Free Sophos Antivirus Software

[Xairbusdriver]

I'm slightly confused at the gentleman's use of "without resorting to undue force." I suppose he means he did not use "Force quit," but I'm not sure. If TM can't find it's previous setup, it will simply start over from scratch. Quitting, even 'gently' but incorrectly, can damage any database or even the directory entry for it. Ergo, "Nothing to see here, move along, please."

More concerning to me is why anyone would not use Time Machine, assuming they had an extra drive to use with it. While a daily Super Duper backup is great, since you can boot from it, it will not have anything on it that you may have created and trashed in the last 24 hours. That's really where TM shines, you have to create a delete something within an hour before it would not make it to the backup. As has been said many times, these are two different types of backups and they compliment each other very nicely, and TM is already installed!

But the same can be said for this Sophos app and ClamXav. The Sophos app is similar to TM in that it runs all the time and that allows it to fine malware even while it may be downloading. ClamXav is more like SD; here's the state of your machine at this particular time; perhaps after you have allowed something to be installed by giving you password to the OS without using your brain!!!

Of course, my argument about being up-to-date still stands, neither app will find anything it doesn't "know" about. At the end of the day, the protection level is only as strong as the weakest link...the human link!

[Xairbusdriver]

I downloaded the free Sophos app. Excluded the Time Machine volume. Been running about 1.5 hours. "173,460 files remaining." It will probably be finished when I return from Church in about three hours.

Pictures at 10!

[gunug]

QUOTE

Pictures at 10!

I think I've seen pictures of you in church; strangely enough!  

[Paddy]

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Nov 10 2010, 06:52 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I downloaded the free Sophos app.

Ok...I'll bite. Why?

Or do you need something to do on the 9th of the month? Trouble is, it's there now and runs in the background. Again...WHY bother? If it ain't broke...

(I assume, Kim, that you meant the 7th day, not the 7th Saturday - or maybe you DID mean the 7th Saturday of the month, in which case you intend never to run Clam! )

[kimmer]

QUOTE(Paddy @ Nov 10 2010, 06:42 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

(I assume, Kim, that you meant the 7th day, not the 7th Saturday - or maybe you DID mean the 7th Saturday of the month, in which case you intend never to run Clam! )

No, that was just a smart a$$ remark meaning I run Clam when I'm bored and need something to do.

[Xairbusdriver]

Why? To see if I can see/feel any difference? To see if it really inspects files as they download as opposed to when I open them. I never "open" an .exe or weird file that comes with an email, but I don't want to try to remember ClamX before forwarding it to a Windoze user? But it's hard to tell (for me, anyway) if it really checks during a download or in creating a .dmg or some other later time.

So far, I can't see/feel anything different but it's hard to count in milloseconds! Activity Monitor show three processes with "Sophos" in their name. Two are running as root, the other one with my admin. Each has four threads. None are using enough cycles to show anything except "0.0%" I'll try to remember to watch when I download something or check mail...

[Johanbgoot]

FYI, I ran Sophos on three machines with the external back up drives turned off.  We have not lost any of the backups. I turn on the drives and run Time Machine at the end of the day on my iMac and my wife's Macbook and then turn off the external drives. My son looks after his own back ups.

[Paddy]

QUOTE

I turn on the drives and run Time Machine at the end of the day on my iMac and my wife's Macbook and then turn off the external drives.

You do realize, Johan, that this pretty much defeats the purpose of Time Machine, which is to provide constant backups (once an hour) so that you have previous versions of things should you wish to revert etc.? The TM backups are not bootable.

With your pattern of once a day backups, you might be better served by SuperDuper, which does give you a bootable backup. No previous versions of course, but you're losing a lot of yours right now. Food for thought, perhaps.

[Johanbgoot]

It is not clear why I need to back up hourly if I have not done anything but a few emails that are of little importance, played a couple of computer games, and perhaps gone to a couple of favourite websites (i.e. flightlevel350.com) to watch some videos.  If I write a letter or do some translation and want that backed up I turn on my external drive and tell Time Machine to "back up now".

I have no qualms about leaving my external drive on if it serves a purpose, but does it?  I do have Super Duper should I really use it instead?

Please let me know folks what you think.

Johan

[Xairbusdriver]

We all know what "opinions" are worth! But you did ask...

The way you are using TM and SD has only one big difference: You will still have daily back-ups via TM until the time comes when they are converted into weekly back-ups, and then monthly. The SD back-ups are completely replace each day or whenever they are made.

TM is a historical back-up with ever expanding time periods; hourly, daily, weekly and monthly. They will consume as much space as you let them have.

SD back-ups are a snap shot of your hard drive at the moment the back-up is made, but it can be bootable. The size remains relatively the same. If you use the Smart Back-up method, you should be able to keep at least one version of older files at the slight cost of increasing back-up size (but only a very small fraction of a TM back-up).

Both these apps can be run manually, if you like that sort of thing. Personally, I think that is one reason we have computers; let them do the common, redundant, boring, detailed stuff. Let apps run on a schedule that's easiest for me. For SD, that means automatically starting up just before I usually turn the Mac off. For TM, I don't bother it, except to retrieve stuff, it runs as long as the Mac does. I'm not convinced that turning an electronic device (be it a light bulb, hard drive or the Space Shuttle) ON/off/ON/off/ON/off... is any better for it than letting it run almost continuously.

Of course, we are not locked in to any particular method of backing up. JUST DO IT!

[Jack W]

Johan,

I'm with you.

If you have SD! clones and daily TM backups, I think that is good coverage.

I wouldn't mind at all if TM only kept 1/Mo on data older than 2-3 months.

Because, by the time TM backups are that old, who can remember individual files, and when they were created?

I do SD! backups at least once a day or two, and TM 1-3 per day.

Jack

[Xairbusdriver]

You can force TM to use less space by limiting the amount you let it "see." Use a volume that is already heavily populated with files, create a partition with only a few hundred gigabytes, etc. It will start deleting back-ups when it thinks the disk is full, which is simply when it can't create a new back-up because of not having enough space. I think of it as a "historical" picture of almost everything I have (or had) on the drive as far back as the space allowed will accommodate.

Actually, each hours back-up takes very, very little space. It only has what has changed in the last hour. Although it will display the entire disk (or whatever you've asked it to back-up), it is all done with smoke, mirrors and a little software. Basically, all the previously backed-up stuff is elsewhere on the disk. What you see is similar to a bunch of aliases. If you haven't created anything in the last hour, the new "back-up" is basically just another file pointing to the same ones that were on the previous one. Quite efficient use of hard drive space, actually. It's not simply another complete copy of what's on the drive at back-up time.

SD, on the other hand, has the advantage of being bootable (in case you can't find your install disks). But if you select the first two types of back-ups (During copy), you will lose any files that were on the old one but not on the drive at back-up time. And the last two choices will over-write any previous file that has changed. It's not what I would call a "historical" back-up. It may go back quite some time for a particular file that hasn't been changed since it was first saved, but any others will either be over-written with the change or simply deleted. It's more like a "snapshot" of your drive at a moment in time.

So far, we have a choice as to how we use these two different methods. But, in all fairness and honesty, everyone should do everything as I dew! Or, at least like Steve says!