000 to 10,000 rpms is going to fail. no bearing lasts forever. even though its a mac you still wanna keep backups. good luck with the new machine.

Easiest way I've found to run backups... Get a HD of equal or greater capacity than your internal HD. Smash that into an external USB enclosure (~$15). Building your own external HD is about half the price of a "real" external HD, and it does the same damn thing. This will be your backup HD; keep it in a safe place.

There's an OS Install CD that came with your computer. Boot up off that (Hold 'C' key at startup). When that's all loaded, one of the menus has "Disk utility" in there. Make an image of the internal HD to the external HD. Takes about 2hrs on my MB, that's an 80GB HD. It's really only about 15mins of work, get it running then go take a shower, wrench on the sled, watch TV, etc until it's done. Big bonus to this method is that you already have all the software you need to make a backup. Don't need to buy anything to do it; just need discipline to remember to do it every month or so.

After it's done, I usually verify/fix permissions on the disk (Disk utility does this too) and reboot.

I do this once a month; haven't lost any data in years and I don't plan on starting anytime soon.

Important things (Keychain, palm database) I back up more often, and usually to a few places. I can't afford to lose that data.

 

[skidooer1]

agreed on building the backup. sometimes its the same price to build vs buying a built, but its nice to have a drive that can be swapped quickly.not saying you can't with others but the western digitals and other brands won't go back together after tearing apart once.lol

 

[redlineguy]

love my Mac, welcome to the great world of Mac








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[Dogmeat]

 

[MARCUSO]

Yeah, an external is the way to go. Like I said, I have now 2 500 gig HD's, and I used one for the external drive, Time machine is pretty cool.
I think I will use my other one for my PC, which I am gonna keep just in case LOL

My nephew is gonna set me up with linda.com, get me a password, and I can go in and learn.
He is also gonna hook me up with some cool software.

 

[Snowlover]

My first 2 imac 20's crashed and burned. Apple care had to send new ones.

It works fine and is real nice looking but you cannot honestly say you like iphoto That program sucks. THere has to be another picture software that is useful!!

I do belive I am stuck in a windows world. It is what I learned on and what I have to use @ work every day. THere are some real annoying differences that do not come second nature to an old windows user.