Okey dokey

[ksmith]

Came home from Ravinia–Joshua Bell, wonderful as always–played with pups, did dishes, had a piece of toast. Opened up the laptop. Time Machine kicked in as I was phutzing around…

…and it’s telling me it can’t find the Airport Extreme Base Station. I can go online, and everything–the external HD, the Base Station, the laptop–is functioning.

So I go online and find out that Apple doesn’t support Time Machine with Airport Extreme. People use the set-up, but it isn’t reliable and data can become corrupted and I may not even know it.

Okay.

If that’s the case, I don’t feel comfortable using it anymore. What’s the point? So what’s the best way to save works-in-progress? Save directly to an external HD with a hardwire connection? DropBox? I can’t use iCloud because it doesn’t work with Scrivener.

(A few minutes pass)

Okay, I unplugged the external HD, waited a few seconds, and plugged it back in. External HD woke up, AEBS read it, everything is talking to everything else again. I did see that sometimes TM/AEBS can’t wake up a sleeping HD, and the connection fails. But the fact remains that this is an unsupported, unreliable set-up.

If I use DropBox, does it function as a back-up, or do I save my files directly to DropBox?

See, I miss the old Backup application that worked with Mobile Me. I set up the files I wanted backed up–not the whole damn laptop, but just the writing files–and it backed up on the schedule I set up. Clockwork. Never failed.

Guess I could burn a DVD. Does anyone do that anymore?

Mirrored from Kristine Smith.

Comments

[nlbarber]

I'm using Dropbox with my iMac (still on Snow Leopard), a work MacBook Pro, and my iPad. On the iMac, I have a local folder that I access just like any other Mac folder, except that every change I make in it is copied up to Dropbox. If I'm offline and make a change, Dropbox will start the sync automatically once I'm reconnected.

I like Dropbox so well because I always have a loca copy, yet I don't have to think about pushing changes up to "the cloud". Sort of the same way I can forget about Time Machine and its backups until I need it...or like you, until something goes awry and the iMac can't see my TM.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Are there step by step instructions for setting up the Local file/Dropbox? IIRC, when I tried to set up my wip file, I moved it to Dropbox so it was no longer housed in my laptop. It sounds as though you are saving to a regular old file that regularly talks to Dropbox. I didn't see a way to do that, but I confess I tried to feel my way through a set-up instead of, you know, reading instructions.

[nlbarber]

As best I remember I just grabbed their Mac installer, and this was the default setup. I think I initially set up my account on the Web page, then ran the installer on my iMac, signed in, and the files started to sync.

This help page reinforces that memory:
https://www.dropbox.com/help/4/en