Forum: Author Hangout

I find it hard to believe computer manufacturers would use it as the principal storage for a computer if it had a very limited life expectancy.

From PC Mag:

it is true that SSDs wear out over time (each cell in a flash-memory bank can be written to and erased a limited number of times, measured by SSD makers as a "terabytes written" or TBW rating)

Right now my wife has Time Machine scheduling a full backup every hour. That's a lot of writing to the backup drive. I'm trying to convince her that's overkill, but we'll see.

I don't understand what critical changes are being backed up that would warrant hourly backups. If the changes aren't critical, daily or weekly backups should suffice.

I'm not a MAC user and have no idea what Time Machine does. Lazeez said it only backs up files that have been changed during the prior hour.

Unless files are critical, I feel hourly backups are overkill. When I work on a story, I may change and save multiple files every hour. The probability of my HD failing is remote.

I have had an HDs go out on me once in my life. After installing a new disk, I opened the damaged disk. The read/write head had broken off of the arm. The arm dropped down to the disk surface and removed the magnetic medium from the platter. I had all but that day's work backed up to external disk.

I have had an HDs go out on me once in my life.

You don't need a disk failure to require a backup.

I had a keyboard problem with my MacBook Pro. Apple replaced it (and the battery that was attached to it - which was good because it was swollen). After they did that the power didn't work so they changed other parts. By the time they were done, my laptop was brand new other than the monitor.

Anyway, when they changed the power and other stuff that went along with it, they must have replaced the SSD hard drive. When I got it back the OS was installed and nothing else.

While I was at the Apple store, we downloaded MS Office and installed it. When I got home I had to copy all my data from my external backup hard drive. So even though I didn't have a disk failure, per se, I needed to get the data from my backup disk. (This is why my wife's external drive is so important now. Her battery was recalled but we don't want to bring it to Apple without a Time Machine backup that we know we'll be able to access.)

And since I only backed up data, I lost applications like Calibre and GIMP. Those were easy to re-download and install. But I lost a Photo Viewer I had gotten for free in the Apple store. It was no longer there so I lost that. I also forgot to back up my Calibre files (which I back up now) so I had to recreate my ebooks (no big deal).

That's what Time Machine is for. It backs everything up, even the OS. I can't use Time Machine because my external HD is very old from my old Del PC and isn't large enough to use with Time Machine.

Right now my wife has Time Machine scheduling a full backup every hour.

Good Lord, why?

If she's a musical composer or is a graphic designer, then having the program she's USING do saves often is needed. I have all of the copies of Open Office set to automatically save every ten minutes.

Is she running a web hosting site, where people are storing and continually changing their information?

If so, then great. Otherwise, that's not just overkill, that's OVERKILL!!!! She's actually wasting system resources doing something that could be done overnight, when no one is using the computer. And realistically, maybe once a week is typically enough for back-ups.

that's OVERKILL!!!!

Even more so because most of her data is in the cloud (whereas all my data is on my internal hard drive).

But if you are married, you know that offering reasonalbe arguments doesn't always work. Sort of like in this Forum. :D

I was unaware reasonable arguments ever worked on any internet forum.

Reasonable arguments are extremely rare on the Internet. However, friendly discussions are a lot more common than most people would realise. The big difference between them is how wedded the people are to any opinions that are presented as against the proven facts presented.

I love SSDs as primary drives in our computers, but my backups are all done on HDDs. External backup drives must be reliable. In my personal experience of the last 8 years, 4 SSDs (3 Samsungs and one Intenso) of perhaps 30 crapped out on me without so much as a single warning sound. Complete data losses, but for the backups we had on HDDs. To be honest, most of the rest were SanDisk, and so far they have held out just fine. Still, SSDs die without warning, while HDDs may warn you with funny noises towards the end of their life.
Another drawback of SSDs: no safe delete. You cannot overwrite a sector that held a sensitive file.
As against that, of the more than 150 HDDs in our use since 1992, only four crashed in use, the last ones a pair of 4 GB Seagate drives around the turn of the century. Wiping HDDs and overwriting them with multiple passes of random I/0 is easy enough, so they can can be passed down to other users without compromising security.
My current favourites for laptop backups are the Western Digital WD Elements Portable series. I don't know the dollar price, but in the German Amazon store, the 1 TB version runs at € 49 including sales tax; 17 € more gets you the 2 TB version.
I am also leery of Time Machine. You cannot manually remove selected files from the backup. I invested a few Euros in a Carbon Copy Cloner license. It does automated backup, too, but you can fiddle with the backup manually, and the settings are more adaptable. It's much faster, too, and you can monitor the progress easily. An added boon: CCC backups are bootable, i.e. you can boot from the copy and keep working.
If your wife wants her projects really safe, let her get a DropBox account and store the work files there. You cannot match their data redundancy.

I love SSDs as primary drives in our computers, but my backups are all done on HDDs.

That's what I've decided. Our MacBook Pros have SSD and I'll use HDD for the backup.

But I'm still trying to determine if the current drive is bad. I've had it plugged into my laptop and it's not disconnecting. I'm not writing to it, but I bring up Finder every once in a while and it can read it and it doesn't disconnect. I plugged a thumb drive into my wife's laptop and it hasn't disconnected. But she's not writing to it either.

Next I'll plug the G-Drive back into her laptop and turn off auto Time Machine updating. Maybe Time Machine with Big Sur (new OS) is doing something funny.

Thanks for the advice on which HDD to get. One problem is her MacBook Pro has USB 3.0 ports. Not USB-C like mine. So when we look at the specs, many don't have the USB 3.0 connection.

Thanks again for all the info.

"One problem is her MacBook Pro has USB 3.0 ports. Not USB-C like mine."

Yes, but the USB-A-type external drives are the cheaper ones, and USB-A to USB-C adapters cost only pennies. You do not need USB-C for 5,400 rpm HDDs, you can max out their speed with USB-3.1. Don't use a cheapo connector cable, and you should be fine.

USB-A to USB-C adapters cost only pennies.

On mine, I go the other way. When I bought my Mac I bought an adapter. The USB-C side is plugged into my Mac and the USB-? is plugged into a 4-port USB-? hub. Plugged into that hub is my external hard drive which I had with my Del PC, a thumb drive, and the thingie for my wireless mouse. When I tested my wife's external G-Drive on my computer I plugged it into the 4th port on the hub.

Drives kept dropping off my Mac and then remounting.

I've never had a problem with my hub. It's a DYNEX.

My MacBook Pro only has 2 USB-C ports (there's an ethernet and power on the other side). My hub uses one of them and has 3 things plugged into it at all times. So I have 3 things and only 2 USBs. That doesn't work without the hub.

But "Drives kept dropping off my Mac and then remounting" is the problem my wife's G-Drive is having plugged directly into her MacBook Pro's USB3.0 port.

Unfortunately USB hubs are probably one of the biggest causes of issues with USB devices there are.

It's been my experience that there are three things that can cause issues with USB hubs:

1. The power needs of the devices attached to it.

If the total power drain of the attached devices exceeds that of what the USB header or cable can handle then an unpowered hub will split the amount of power over all of the attached devices. Sometimes this can be resolved by removing the other devices, other times you need to take the hub out of the link and just attach the device you wish to use.

This can easily be overcome by using a USB hub with and external power source. I've 3 USB hubs I've bought over the years and use. One has a wall plug for its own power and it supplies all of the power to the device plug into it. Without the power on it won't start up a device, that's the way it's made and thus there's no way it will every try to make a USB device work with too little power. Another relies solely on the power drawn from the computer. This works well with small power use items like the USB drives often called 'thumb drives' and peripherals like a mouse and a keyboard; but it has issues with most of the external platter hard drives due to insufficient power if other devices are plugged in. Remember, most external platter hard drive units have a higher power demand than most other USB devices. The third unit has an extra power option but will work as an unpowered hub as well; it also works as card readers and that's what I mostly use it as.

NB: The power demands of the different USB types also varies, so sometimes you can't get a USB 3 device to work off a USB 1 or USB 2 header, cable, or hub - some will work at reduced power and some won't.

2. The operation of the USB header / driver of the computer the hub is connected to.

Some USB headers will establish a full-time link until such time as the device is unplugged. Other headers will disable the link if there isn't any communication between your system and the device within certain time limits. This is very common on mobile devices as it's done to save power.

If the header is one that disables after a certain period of non-use it can cause problems with the device due to it being turned on and off at a high frequency. However, in some devices the power saving turn will register as an improper disconnect and it will need to be unplugged and then plugged back in to fully boot up again.

3. The operating parameters of the device attached to the hub.

This is a rare event, but can happen. The few times I've seen this cause issues it came down to the device having issues sharing the link with other devices on the hub and taking it off the hub for a direct cable access resolves the issue.

Of these the first 2 cause 98% of the issues anyone is likely to come across.

This can easily be overcome by using a USB hub with and external power source.

This might solve my wife's problem. Her G-Drive does not connect to an electrical outlet. It gets its power from the computer. Someone said earlier that that is one of the reasons devices get disconnected. If it's not the G-Drive but a power issue, instead of buying a new HDD drive we can buy a hub with its own power. If it really is the drive, we can still use the new hub. All the external drives my wife researched that have her Mac specs (and small enough to carry with the laptop) don't have their own power supply.

what can you afford 2 GB or less stick

She needs 1 TB for Mac's Time Machine backups.

No, she doesn't need to back up every hour. It's overkill.

I just plugged her G-Drive into my Mac. Finder recognized it as being connected. I won't write to it, but Finder listed her backup folders so it's reading it.

The last time the G-Drive was connected to her Mac it went two days before being disconnected (no longer viewable in Finder and Time Machine backups not happening). So I'll see if it stays connected to my Mac for two-plus days. If it does, it may not be the drive (or new cable).

I also plugged a thumb drive into her USB port. Finder sees it. If it disappears, it means it's her computer. I don't think the USB port because we had the problem with her other one too. But maybe it's a software or driver problem. That's why we reinstalled the OS. The problem may have started when she upgraded the OS to Big Sur.

But I don't want to buy a new external drive only to find out it's not the drive that's the problem.

Does that mean she actually has 1TB data to backup?

Nowhere near that. She has backups on the drive from 2016.

Could be a bad header on the port you're using, either on the device itself or on the computer.

While it's rare, you can sometimes get issues with older devices using USB not being as fully compatible as they should be. This can happen with the device at either end or the cable. I've one USB 1 cable that will not work properly if the item on either end is USB 2 or USB 3. I also have a USB pair of connectors on a case that connects to the USB 1 / 2 header on the motherboard which will not work with a USB 3 cable or USB 3 device. Yet thee is nothing faulty with any of the devices or cables; as long as I stay within the discovered limits all works well.

Could be a bad header on the port you're using, either on the device itself or on the computer.

We tried both USB 3.0 ports on my wife's laptop. We had the problem on both.

I now connected the G-Drive to my laptop. So far it is still connected. But the last time it disconnected from my wife's it was good for 2 days running.

Now I'm not reading or writing to the drive (other than Finder reading it to display the folders).

So if it stays connected on my laptop for 3 days or more I would have to guess it's something on her computer and not the drive or cable.

Oh, and I plugged a thumb drive in her laptop. Right now Finder says it's connected. We'll see if it disconnects.

If you are hit with ransomware, it will attack when the backup is reachable.

On my computer, I have a thumb drive plugged in and back up to it often, like every time I change a spreadsheet and very often when writing a novel. But my main backups are on an external hard drive. That drive is only turned on when I'm backing up, which isn't too frequent. So it's not accessible if my computer is attacked.

USB ports are turning off after a period of inactivity to conserve power

That's interesting. I'll research that.

When I moved her G-Drive back to her MacBook Pro and plugged it into the USB 3.0 port it has always been in, it did not connect. So I thought I'd try the USB on the other side. I found that there are two on that side, one we never used (she uses the other one on that side to charge her mouse). It worked.

So now we simply wait to see if it disconnects.

but her USB ports are turning off after a period of inactivity to conserve power

I found this on the Apple support site:

Drives, cameras, keyboards, hubs, and other devices that plug into your USB-A, USB-C, or Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) port can request a limited amount of power from your Mac.

Symptoms such as these could mean that a device connected to the USB-A , USB-C , or Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) port on your Mac isn't getting enough power:

…or USB devices are disabled until you unplug the device using too much power.

Solutions

Use your device as a self-powered device or connect it to a powered USB or Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) hub if possible.

Self-powered devices get power from an electrical outlet or their own battery. Bus-powered devices get power from the device they're plugged into, such as your Mac.

You should talk your wife into letting it still back up to the G-Drive

She can't.

I called Apple Tech Support and asked if Time Machine could access the iCloud like a device. It can't.

and then just set what ever program you choose to then handle the back-up to the iCloud.

I don't think the iCloud works that way. You can't back up to it from your hard drive. Or use your hard drive to back up the data in the iCloud. You read and write from it from your applications. But you can't get at it like a drive.

At least that's my understanding.

I believe what it was created for was to access your data from multiple devices. My wife always had her photos in iCloud. She's a glass artist and she can show people her art on her iPad or iPhone.

So all Time Machine is backing up on her computer, I believe, is changes to the OS and application software. She has no applicaton data on her Mac.

However, my wife panicked and moved all her data to the iCloud so there's no data for Time Machine to back up now.

She needs to use both. I know a lot of people who had all of their data out in the cloud and they lost it in well there was trouble with the cloud servers. On the flip side, when the gestapo walked off with all of my computing gear they destroyed all of my data because they were to stupid and too lazy to check it out and the courts went in their favour. The only data I was able to recover was what little had been out in the cloud and with my editors. - I now use local USB back up, local hard drive back up, and dropbox.

She needs to use both.

From what I got from talking to Apple, she can't. It's one or the other.

She can't have it on her Mac's SSD and back it up to the iCloud. They said iCloud is not for backups. And she can't back up from her iCloud to her SSD. There's no mechanism to do that. It's not like an external drive (in Finder you can't drag files from iCloud to your hard drive).

From what I got from talking to Apple, she can't. It's one or the other.

And thus we learn Apple have degraded the capabilities of the basic software it works on. This has to be something with the way Apple have set their software up to make them that way.

Depending on the software you choose, you can have your data backed up to multiple devices in multiple ways. Or you can do it manually.

A local has two pieces of data management software running on both their tablet and their PC. One synchronizes their tablet data to their PC and it also synchronizes changes to their PC data to their cloud account while the other synchronizes their PC data to their external hard drive which also runs a daily and a weekly back up.

Apple have degraded the capabilities

...and this is a surprise to who, exactly?

98% of Apple product buyers.

I would've also accepted "nobody with a brain" but that works.

same data set, just expressed differently and your's is slightly bigger.

Remember, "the Cloud" is synonym to "Someone else's computer" which can be gone tomorrow. Make sure you have local backups because the cloud is very convenient but not very safe.

As has happened with 2 major cloud storage companies in the past where they went off-line at short notice and millions of people lost all of their their data.

Make sure you have local backups because the cloud is very convenient but not very safe.

I haven't figured out how to back up onto her hard drive (either on the Mac or her external one) from the Cloud. And her data is only on the Cloud.

So if she creates a file in Numbers and saves it, it's in the Cloud. She can access it, like to read or change it, but she can't copy it to her hard drive, like with Finder.

To copy the cloud back to my HD, I had to create a new folder then copy the files from the cloud to the new folder

How did you copy from the Cloud to your HD? On a Mac, there's a utility called Finder (like Explorer in Windows). But Finder copies from one device to another. The Cloud is not a device.

Windows explorer can copy from one directory to another within a single drive, it's copy function is NOT strictly device to device.

Yes, Finder can do that do. I was keeping the example simple for backing up to another drive.

In any case it's a bit more work, but what about opening the files in the appropriate program and doing a save as to local storage?

That was suggested in a private message. She could save the file into the cloud and then do a "save as" onto her HD. That's actually good because then Time Machine will automatically back it up to the external HD.

She'd have 3 copies. One in the cloud. One on her Mac's HD. One on her external HD. And the external HD will have many versions of the file.

I already asked her if she'd do that. She asked, "What if I forget?" My answer was that she'd be no worse off than she is now, but when she remembers she'll have backup copies.

How did you copy from the Cloud to your HD?

For most cloud services you simple log into the cloud service select the file or folder you want, and select the download option to download copies to your system.

For most systems to copy to both your hard drive and the cloud the cloud service has an app available to synchronise with your back-up drive on either a regular basis or each time you save a file. Not sure how you do it on a Mac but I know I can do that on my Linux system with my Dropbox account if I want to set it up that way.

do a internet search on "how do I move my files from iCloud to local hard drive"

Found this:

Copy files from iCloud Drive to your Mac

1. Click iCloud Drive in the sidebar of any Finder window.

2. Press and hold the Option key and drag the file to a new location.

Don't use the cloud, never, not for any reason.

She's always used the cloud for photos. She's a glass artist and with the photos in the cloud she can show someone her work anywhere on any device (iPhone, iPad, etc.) wherever she is.

If the cloud goes away? Unfortunately, her portfolio would end up being her prints.

I don't know why data can't be copied from the cloud to a HD.