My New Mac

[Texas Mac Man]

I bought (on eBay) a 21.5" 2.7GHz Core i5 iMac running Lion. It has a 1TB hard drive. It replaces my 10-year old G4 1.25GHz MDD PowerMac desktop. The G4 has been a workhorse and never failed, but it's quite old it can't run the latest apps or browsers. Plus, by today's standards it's slow. The iMac is many times faster.  My old apps, will not run on the iMac, so I'll have to buy upgraded apps. I'm going to miss the ability to run many classic apps in classic mode. I was able to find a GutenPrint driver to operate my old Canon i960 printer, however, the driver doesn't have all the printer's controls. I'll probably get a new printer when my ink supply runs out.

For backup, do you use Time Machine or an externally connected Firewire hard drive? Frys currently has a WD 500GB Passport Edge HD on sale for $49, however, it will run at USB 2.0 speeds compared to Firewire 800.

I'm also going to miss classic's Scrapbook. Is there a Lion app that's similar?

[kimmer]

Congrats on your shiny new iMac. I sure like mine, and trust you'll enjoy yours.

I use TimeMachine and SuperDuper. They each have their own external drive and they are daisychained and run through firewire. Best investment I ever made was those two drives. I'm considering a third simply for my photos and such, but don't tell Sneakers.  I got my drives from OWC and highly recommend them. Perhaps someone else knows about the drive that Frys has available.

Scrapbook ... interesting question and hopefully someone will have an answer.





Moving to Tech where it will get more notices.

[Xairbusdriver]

Not sure what Scrapbook is as compared to the Clipboard. Seems I remember something like "Scrapbook" back in PPC days... OS 8/9? There are several multi-clipboard apps around that let you save just about any kind of data from text (including formatting) to images to music to ??!! I use PTHPasteboard... when I can remember to use it!

Definitely use TimeMachine but also another cloning backup like SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner. They save stuff in different ways and times. I've used TM to Restore dozens of files, one at a time over several years. So far, I've never had the occasion to Start up with SD. But drives so inexpensive, why not have both methods?!

Many of us had rather know for sure what the drive is that comes in the enclosure, so we buy the two items separately. I know you are great with a screwdriver, which is all it takes to "build" your own external drive. Just get the drive with the longest warranty (5 years, as far as I know). And get one that runs at 7200rpm rather than 5400. Unless you store lots of video and or music files, you probably won't notice the speed difference between USB 2 and FireWire 800 (even with a 5400rpm drive!). Most of the time they'll mainly be doing backups, running in the background. OTOH, the USB versions will slow down other processes during those backups since it uses the cpus, unlike FW.

Your first TM backup will probably take hours. Don't be alarmed or worried! After that, they are usually done in seconds. SD/CCC backups will also take quite a while, every time. But you can schedule them for times you're not at the computer or even have them run and then Shutdown the machine late at night.

[jchuzi]

I have the luxury of having extra internal drives, but external should work fine as well. I have a TM drive and a cloned drive (SuperDuper). The advantage of a clone is that you can boot from it in emergencies. I have never had an emergency that required this but I do boot from it to run Disk Warrior on my main drive. That's a LOT faster than booting from the DW CD. Once in awhile, I have used the TM drive to recover specific versions of files that had been replaced during the cloning process.

I can't speak for Carbon Copy Cloner, but you can have SD do a smart update, meaning that it only copies those files that have changed since the last update. This takes a fraction of the time that a full clone requires. In my case, the smart update is completed in about 10 minutes. In contrast, a full clone can take 45 minutes or more. These times depend upon the parameters of your system, of course, so don't take them literally.

[Paddy]

I use SuperDuper for cloned backups. I've owned it for years now and am consistently pleased with the incredible support from developer Dave Nanian. However, I've read a lot of good reviews of CCC lately too, and it does do a couple of things SD doesn't do. See: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1566380

Note: CCC has recently started charging for their software - it's now $39.99, which is $12 more than SD.

As for drives, I'm no fan of the pre-assembled sort, with the sole exception of my terrific little Hitachi Touros (1 TB, 2.5" USB 3.0 drives that run off one USB port.) However, you don't have USB 3.0, so I'd consider a FW 800 enclosure from OWC and then put in the best 1TB drive you can find. I'm partial to WD Caviar Blacks.

Do not buy a backup drive that is smaller than your internal drive - especially for Time Machine, which just keeps on eating space. And generally, you'll do better with a 1 TB or 2TB drive these days, in terms of cost per GB.

[Jack W]

What Paddy said.

I have two external drives connected with firewire 800/400.

One for SuperDuper! clone, and the other for Time Machine.

I have a second drive for SD! backups, which I rotate to my Safe Deposit Box 1 or 2 times a month.

Both are 1TB Hitachi drives in Macally G-S350SUA cases with fw, usb and . . .

I back up regularly, but on my schedule.

Again, Dave Nanian offers excellent support for SD!

I love the Macally-Hitachi combo, they just work!!!

OWC has a whole line of cases, and I have had very good luck with their products.

Jack