E
arly last week my Mac Book Pro crashed right after I installed a new font. I put the new font into my system and then restarted my computer. When my computer attempted to restart I found it stuck in a restart loop. Very frustrating.
I backup every computer on my network every hour on the hour using Apple’s Time Machine backup software. The backups are stored on a device called a Drobo.
The Drobo I have is a first generation Drobo, but it is still a very sound machine.
My first thought to resolve my computers crash was to restore my computer using Time Machine. I began the restoring process and 12 hours later I was saddened to learn that the restore was unsuccessful.
My second attempt to resolve my computers crash was to reinstall the system software using the CD that came with my Mac Book Pro. This too proved to be unsuccessful. A quick trip to the Apple store and it was soon obvious that my hard drive had failed.
Returning home with a new hard drive installed, I attach my Drobo directly to my laptop. Because my laptop is normally backed up over my network, my Drobo stores my backup file in a different format which makes it impossible for Apple’s Time Machine to restore from.
I was finally able to restore my computer back to its normal state, which is the point of this blog entry. My solution was to insert the install CD that came with my computer and then restart from the CD. Instead of reinstalling the system software, I used the restore application found on the CD. This application was successful in accessing my laptop’s backup file on my Drobo. 12 hours later my computer was back to normal.
Hope this helps someone out there.
By Aric C. Hoek, owner and creator of Ten Houston Wedding Photographers
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Sounds like you could use another piece in your backup strategy to minimise down-time and add another layer of redundancy.
Have a look at SuperDuper from Short Pocket http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html. I use SuperDuper to maintain a bootable clone of my system drive. If that drive fails i can continue working directly from the clone, and then reverse the process back onto the replacement drive when the time comes. You can schedule the backups, and write to a disk image which can be stored on your drobo. The smart update feature (incremental) only copies new or changed files from the last clone, so its really a quick process for such a solid backup.
Another one to look at is Carbon Copy Cloner http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html, although with no experience I cannot provide any insight except for the fact that it is free (SD goes for $28). At the time CCC did not support incremental updates for Leopard, but that has now changed, so well worth a look.
I only rely on Time Machine for those accidental deletions and corrupted files, and a catch-net for a system restore.
Good luck with the new drive.