Drobo failure
Man, I love my Drobo. I even wrote about it for our local alt-newsweekly. We’ve installed Drobos at several clients, and we’ve never had occasion to consider any other mass-storage device. Their support has been stellar … up to now.
Two weeks ago, the drive volume on my Drobo went belly-up. Couldn’t access it except for just long enough — THANK GOODNESS — to back up everything. I tried reformatting it but the damn thing won’t stay mounted.
The thing is, I wouldn’t mind as much if the Drobo engineers weren’t still, purportedly, looking at my diagnostic file, after a WEEK. I’m stuck. It was easy enough to retrieve my financial data, but my music and multimedia remain in limbo on a single external hard drive. I want to try another reformat, or maybe buy an additional SATA drive to increase storage (it wasn’t near full, and all of the disk lights were all-systems-go green), but I really just need to hear something from the engineers to set my mind at ease.
Stop Time Machine from nagging about every external disk
Straight from afp548.com:
Wednesday, January 09 2008 @ 09:37 pm CST
Contributed by: macshome
A while back I posted a tip on a useful, but little known, preference setting for dealing with the Kerberos Agent dialog box. Today I’m posting another little known setting to handle an even more annoying box. The time machine “Use this disk for backup?” dialog.
The scenario is like this. Every time you plug in a different external disk time machine asks if you want to use it for backups. This is fine for the home user that can just click the No button, and get on with life. This is a giant pain in a managed deployment though as the setting is set per machine, not disk. Imagine if you have 3,000 Macs and 500 external disks that float around. That’s a lot of nag windows and a lot of chances for users to screw up. What we need is a way to set a policy that tells time machine to not ask about every disk that is plugged in. That way we can guide the users to the correct result. Here it is (one line):
defaults write com.apple.timemachine DoNotOfferNewDisksForBackup -bool YESAs with the Kerberos setting, I would push this with policy so that you don’t need to touch every Mac by hand.
Totally great enhancements to OS X
I’m editing this from my old web page. I’ll do an updated list soon; meanwhile I tweaked this, struck out some old stuff, and emboldened my favorites. Since I’ve been blogging, I’ve posted many more entries like this, but I want to preserve this list as a sample of the Mac tweaks I use all the time. I believe that the key to making OS X work best for you is to customize it. There are so many fantastic 3rd-party apps and add-ons out there, and often for free. The modern Mac can handle more of these tweaks than one might think, and without hiccupping a bit. If I like them, and they’re shareware, I’ve paid the few bucks, and they’ve had a great effect on my productivity. (Note: this list is mostly not about stand-alone applications, but rather plug-ins that modify the operation of the Mac.)
SMARTreporter - get notified if one of your hard drives is going to fail. Of course, even if it does, you’re fine, because you’re backing up every day, right?
MondoMouse - I’m putting this so close the top because I’m totally in love with it! Resize or move windows without clicking on a window handle. Totally crucial for smaller screens, especially.
Déjà Vu – If you’re not backing up every day, you will lose something precious at some time in your computing life. I may not even touch your computer if you don’t have an external backup. So, we can use Déjà Vu to schedule backups. Plug in your Firewire drive, and enjoy peace of mind. SuperDuper and ChronoSync are also fantastic. Slightly different tools for different situations. Time Machine is an amazing piece of software, but after almost a year with it, I still find it very hard to trust as one’s exclusive backup method. We almost always have at least a SuperDuper clone on a separate partition. (By the way, if you were wondering, Apple’s Backup is kind of terrible, but the next version of OS X —10.5 Leopard, due this Spring — will include a program called Time Machine that promises a great new era in backups.)
AppleScript and Automator – Yes, I know these are built-in, but the point is fantastic sites such as Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes and automator.us and Automator World are just fantastic for boosting one’s efficiency.
LaunchBar – The future of search was in our hands well before Tiger was announced! I can’t wait to see how LB incorporates with Apple’s next-generation operating system.
Quicksilver – A lot like LaunchBar, but free and with all kinds of neat little plug-ins built in. Quicksilver can also replace Spark to launch apps with keyboard shortcuts. I prefer the LaunchBar/Spark/Synergy/PTHPasteboard setup, mostly because Quicksilver ran a little slow on my PowerBook. Now that I’ve added memory to my laptop, I might give QS another try.
Default Folder X – How to get to favorite and recent files instantaneously. Tried-and-true since OS 9. Fantastic in a production environment.
PTHPasteboard – This free multi-item clipboard dramatically reduces my having to switch between applications. Keyboard activated, of course, or what would be the point. (BTW, Quicksilver has this, and Spark, and Synergy, all built-in.)
Spark – Set up your own shortcut keys
Unsanity haxies – These folks have been the most consistently great developers for minor-but-major add-ons for OS X. Check out:
- WindowShade – Bring back that useful little OS 9 feature
- Menu Master – instantly assign a keyboard shortcut to any menu item
Peter Maurer – I don’t use these so much anymore, but Maurer’s stuff is genius, much like the Unsanity group. He does Butler, which is a lot like LaunchBar and QuickSilver, but you should also look at:
- TextExpander – Autocompletes text that you type frequently (the company SmileOnMyMac bought it from him recently)
- Witch – Enhances the Apple-Tab application switching to include all open windows
Salling Clicker – the best reason to buy a Bluetooth phone
So cool, and man I miss it from my Sony-Ericsson & Treo days, but it ain’t available for the iPhone. The developer comments here.
MailUnreadStatusBar – puts a count of unread e-mails in your menu bar
Or you could go for Inbox Zero.
Synergy – best-of-breed iTunes control
You Control – I gotta admit, for a one-stop package, it’s worth every cent.
Haven’t used it in a while. It seemed to take a lot of resources.
MenuCalendarClock – iCal integration in a highly configurable menu-bar clock. And now there’s a new, free menu bar widget called MagiCal that does much of the same thing.
Text Wielder – a collection that will show in the Services submenu of any Cocoa (OS X-native) application. Look for more Services, such as CalcService, on VersionTracker. (Note: The link to TextWielder will begin downloading the disk image.)
Services were a fine idea, but they just never seem to have made it.
SBook – convert text to an Address Book card
Definitely made moot by Leopard’s Data Detectors
Just good software:
VueScan – The best scanning software available, and compatible with just about any scanner you can plug into your Mac
GraphicConverter – a great “can opener” for hundreds of kinds of image files
Disable backups to speed iPhone/iPod touch syncing
- The backups can take anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours.
- The backups are not “incremental,” i.e. they backup all the data on the phone.
- If someone calls you, the backup is interrupted.
- Whenever the backup is cancelled or interrupted — when, y’know, have to use the phone — that backup data set is corrupted.
I have several (more than 30) applications installed in my iPhone 2.0 (some of them are over 10MB). I’ve been a bit disappointed with the oh-so-slow syncs in iTunes due to the required backup process. Searching a bit, I found that I could disable the backups by setting a hidden iTunes preference. Quit iTunes, open Terminal, and enter this command:
defaults write com.apple.itunes DeviceBackupsDisabled -bool YES
From the comments:
Also check out the free Backup Disabler, which is probably just a GUI for this hint.
UPDATE: iPhone firmware 2.0.1 dramatically sped up my backups! Yaaaaaaaay! We’ll see if it fixes the other stuff. In brief testing, the phone feels less crashy.
UPDATE: The backups got slower again after I started accumulating a lot of third-party data on the phone again.
UPDATE: iPhone firmware 2.1 is waaaaaaaaaaay faster on backups, and on installing apps.
Leopard Server: file names are screwed up when connecting over SMB
Apple is all too aware of the chronic Apple File Protocol authentication issues with 10.5 Server. Some people have fixed this with a cron task that restarts AFP, say, every night. In my experience, this starts to corrupt file sharing altogether, to the point that, eventually, nobody can log in over AFP.
So I’ve been switching people to using SMB (Windows file sharing), which sucks just on principle, but it also cuts out Time Machine backups. I am also nervous about it losing Apple-specific file resources.
Anyhoo, at one site where I’ve asked everyone to connect over SMB, several on the server appeared with weird random file names, such as “_GNEWM~A” or “4UI5WM~7″. Didn’t matter which machine or which user account I was using to connect.
After some poking around, I figured out that folders and files with odd characters in their path, and especially with spaces at the ends of their names, were the culprits. Extra long names, too.
I don’t know if this is an historic problem with OS X Server, and I just never ran into it because most of my clients use Macs, or whether this is specific to 10.5. Regardless, right now OS X Server is hurting my schedule really bad, and I can’t believe I’m having to be wary of proferring it as a recommendation.
Backups: How not to assume nuthin’
I am using Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my MacBook. Any suggestions on how to confirm the stuff is there?
Your backups: Don’t assume nuthin’
Macworld keynote: the Cliff notes
My impressions are the same as everybody else’s, I suppose. So here’s a quick recap.
Yay, movie rentals!
Boo, 24 hours to watch ‘em!
Yay, movie rentals and other shit on Apple TV, justifying the money early adopters (including your humble) paid.
Yay, iPhone updates!
Boo, lame iPhone updates!
Yay, MacBook Air!
Yaaaaaaaaay, MacBook Air, although the maximum of 2Gb RAM is a smart move by Apple to prevent it being used for serious work like graphics or photo manip. (I make grandmas buy 2Gb for their Macs.)
Yay, Time Capsule!
Boo, not letting existing Airport Extremes use their Air Disks for Time Machine backups! (Although one can do it with Mac OS X client or server.)
Yay, Manhattans at Jilian’s next door to MacWorld…………!
Security cables
A little while back, the offices of two of my clients got broken into, only a couple of days apart. The similarities were weird! Both doctors’ offices, and both got 2 iMacs ripped off from the front desk.
This started to read like a Dickens novel: In one office, we had daily backups running to a server, and that office ran out the next day and got new machines (ultimately reimbursed by insurance). We restored from their backups, and they were back in business. In the other office, they had ignored warnings about backing up, and they had to re-input months of data. Some files, including pictures, could never be reproduced.
But in both cases, the entire situation could have been averted if security cables had been attached to the machines in the first place. Almost any computer — certainly any Mac — and many peripherals such as external hard drives come with little holes in the chassis that accommodate a security lock standardized by the peripheral manufacturer Kensington. Several companies make cables that fit into these holes, and are locked by key or combination.
It is nearly impossible to force the lock out of the hole without ruining the computer’s case (and thus its resale value), and most would-be burlgars don’t carry the bolt cutters necessary to sever the cables.
Here are some Amazon links to cables by Kensington and Targus. I bought a couple of each, and they’re fine. Be careful, as this one by Belkin (a company I usually like a lot for its quality and lifetime warranties) doesn’t fit some locks.
All of my home Macs, and their backup drives, are now locked down to their furniture, and I have a cable with me always for my laptop, in case I need to walk away from it in a busy environment.
Happy — and secure — computing!
End User: Nirvana for Gigabytes
Published in San Antonio Current, July 19, 2007
Data, welcome to Nirvana: a small black box with lights, called Drobo, the “data robot.” One pull quote called it “the iPod of mass storage.”
I’ve been waiting a decade for this.
The Drobo (drobo.com) is the first device that can take multiple hard drives — of unequal size, by any manufacturer — and unify them into one giant walk-in closet for your digital stuff. If any one drive fails, you just pop in a new one. If you run out of space, you buy bigger drives and swap them in. All the while, the Drobo stays on, and you don’t lose access to your files for even a second.
If you’ve heard of RAID, Drobo takes RAID out to the shed and beats it with a belt.
For four years, I’ve made almost every one of my clients buy an external hard drive to sit on their desk, automatically backing up their stuff. Each time, I’ve said, “When that drive fills up, we’ll get you a new, bigger one and you can stash the first one in a closet.” It may seem wasteful, but as I discussed in my last column, very few computer users can afford to lose what’s on their hard drives.
I want to mention here that, if you do suffer a hard drive failure, services exist that can typically recover your data. Drive Savers of California has one of the best reputation (and employs a crisis-intervention counsellor). Their work can run between $1,000 and $3,000, but there are more affordable and locally based agencies. Also, the $89 software SpinRite, by Steve Gibson at grc.com, reportedly does the best job at recovering data outside of a clean room.
Back to good vibrations: Mass storage used to be unnecessary for non-geeks. Now any new computer can help anyone become a musician or filmmaker, work that takes lots of space to produce.
On the other end, internet-based consumers have put billions of dollars into pure 0s and 1s, assets that exist nowhere but hard drives. In January, the iTunes Store sold its two billionth song, and it offers more than 500 movies, and whole seasons of many TV shows. Amazon recently announced its own forays into digital downloads of music and video. Sales of physical albums continue to drop, while downloadable purchases claim bigger market share every day.
Then there are the terabytes of free (or free-if-you-know-where-to-look) files being downloaded every day. (Between us, did you know you could have your computer automagically grab new episodes of your favorte TV shows, sans commercials, without any subscription? Whatever you do, don’t visit tvrss.net, and don’t download, for example, Miro-né-Democracy Player, which also has wonderfully legitimate uses.)
So, the Drobo lets you stash that multimedia audio-visual glut in an expandable, protected space. Now that the first 1Tb (terabyte) internal hard drives have hit the market, the Drobo can combine four of those puppies for a total of 2.7Tb redundant storage. (Redundancy in computerdom, as opposed to, say, a philosophy major, is a boon.)
I can’t report that this magnificence comes cheap. The Drobo is $500 for the enclosure alone. But gigabytes have become very cheap, indeed; a year ago I advised people to be happy getting $1/gigabyte. Today, I paid $100 for a 500Gb drive. Three of those will put 930Gb in my Drobo. That, my friends, is 2,000 movies or 300,000 songs, whichever comes first. By the time I fill that (and I will), drives will be more capacious and markedly cheaper.
The Drobo currently only connects over a slightly slower USB 2.0. Many forum-posters have griped about this limitation, but it makes sense in the way the iPod makes sense: Keep it simple, and fewer things will screw up.
I bought my Drobo in August, and it is everything I expected. I feel a lot more secure knowing my data is (almost completely) safe from drive failure.
And… iPhone… Ooooh, you knew I was gonna sneak it in somewhere!
Jonathan Marcus publishes online at themacwhisperer.blogspot.com.
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