Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

I had been using a Unix command for Mac backups. My recent experience with a dead disk drive showed that the strategy didn’t quite work.

I don’t like commercial products that make backups for disks. My worry is that the backup data are useless without the product to unpack them. Hence, for my iMac desktop computer, for several years I have used a BASH script based on the Unix (Linux OSiX – take your pick) rsynch command.

My script worked. All the files were on a backup disk. The fault lay in the applications and how they reside on an OS X computer. Why can’t they simply sit on the disk. No, there are some other files and bytes and such here and there on the computer’s disk. You have to know where they all are in order to restore them correctly.

I suppose the problems were my own doing for not understanding all the intricacies.

Henceforth, I am using Apple’s Time Machine product for backups. It is simple to use. I am not happy with this, but I’ll have to get over my unhappiness and just concentrate on my writing.