The developer of popular Mac utility Carbon Copy Cloner says that either macOS 10.15.5 has a bug that prevents the creation of bootable backups, or Apple has made a ‘reprehensible’ security decision …
My MacBook Pro problems had one more episode in store for me: after getting the repaired machine back from Apple, there was a glitch after restoring it from a clone.
I cloned the original SSD to an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. When I got the repaired machine back, it was effectively a brand new one, as it had a new logic board with new SSD.
I plugged in the clone drive and used a CMD-R startup to boot from the clone, which worked fine…
This article is meant to serve as the most up to date guide to backing up your Mac. Unlike iOS, there is no built-in cloud backup feature that will cover everything on your device to an offsite server. I am often asked by friends and family about backups, so I wanted a way to just send a simple article they can follow.
If you are hesitant to pay for anything, think of it like this: If your hard drive crashed, and I offered to restore everything for less than a meal at a restaurant, you’d take me up on it. Even in the age of flash storage and SSDs, failures still happen. Don’t forget about data losses due to theft, fire, and accidental damage (spilled drinks, drops, etc.). The most important thing I can communicate is you need to act like all of your devices have a chance of breaking tomorrow, and you need to be prepared. Here’s my guide on how to back up your Mac:
Have you noticed that virtually every aspect of the personal information on our iPhones can be restored individually via iCloud? Things like photos, mail, contacts, calendars, Safari bookmarks, and notes can all be individually recovered on a fresh install of iOS.
The one thing that sticks out like a sore thumb is text messages and iMessages. Sure, it’s possible to restore text messages if you’re willing to backup and restore the entire contents of your iPhone, but what if you wish to perform a fresh install of iOS and then restore messages?
Fortunately, backing up and restoring SMS texts and iMessages on an individual basis is possible, as long as you’re willing to take some time to follow our step-by-step guide.
With Apple’s Special Event being live tomorrow, and with iOS 9.3 most likely being released shortly after, it’s worth taking a look at how you should prepare your device for the feature-packed update. Before installing the update, it is recommended that you have a backup of your data. This tutorial is going to walk you through backing up your iOS device and how to perform a software update when available.
Back in the summer, the UK’s High Court overturned legislation allowing citizens to duplicate copyrighted material for personal use. The British government has now accepted this ruling, meaning that the private-copying exception to anti-piracy laws no longer applies – and the government will not attempt to reintroduce it.
This means that we’re back where we started: doing something as simple as ripping a CD, backing-up your music to Time Machine or uploading it to a cloud service is once more illegal, reports copyright blog 1709.
So where does this leave ordinary users in the UK? Clearly some will have been unaware of the introduction of the exception last year, and possibly a larger minority will have been unaware of the rescinding of the exception, so they will no doubt continue to format shift their personally owned music and store tracks on the cloud in blissful ignorance that that is not legal in most cases.
It also means that Apple may need to change the terms of both iTunes Match and Apple Music in the UK.
Operators of cloud services may face pressure to amend their terms of service to reflect the new status quo, and some streaming services may be forced to tighten up their procedures to prevent users from creating multiple copies of the same download.
Yep, technically you can’t have the same music on your iPhone and Mac …
It seems unlikely that anyone will actually enforce the law, but these days, who knows. Just as plastic bags come with warnings that they should be kept out of the hands of infants, technology should come with a warning that it should be kept out of the hands of governments.
Via Gizmodo
With iOS 9 launching later today, it’s worth taking a look at how you should prepare your device for the new operating system. Before installing the update, it is recommended that you have a backup of your data. This how-to is going to walk you through backing up your iOS 8 device and transitioning it over to iOS 9:
Backing up Apple Watch doesn’t work exactly like your iOS device, and some of the data on the watch— like Workout and Activity calibration data, for example— won’t be included in your backup. Head below to learn exactly how to back up your Apple Watch, what to expect when doing so, and how to access the data if need be.
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I’m a huge fan of IFTTT, the iOS app (and web app) that allows you to do really clever things completely automatically, just by creating or downloading an ‘if this then that’ rule–which IFTTT calls a ‘recipe.’ For example, if you’d like to save a copy of a photo anytime you are tagged on Facebook, there’s a recipe for that. Want to switch on a WEMO-controlled light when the sun goes down, there’s a recipe for that too. Pretty much anything you might want to automate has an existing recipe–and if it doesn’t, you can create your own.
But while IFTTT is incredibly powerful, the developers found that some people found it so overwhelming they didn’t know where to start. The company has now addressed that by creating three cut-down apps, each of which can perform only three functions: Do Button (geared for controlling hardware), Do Camera (to automatically post, share or save photos) and Do Note (to quickly write something and save it as a note, make it a calendar entry, tweet it and so on) …
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Choosing holiday gifts for the techies in your life isn’t always easy, so we’ve put together a series of gift guides to give you plenty of ideas. These include category guides, like making music, smart home and in-car, as well as across personal recommendations from the rest of the 9to5Mac team – with more to follow.
For my personal guide, I’ve opted for a mix of the fun and the functional – ranging from action cams and drones to backup drives. Mix-and-match to the personalities of your lucky gift recipients as appropriate …
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From 9to5Toys.com:
We’ve got a nice 9to5Toys Specials deal on this evening and the best part is that it is a name your own price with the bids starting at $1. The earlier you get in, the less you pay. Here’s the list of apps but frankly Typinator alone is worth it. Go big and 10% of your purchase price goes to a charity of your choice and you’ll be entered to win a Gold iPad 2 & iPhone 6
(Update:6:30am ET: the price is now $3.50)
Apple’s latest desktop operating system, OS X Yosemite, is available today. In this post, we’ll take you through the steps required to protect your data by backing it up, upgrading the OS, and getting started with the latest version of OS X.
Before you get started, you’ll want to make sure you have everything you need. To backup your data, you’ll need an external hard drive or a Time Capsule with at least the same amount of storage as your hard drive. You’ll also need to make sure your Mac is capable of running Yosemite (we’ll show you how below), and you’ll want to make sure you have an iTunes account to purchase the update.
With iOS 8 launching later today, it’s worth taking a look at how you should prepare your device for the new operating system. Before installing the update, it is recommended that you have a backup of your data. This how-to is going to walk you through backing up your iOS 7 device and transitioning it over to iOS 8:
I’m a huge fan of my Time Capsule. Once an hour, both my MacBook Pro and Air machines are backed-up automatically via wifi without me having to do a thing. As a wise friend once observed, the only 100 percent reliable backup system is one where you don’t have to do a thing – not even plug in a drive.
But there’s no denying that at $299 for the 2TB model or $399 for the 3TB model, the Time Capsule isn’t cheap. You can buy a 2TB external hard drive for well under $100 or a 3TB one for slightly more. You’d normally need a more expensive NAS system to make it work via wifi, but Remy van Elst has created an instructible enabling you to do it with nothing more than a $35 Raspberry Pi.
You’ll need to be comfortable with command lines, and it will take you a little time to get it all configured, but at the end of it all you’ll have a working Time Capsule – that looks to OS X just like the real thing – for somewhere around $120.
The latest version of Picasa includes an additional bit of software called Google+ Auto Backup, as reported by Google Operating System. The new software can be used to automatically backup photos and videos from user-selected directories to your Google+ account. Interestingly, the app has nothing to do with the Picasa service, even though it ships exclusively with the Picasa app.
The app can save unlimited 2048px photos to your account, or upload full-quality versions at the expense of Google Drive space. It can also intelligently copy media from storage cards and other devices that are attached to the system. Furthermore, the app can be configured to backup all media to a designated location on the local hard drive, putting all of your backed-up media in one convenient place.
You can get the Google+ Auto Backup app by downloading the latest version of Picasa.
Apple’s latest desktop operating system, OS X Mavericks, is available today. In this post, we’ll take you through the steps required to protect your data by backing it up, upgrading the OS, and getting started with the latest version of OS X.
Before you get started, you’ll want to make sure you have everything you need. To backup your data, you’ll need an external hard drive with at least the same amount of storage as your hard drive (or a Time Capsule). You’ll also need to make sure your Mac is capable of running Mavericks (we’ll show you how below), and you’ll want to make sure you have an iTunes account to purchase the update.
Remember those promises we were made, about a paperless world? Everything electronic, everything online? Since the world was failing to deliver, I decided a couple of years ago to do an experiment to find out whether it is possible to live a truly paperless life.
Two years later, the bad news is that you can’t entirely avoid the stuff. There are a few documents the government insists I keep in paper form: my passport and driving licence, for example. There are documents that still arrive in paper form, and documents I have to supply in paper form.
The good news is that you can get very, very close. Here’s how I made it work …
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Apple has announced that iOS 7 will be available tomorrow, September 18th. Before installing the update, it is recommended that you have a backup of your data. This how-to is going to walk you through backing up your iOS 6 device and transitioning it over to iOS 7:
Before Dropbox became popular, there was iDisk, which was Apple’s cloud storage system. iDisk allowed you to store documents, pictures, QuickTime files, and PDFs in one cloud-based “drive.” This was accessible on all of your Apple products as well as at me.com on a PC. It was practically like having your most important files in Finder on your computer – but everywhere.
Then iCloud came out. iCloud dropped support of iDisk, which meant there was no longer a way to access all of your files in a Finder-like cloud system. This paved the way for third party apps like Dropbox to become even more popular.
Dropbox is free. Dropbox works on any platform: Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and Blackberry. Dropbox gives you 2GB of storage space for free and they offer incentives to increase your allocated amount of free storage space.
There are two different ways to set up Dropbox:
Apple’s system status page is showing that iMessage and four iCloud services – Photostream, Documents in the Cloud, Backup and iPhoto Journals – have been down for some users for more than six hours …
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Update: Apple has reported that all problems are now resolved with outages having lasted from 5:35 p.m. to 6:49 p.m.:
Apple’s system status page is showing that some users are experiencing problems with iCloud and may not be able to access a number of services, including: Mail, Contacts, Photo Stream, Calendar, Reminders, Backup, and more. iMessage and other services, such as the App Store and iTunes, remain online. Apple’s recently updated system status page shows that the outages started happening around 5:30 p.m. EST.
Late last week Apple confirmed and quickly fixed issues that some users were having with being unable to access iCloud documents, Photo Stream, back up and restore, and iMessage. We’ll keep you posted.
CNet has discovered that OS X Lion users lose support for Time Machine backups with third-party NAS hard drives. Time Machine in OS X Lion is now only compatible with Netatalk 2.0. This means that third-party NAS (network attached storage) drives will need a software upgrade from their respective manufactures in order to work with Apple’s next-generation Mac operating system. Users of cable-connected external hard drives will not be affected. Drobo, the company behind popular network attached storage devices has noted the issues on their website:
DroboFS, B800fs and DroboPro FS users running Mac OS X Lion (OS X 10.7) will experience problems with Time Machine.
The next official firmware release for all “FS” products will ensure full compatibility with the released version of Mac OS X Lion, including use of Time Machine.
Another popular NAS drive maker, Synology, has already released a fix in beta form. Other NAS drive makers will likely follow up with their own OS X Lion compatibility updates.