[9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Axel Belinfante]

Just curious what 9fans use, for home and/or work, to backup their macs.

time machine?
to a local (usb,firewire) disk?
or remote (time capsule, nas (not officially sanctioned by apple))?

or eat our own dog food and use eg. venti?
or tra?

or no backup necessary because everything important is already elsewhere?
(in the cloud, or in a version management system)

or?


context: we are reconsidering how to do this at work,
and prefer not to reinvent the wheel.

(at home I just backup my mac to a readynas box using time machine).


Sorry for the off-topic nature of this post, but the fact
that 9fans will be aware of less-common solutions like venti -
not to mention the presence of coraid people here -
made me look for experience/expertise here.

Regards,
Axel.

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Anthony Sorace]

> Just curious what 9fans use, for home and/or work, to backup their macs.


I use venti. On servers, I use /n/sources/contrib/anothy/bin/rc/vacbak from cron
and have the system submit the score to my plan9 server. I tried using vbackup
first, but there's a huge volume of stuff on these systems I don't need to have
backups of (and couldn't figure out how to access the results from plan9). vacme
should be suitable for any unix host with p9p installed (with path changes for
your local setup).

At home I have a similar script that's a bit more OS X specific that operates
similarly. I use it periodically, but (as with any on-demand backup system) never
as often as I ought.

When non-plan9 people ask me this question I tell them to get an external
disk and use Time Machine.

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)]

> When non-plan9 people ask me this question I tell them to get an external
> disk and use Time Machine.

I would tell it to Plan9 folks as well.  There is no way to
recover from a catestrophic disk failure on a Mac using venti.

Two days ago I spent $137 on a 1TB external USB disk.  I now have an
encrypted backup of my laptop from which I can recover my complete
environment on new hardware.  If your scheme can't do that, it's not a
backup.

I.e. don't confuse 'backup' with 'archive'.  If you need a backup
in the true sense of the word, your only option is Time Machine.

--lyndon

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[erik quanstrom]

On Fri Sep 30 13:51:19 EDT 2011, lyndon@orthanc.ca wrote:
> > When non-plan9 people ask me this question I tell them to get an external
> > disk and use Time Machine.
>
> I would tell it to Plan9 folks as well.  There is no way to
> recover from a catestrophic disk failure on a Mac using venti.
>
> Two days ago I spent $137 on a 1TB external USB disk.  I now have an
> encrypted backup of my laptop from which I can recover my complete
> environment on new hardware.  If your scheme can't do that, it's not a
> backup.
>
> I.e. don't confuse 'backup' with 'archive'.  If you need a backup
> in the true sense of the word, your only option is Time Machine.

i have a hard time believing that this couldn't work.

backup:
1.  power down mac.  remove hard drive.
2.  stuff drive as one gigantic file into venti.

restore:
1.  copy your backup onto drive
2.  install hard drive.  power up mac.

i'll admit it's not convienent, but it is a workable alternative.
and it leads to the fact that any storage that can snapshot itself
can give you backups.  putting the snapshot into venti is an exercize
for the reader, as is determining if using venti like that is a good idea
or not.

- erik

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)]

> backup:
> 1.  power down mac.  remove hard drive.
> 2.  stuff drive as one gigantic file into venti.
>
> restore:
> 1.  copy your backup onto drive
> 2.  install hard drive.  power up mac.

Disassembling the machine every night to back it up is not on.

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[erik quanstrom]

On Fri Sep 30 15:22:19 EDT 2011, lyndon@orthanc.ca wrote:
> > backup:
> > 1.  power down mac.  remove hard drive.
> > 2.  stuff drive as one gigantic file into venti.
> >
> > restore:
> > 1.  copy your backup onto drive
> > 2.  install hard drive.  power up mac.
>
> Disassembling the machine every night to back it up is not on.

how come you keep changing the parameters after you get
in-principle solutions?  :-)

- erik

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)]

> how come you keep changing the parameters after you get
> in-principle solutions?  :-)

Ask the guys who make those crappy hard disk ball bearings.
They are the ones who keep changing the parameters :-P

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[erik quanstrom]

On Fri Sep 30 15:46:25 EDT 2011, lyndon@orthanc.ca wrote:
> > how come you keep changing the parameters after you get
> > in-principle solutions?  :-)
>
> Ask the guys who make those crappy hard disk ball bearings.
> They are the ones who keep changing the parameters :-P

there are no hard drives with ball bearings.

- erik

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Anthony Sorace]

On Sep 30, 2011, at 13:59, erik quanstrom <quanstro@labs.coraid.com> wrote:

> backup:
> 1.  power down mac.  remove hard drive.
> 2.  stuff drive as one gigantic file into venti.
> 
> restore:
> 1.  copy your backup onto drive
> 2.  install hard drive.  power up mac.

In principal, that's roughly what vbackup does, except with file systems instead of whole disks and without taking things apart. I decided I didn't need to store each version of the OS files; if you want whole images, look at vbackup (or, yes, time machine).

I don't buy the backup/archive distinction as defined. It's totally coherent to say "I want a backup of data set xyz", where that isn't exactly one file system. I have backups of the data I care about, and I've judged that, for my usage, the moderate inconvenience and tiny risk of not having full FS backups is worth the trade off.

(note I don't dispute that backup/archive is an important distinction, I just think that draws the line in the wrong place.)

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:59:00 -0400
erik quanstrom <quanstro@labs.coraid.com> wrote:

> backup:
> 1.  power down mac.  remove hard drive.
> 2.  stuff drive as one gigantic file into venti.
>
> restore:
> 1.  copy your backup onto drive
> 2.  install hard drive.  power up mac.

ROFL! What I guess you don't know is you can more or less do this
without disassembling the Mac. Boot the Mac with the right keys pressed
(I forget which) and it will emulate a Firewire drive.

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[erik quanstrom]

> erik quanstrom <quanstro@labs.coraid.com> wrote:
>
> > backup:
> > 1.  power down mac.  remove hard drive.
> > 2.  stuff drive as one gigantic file into venti.
> >
> > restore:
> > 1.  copy your backup onto drive
> > 2.  install hard drive.  power up mac.
>
> ROFL! What I guess you don't know is you can more or less do this
> without disassembling the Mac. Boot the Mac with the right keys pressed
> (I forget which) and it will emulate a Firewire drive.

i did know that, but that requires more complicated
explaination, and only works on macs.

in case it wasn't clear enough the first time, my point
was that if your storage is fancy enough to be snapshotted,
you can do a system-image backup.  the system doesn't
need to have the capability.  in fact, you don't care what
system you've got.

and as long as your drive isn't soldered to the mb, your storage
is fancy enough.  after that we're just arguing over convienience.

- erik

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Sat, 1 Oct 2011 11:24:07 -0400
erik quanstrom <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:

> and as long as your drive isn't soldered to the mb, your storage
> is fancy enough.  after that we're just arguing over convienience.

Right. :D

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Venkatesh Srinivas]

When my home directory is less than 2 gigabytes in size, I use
dump9660 from Plan 9 port (or a standalone relative).

Otherwise I rsync my home to a DragonFly BSD system and take a HAMMER snapshot.

-- vs

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)]

> ROFL! What I guess you don't know is you can more or less do this
> without disassembling the Mac. Boot the Mac with the right keys pressed
> (I forget which) and it will emulate a Firewire drive.

ROFL! What you don't know is (most) Macs no longer have Firewire
interfaces.

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Anthony Sorace]

On Oct 1, 2011, at 14:21 , Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX) wrote:

> What you don't know is (most) Macs no longer have Firewire interfaces.

This works again with the newest Macs with Thunderbolt.

Lest this just be even further off topic, the relevant point here is that beyond
erik's "unless your storage is soldered to the motherboard" qualifier you can
add "and sometimes even if it is".

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Sat, 1 Oct 2011 14:29:29 -0400
Anthony Sorace <a@9srv.net> wrote:

> On Oct 1, 2011, at 14:21 , Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX) wrote:
>
> > What you don't know is (most) Macs no longer have Firewire interfaces.
>
> This works again with the newest Macs with Thunderbolt.

LOL yeah, I forgot but I knew the same basic idea worked on new macs
somehow. It kinda gives new meaning to the physical access problem.

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Michaelian Ennis]

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 1:59 PM, erik quanstrom
<quanstro@labs.coraid.com> wrote:

> backup:
> 1.  power down mac.  remove hard drive.
> 2.  stuff drive as one gigantic file into venti.
>
> restore:
> 1.  copy your backup onto drive
> 2.  install hard drive.  power up mac.

If there were/is block device firewire support in plan 9 one could
boot the mac in target mode and copy it over that way.

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[erik quanstrom]

On Thu Nov  3 16:56:29 EDT 2011, michaelian.ennis@gmail.com wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 1:59 PM, erik quanstrom
> <quanstro@labs.coraid.com> wrote:
>
> > backup:
> > 1.  power down mac.  remove hard drive.
> > 2.  stuff drive as one gigantic file into venti.
> >
> > restore:
> > 1.  copy your backup onto drive
> > 2.  install hard drive.  power up mac.
>
> If there were/is block device firewire support in plan 9 one could
> boot the mac in target mode and copy it over that way.

i've never seen so many practical suggestions to a thought experiment.  :-)

- erik

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[smiley]

Anthony Sorace <a@9srv.net> writes:

> I use venti. On servers, I use /n/sources/contrib/anothy/bin/rc/vacbak from cron
> and have the system submit the score to my plan9 server. I tried using vbackup
> first, but there's a huge volume of stuff on these systems I don't need to have
> backups of (and couldn't figure out how to access the results from plan9). vacme
> should be suitable for any unix host with p9p installed (with path changes for
> your local setup).

Does anyone have a link for that "vacme"?  It isn't listed in the lsr on
sources, and the Internet doesn't seem to know anything about it.  :(

Thanks!
--
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|Smiley       <smiley@icebubble.org>    PGP key ID:    BC549F8B |
|Fingerprint: 9329 DB4A 30F5 6EDA D2BA  3489 DAB7 555A BC54 9F8B|
+---------------------------------------------------------------+

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Anthony Sorace]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1133 bytes --]

On Nov 1, 2011, at 14:15 , smiley@icebubble.org wrote:

> Anthony Sorace <a@9srv.net> writes:
> 
>> I use venti. On servers, I use /n/sources/contrib/anothy/bin/rc/vacbak from cron
>> and have the system submit the score to my plan9 server. I tried using vbackup
>> first, but there's a huge volume of stuff on these systems I don't need to have
>> backups of (and couldn't figure out how to access the results from plan9). vacme
>> should be suitable for any unix host with p9p installed (with path changes for
>> your local setup).
> 
> Does anyone have a link for that "vacme"?  It isn't listed in the lsr on
> sources, and the Internet doesn't seem to know anything about it.  :(

Sorry, that "vacme" should read "vacbak", which is at the path specified. I have a
similar command called vacme (actually "vacme.command", IIRC, to get Finder to
make it clickable) I've used for one-off backups, but I don't believe I've ever stuck
that up anywhere and don't have it handy. If you're interested in something more
for ad hoc backups than recurring ones, I can dig it up and stick it on sources,
likely tonight.


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Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Latchesar Ionkov]

At work, I use Time Machine to a Linux server, then vac the Time
Machine files to venti.
At home, I just use Time Machine to a Linux server. I am planning to
add the vac to venti at some point.

Thanks,
    Lucho

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Axel Belinfante
<Axel.Belinfante@cs.utwente.nl> wrote:
> Just curious what 9fans use, for home and/or work, to backup their macs.
>
> time machine?
> to a local (usb,firewire) disk?
> or remote (time capsule, nas (not officially sanctioned by apple))?
>
> or eat our own dog food and use eg. venti?
> or tra?
>
> or no backup necessary because everything important is already elsewhere?
> (in the cloud, or in a version management system)
>
> or?
>
>
> context: we are reconsidering how to do this at work,
> and prefer not to reinvent the wheel.
>
> (at home I just backup my mac to a readynas box using time machine).
>
>
> Sorry for the off-topic nature of this post, but the fact
> that 9fans will be aware of less-common solutions like venti -
> not to mention the presence of coraid people here -
> made me look for experience/expertise here.
>
> Regards,
> Axel.
>
>

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:50:23 -0600
Latchesar Ionkov <lucho@ionkov.net> wrote:

> At work, I use Time Machine to a Linux server.

You can do this? I tried to use a second internal drive for Time
Machine but it claimed "Cannot find wifi" and refused to proceed. (O.o)
This was with Leopard; maybe it only worked with Apple-sourced external
wifi-connected drives back then. I don't know.

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

What I do is to consider the macs as volatile.
Very much like "firmware".
All the stuff I care about is in our main file server.
I might either use my files using the octopus or just cache them in the local
disk of the mac when I need that.

To recover such "firmware", yes, I use an external disk and time machine,
which is what the mac seems to like.


On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 5:19 PM, Axel Belinfante
<Axel.Belinfante@cs.utwente.nl> wrote:
> Just curious what 9fans use, for home and/or work, to backup their macs.
>
> time machine?
> to a local (usb,firewire) disk?
> or remote (time capsule, nas (not officially sanctioned by apple))?
>
> or eat our own dog food and use eg. venti?
> or tra?
>
> or no backup necessary because everything important is already elsewhere?
> (in the cloud, or in a version management system)
>
> or?
>
>
> context: we are reconsidering how to do this at work,
> and prefer not to reinvent the wheel.
>
> (at home I just backup my mac to a readynas box using time machine).
>
>
> Sorry for the off-topic nature of this post, but the fact
> that 9fans will be aware of less-common solutions like venti -
> not to mention the presence of coraid people here -
> made me look for experience/expertise here.
>
> Regards,
> Axel.
>
>

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Bakul Shah]

On Fri, 30 Sep 2011 17:19:26 +0200 Axel Belinfante <Axel.Belinfante@cs.utwente.nl>  wrote:
> Just curious what 9fans use, for home and/or work, to backup their macs.

I use Time machine on zfs + freebsd + netatalk. [Broken ATM
since the Lion uprgade. Need to update to netatalk-2.2.1]

> context: we are reconsidering how to do this at work,
> and prefer not to reinvent the wheel.

May be some zfs based NAS appliance? ZFS snapshots are very
cheap and you can delete old ones (if you want more frequent
recent backups and less frequent older backups. But I would
test how well deletes work when dedup is used).

You can probably use netatalk & venti (on Unix) to provide a
time machine interface. But I would test venti scaling first.

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[John Stalker]

> Just curious what 9fans use, for home and/or work, to backup their macs.

At work everything is FreeBSD and backups are not my worry.
At home I use rsync to keep a copy of my home directory at work,
and just reinstall everything else.  So far I've had to do that
once.  Huge files which can be downloaded again go in symlinked
directories, to keep the rsync time manageable.
--
John Stalker
School of Mathematics
Trinity College Dublin
tel +353 1 896 1983
fax +353 1 896 2282

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[steve jenkin]

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1. I liked the distinction noted between 'backups' and 'archives'.

2. Cloning a drive is of limited use on any system.
    Isn't "future proof", doesn't scale, doesn't allow for disk size
changes or hardware changes.
    Is a necessary part of an Admin Toolkit, but only for very
particular situations.

3. HFS+ stores a lot of metadata which OS/X relies upon.
    If you chose to backup system that doesn't capture it, you're losing
a lot.
    Not sure if using SMB or NFS stores for Time Machine captures it or
not (.../.DS_store ??)
    [There's enough doco out there and enough tutorials on using network
filesystems for TM]

4. With a locally attached drive, mds/mdimporter indexes Time Machine
for 'Spotlight'.
    This is a very useful feature of OS/X, if somewhat annoying as it
hammers the disk.

5. Locally attached drives with HFS+ use hard links to "dedup" at the
file level.
    I suspect that on any medium, Time Machine backups up all files
modified since last backup.
    Which is painful and slow for big files that change frequently -
like my email files.

    As a direct consequence, "mail directory" format is a much better
idea than "mailbox" format
    [dir per message + one file per message segment,  vs many messages
in a single file]

6. Time Machine backups are "well integrated" with the OS/X.
     *when*, not if, you upgrade your hardware, including replacing a
lost laptop,
     the OS/X install process takes the lastest snapshot as the basis
for the new machine.
     This isn't a mere copy, but a very sophisticated 'merge'.
      I upgraded from PPC & Tiger to Intel + Snow Leopard, took 3-4
hours [direct, no TM]
      All apps+data moved & upgraded, modulo PPC-only binaries.
      I know TM upgrade/restores work - a friend used this for his 2
iMac's @ home.

Nothing else I've seen comes close to Time Machine.
The "upgrade & merge" feature alone is worth the price of admission,
even for a single m/c at home.
For a workplace, it's an Admins' Dream...

In a workplace, you'll be using network logins and network shares.
There may be no reason to personalise machines because the user's 'home
directory' is where everything specific to them is stored, and they
don't get admin rights on their machine (to install non-standard Apps),
do they?

I did some graduate study at a local University a few years back.
They provided common-access computers:
 Windows & Mac: machines were a standard image with the 'home directory'
mounted via SMB.

I thought it worked well for 5-10,000 students.
Because students couldn't install random Apps, virus & malware
infections were quite infrequent.

These days, you could use one of the many VM solutions out there to
allow users a way to have a reasonably safe personalised environment -
that's backed up, accessible 'everywhere' on-net and not subject to
upgrade problems (for the system admins).

Do Apple allow OS/X desktop to run under a VM?
They certainly insist that OS/X only be run on Apple hardware.

Hope this is of some use.

Axel Belinfante wrote on 1/10/11 1:19 AM:
> Just curious what 9fans use, for home and/or work, to backup their macs.
>
> time machine?
> to a local (usb,firewire) disk?
> or remote (time capsule, nas (not officially sanctioned by apple))?
>
> or eat our own dog food and use eg. venti?
> or tra?
>
> or no backup necessary because everything important is already elsewhere?
> (in the cloud, or in a version management system)
>
> or?
>
>
> context: we are reconsidering how to do this at work,
> and prefer not to reinvent the wheel.
>
> (at home I just backup my mac to a readynas box using time machine).
>
>
> Sorry for the off-topic nature of this post, but the fact
> that 9fans will be aware of less-common solutions like venti -
> not to mention the presence of coraid people here -
> made me look for experience/expertise here.
>
> Regards,
> Axel.
>
>
>


--



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Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[erik quanstrom]

> 2. Cloning a drive is of limited use on any system.
>     Isn't "future proof", doesn't scale, doesn't allow for disk size
> changes or hardware changes.
>     Is a necessary part of an Admin Toolkit, but only for very
> particular situations.

really?

what do you mean by "doesn't allow for hardware changes"?
i
also, i'm pretty sure that whenever the new disk is larger
than the end of the last used partition, both fdisk and prep
just see more empty space at the end of the partition.  judging
from the spec, gpt should work the same way.  where do you
see cloning onto a larger disk failing?

cloning a disk is really common for nas appliances, and it's
not too hard to make your storage whatever size you require.

most advanced storage features of vmware work by cloning
storage.  i see the the idea of cloning disks becoming more
prevalent.

- erik

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[steve jenkin]

w.r.t. Disk Cloning.

you are conflating multiple issues:
 - hardware disk imaging
 - managing NAS appliances
 - handling VM images

I agree with you.
Cloning drives in low-end NAS appliances is quick, simple and effective.
I had a lot of fun a year ago documenting how to clone config and data
from one Thecus to another.

But that approach doesn't/won't work on high-end systems or 'enterprise
grade' LVM systems, like Veritas, and the IBM/HP LVM system.
They build in too many checks, because they give you all the tools you
need to move data around and keep it 'known' by their system.

How many times have you cloned a physical disk yourself, NOT in a NAS,
but on Apple hardware for OS/X?
If you haven't done exactly that, you have no idea of the magnitude of
the problem, or if it is feasible at all.

After having to clone disks in systems far too many times, I've come to
find it tiresome and time wasting.
If the situation demands you do it, you've already failed as an Admin...

At home, I have an 80MB (m-e-g-a b-y-t-e) drive in an old PC that I want
to access.
Really, I'd like to access the data, so how do I do that?
And for some extra fun, upgrade the disk on that old existing system so
I have more space available.

cloning the 80Mb onto a more recent drive won't work.
The BIOS notices the mismatch and won't play.
More significantly, if I could bodgy-up everything so the new drive
worked, I'd still only have 80Mb and no way to expand it.
The disk partitioner respects the limits of the drive. If I simply 'dd'
the drive onto another, it fails.

Couldn't take an image of the drive either: IDE version was so old,
modern adaptors wouldn't work.
So I figured out how to transfer the files to a 2nd, newer, drive with a
large filesystem whilst mounted in the PC.
[The system would only allow a maximum filesystem of 472Mb. The rest of
the drive was wasted]

Having a readable copy of the data, NOTE, not the original
hardware-disk-image, I've taken a copy of that filesystem so I can run
up a VM in the future. That VM image I can now 'clone' to my hearts content.

You are right that cloning disk *images* is an essential part of
using/managing VM's.
Don't conflate that with cloning physical disks.

Physical cloning is not something to trifle with when you're looking
after Other People's Data/Systems, more a last-chance desperation
measure. [see above. having to clone means everything else has failed]

Something we're going to see more of is the physical disk information
being incorporated into a motherboard-based security system.
We are going to see more "Trusted Platform Module" systems shipped - and
they notice little things like changing the drive-id...

As well, Apple adopted GPT drives. Not the 'industry standard' disk
partitioning.
I simply don't know enough to fiddle everything that's needed to support
both arrangements - there's a lot of fine detail to get right...

It's not unusual to want or need to mount the original and copy drive in
the same machine.
If you've cloned the GPT, that's not going to happen.

Have you ever tried to move a Windows Vista partition? There are quite a
few subtleties & 'gotchas'.
I spent around a month, near full-time, on this problem several years
ago and bounced off it.
I've a whole bunch of experience with FAT, NTFS, Unix, Linux, multiple
LVM systems filesystems, disk-arrays or not, and their supporting disk
partitioning, but I couldn't get this to work...
I've dug people out of seemingly impossible situations many times, but I
didn't crack that one - nor had anyone else from what I was reading on
the web at the time.

It's trivial to clone/migrate & resize an NTFS partition with Win-XP and
below, but Vista had a few too many checks.
Doesn't play well with 'grub', either.

erik quanstrom wrote on 2/10/11 12:28 PM:
> really?
>
> what do you mean by "doesn't allow for hardware changes"?
> i
> also, i'm pretty sure that whenever the new disk is larger
> than the end of the last used partition, both fdisk and prep
> just see more empty space at the end of the partition.  judging
> from the spec, gpt should work the same way.  where do you
> see cloning onto a larger disk failing?
>
> cloning a disk is really common for nas appliances, and it's
> not too hard to make your storage whatever size you require.
>
> most advanced storage features of vmware work by cloning
> storage.  i see the the idea of cloning disks becoming more
> prevalent.
>
> - erik
>


--
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

stevej098@gmail.com http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[erik quanstrom]

> You are right that cloning disk *images* is an essential part of
> using/managing VM's.
> Don't conflate that with cloning physical disks.

why not?  this reminds me of the mem "$x ... with a computer".
i think we've gotten to the point where we keep hearing "$x ... with v12n".
and why make such a big distinction between das and nas.  it's
all block storage.

depending on exactly where your bits are stored seems so vms-y.

- erik

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[steve jenkin]

erik quanstrom wrote on 2/10/11 1:37 PM:
>  it's all block storage.
>

Nope.
In the same way that RAM is finely differentiated with many
incompatibilities & 'gotchas'.
It's not "all memory".

Go away and actually *do* the thing you are suggesting, then tell us how
you went.

Get 3-4 macbooks. Preferably a range of machines: old to new.
Get 8-12 replacement drives, differing ages, capacities and types.

Do your "just pull the drive out and copy it" multiple times on each
machine.
To be valid, you have to swap drives between machines and have then work
properly.
No cheating, fully reconstruct machines between tests.
Wearing out screws/fittings is a classic weakness on single-assembly
designs.

Quicker solution:
 point us to a web-page where your suggestion is done, even once.
 Bonus for a webpage where someone does exactly what you're suggesting,
multiple machines, many drive types.

--
Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

stevej098@gmail.com http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Iruatã Souza]

On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 12:07 AM, steve jenkin <stevej098@gmail.com> wrote:
> erik quanstrom wrote on 2/10/11 1:37 PM:
>>  it's all block storage.
>>
>
> Nope.
> In the same way that RAM is finely differentiated with many
> incompatibilities & 'gotchas'.
> It's not "all memory".
>
> Go away and actually *do* the thing you are suggesting, then tell us how
> you went.
>
> Get 3-4 macbooks. Preferably a range of machines: old to new.
> Get 8-12 replacement drives, differing ages, capacities and types.
>
> Do your "just pull the drive out and copy it" multiple times on each
> machine.
> To be valid, you have to swap drives between machines and have then work
> properly.
> No cheating, fully reconstruct machines between tests.
> Wearing out screws/fittings is a classic weakness on single-assembly
> designs.
>
> Quicker solution:
>  point us to a web-page where your suggestion is done, even once.
>  Bonus for a webpage where someone does exactly what you're suggesting,
> multiple machines, many drive types.
>
> --
> Steve Jenkin, Info Tech, Systems and Design Specialist.
> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
> PO Box 48, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
>
> stevej098@gmail.com http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin
>
>
>

you know so much, and yet you failed to read that this is not a mac list.

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[steve jenkin]

Iruatã Souza wrote on 2/10/11 11:38 PM:
> you know so much, and yet you failed to read that this is not a mac list.
>
>
and yet this is a rather rude, unhelpful list.

1. the subject line is "Off Topic". That's a clue.

2. I didn't start the thread. I responded to it.

3.  The lack of any real technical detail/discussion is disturbing.

Like your response.
It's a snide,  cowardly attack on someone you've never met, someone you
know nothing about.
If this is something you'd do in the real world, you'd quickly be a
social pariah, if not beaten to within an inch of your life.

In no way is your response helpful nor useful in moving the topic forward.
If you actually felt I was disrupting the list, you'd had written to me
off-line, not on-list.

And included a suggestion as to what *would* be appropriate
conversationally and acceptable on list.
But you want to strut your stuff in front of an adoring crowd and show
what a clever little person you are.

The fact I've seen no responses about your comment, tells me one of two
things:
 - nobody takes any notice of you, or
 - this is 'business as usual' for the list and accepted behaviour. ie.
the list is dysfunctional.

Good luck with whatever you do.

--

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[erik quanstrom]

On Sun Oct  2 23:58:29 EDT 2011, stevej098@gmail.com wrote:
> Iruatã Souza wrote on 2/10/11 11:38 PM:
> > you know so much, and yet you failed to read that this is not a mac list.
> >
> >
> and yet this is a rather rude, unhelpful list.
>
> 1. the subject line is "Off Topic". That's a clue.
>
> 2. I didn't start the thread. I responded to it.
>
> 3.  The lack of any real technical detail/discussion is disturbing.
>
> Like your response.
> It's a snide,  cowardly attack on someone you've never met, someone you
> know nothing about.
> If this is something you'd do in the real world, you'd quickly be a
> social pariah, if not beaten to within an inch of your life.

relax man, iruatã''s good people.  you might not like what
he said one time, but let's not overgeneralize.

by the way, this whole discussion is my fault.  you can blame me.
(you might have to take a number.)

- erik

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[Salman Aljammaz]

On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 4:07 AM, steve jenkin <stevej098@gmail.com> wrote:
> erik quanstrom wrote on 2/10/11 1:37 PM:
>>  it's all block storage.
>>
>
> Nope.
> In the same way that RAM is finely differentiated with many
> incompatibilities & 'gotchas'.
> It's not "all memory".
>
> Go away and actually *do* the thing you are suggesting, then tell us how
> you went.
>
> Get 3-4 macbooks. Preferably a range of machines: old to new.
> Get 8-12 replacement drives, differing ages, capacities and types.

my mac's old hard drive, with os x and all my data, has been through 3
macbook(pro)s without a single os x reinstall.  recently i dd'd it
into an ssd which replaced it with no issue.

i don't recommend this or anything; but i have on a couple of
occasions yanked the drive out of the mac and into a machine with more
storage and dd'd it as a backup (or is it archive?)  i only restored
from these images once, but it worked.

unless the interface is physically incompatible with your machine, i
don't see the problem.

salman

Re: [9fans] OT: how do 9fans backup their Mac(book)?

[steve jenkin]

Salman Aljammaz wrote on 3/10/11 12:30 AM:
> my mac's old hard drive, with os x and all my data, has been through 3
> macbook(pro)s without a single os x reinstall.  recently i dd'd it
> into an ssd which replaced it with no issue.
>
> unless the interface is physically incompatible with your machine, i
> don't see the problem.
>
> salman
>
>

Nice to know.

--