ksmith: (shirley)
ksmith ([personal profile] ksmith) wrote2012-07-26 12:08 am
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Okey dokey

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.

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[identity profile] silvergryphyn.livejournal.com 2012-07-27 12:47 am (UTC)(link)
Pretty much the same except Carbonite's a bit cheaper ($60/year for unlimited backup from one computer vs. $120/year for the larger home plans from Dropbox). And I think at the time when I was researching, I didn't like their interface as much (although that may have improved). I'm always a big fan of good multiplatform support including iPhone and Dropbox wasn't always so great on Macs (no longer the case I believe). I use Carbonite for mp3 and audiobook backup from just one machine (200+ GB) and then SpiderOak for all the stuff, Docs & Pictures, I want to keep in sync and backed up.

Fortunately, most of these places have free small accounts or a time limited trial so you can check out the interface before committing.
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