Category: Technology

Crashplan+ Review

This is a short review of Crashplan+, which is an online backup service from the fine folks at Code42.

The really, really short version is that you should go get your credit card and buy at least a year subscription right now.

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Quick survey:

Do you have any important photos on your computer?
Do you have more than a few songs you’ve purchased that you love?
Do you have a few videos of your kids that only exist on your hard drive?
How about those important tax or accounting documents for your small business?

If you answered yes to these questions then you should be backing up your computer(s). Seriously. There is one thing that all hard drives do – fail.

Most common drives in a computer are mechanical – which means there are moving parts within that little box that spin around at speeds greater than 5,400 rotations per minute! These parts are moving all the time when you using your computer. Eventually, this drive will go toes-up and stop working. If your super lucky (winning-the-lottery-lucky) you might be able to get data off the drive when it breaks. Even better, you might be able to go long enough on that drive without it breaking to get a new computer and start the spin of the roulette wheel all over again.

The great news is that on-site backups have been super easy to set up for the last few years. On-site means a backup of the information on the drive inside of your computer to another drive (most likely an external drive that is attached via a USB cable) that stays relatively near the computer. Here in the Koerner house, both my wife and I backup our computers to little Seagate drives that are tucked next our monitors. Software like Time Machine and Windows Backup and Restore are great solutions that you can set up and forget about. They work diligently in the background making copies of your photos, pictures and documents as you work.

Sounds great right? You’re saying, “Well now I have my stuff in two locations, so the odds of both those drives going bad is slim.”

Well, that’s true. Having your data on two drive is a smart idea. Just like putting on your seatbelt when driving. But how many of us have a car that has airbags as well?

That’s what Crashplan+ is. Airbags for your computer…Wait, that doesn’t make sense. Let me explain.

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On-site backups are great if your problem is just a hard drive gone bad, but if your system is stolen or damaged you’re still toast. Now you only have one copy of your data. Natural disasters aren’t very picky when it comes to damage. Most likely, if your house is flooded the same drive you back up to will be damaged. Off-site backups are backups stored somewhere other than where you computer spends it’s time – preferably in a geographically separate location.

Off-site backups complement on-site backups. They give you another layer of security when it comes to the integrity of your data. If something happens to your computer and the local on-site backup (like theft or the aforementioned flood) your data is still safe somewhere else.

So, back to Crashplan+. I had been looking for an off-site solution, but none of them were as easy as on-site backups via Time Machine. Either the software looked funky or the billing was confusing. How many gigabytes and how often were things backed up? Ugh. So then I heard about Crashplan+ from a friend of mine.

I downloaded their 30-day trial and began to back up all of my important files. Their software and billing is easy to understand and after checking the files I wanted to back up it was off. A few days later (for me it was around 20 days – I used the super fast connection at my work to do most of the backup. For home users it might take a bit longer.) I had my most important documents securely stored on redundant servers somewhere miles away. Now every time I import some new photos into iPhoto or some new songs into iTunes, Crashplan+ waits for changes and then without much fanfare begins to back them up for me. If something happens I can order a drive with my data to be delivered to my door, or use their tool to restore my files to a new hard drive.

Some of my favorite features:

  • You can tell it what to ignore and what to watch or just let it backup everything. Very customizable if you want to ignore some files (Apps you can download again for example).
  • There is no limit to the amount of space you can use for backups. With my recent purchase of a new laptop my local backup drive was too small. With Crashplan+ I’ll never have a ‘too small’ drive that won’t hold my backups.
  • Accessing my backups is super easy. I can do so through their app on my computer, or in an emergency from a web browser on any computer. I can download a whole folder or just a few files within minutes. This already saved my bacon when I absent-mindedly deleted my daughter and I’s most important Minecraft world.
  • They also recently launched mobile apps for Android and iOS that allow you to view your files ala Dropbox. The advantage over Dropbox is that it’s all of your files – not just a single folder.
  • It’s also fairly inexpensive. I subscribed to a 2-year Crashplan+ Unlimited plan for $89.99. That’s less than $4 a month to make sure all my photos, songs and documents are safe.

So give Crashplan+ a try. My experience has been nothing but positive. The service is by a bunch of nice folks working in Minneapolis, MN making software I forget about – and it helps me get sleep at night. How could you not like it?

 

This article was written while listening to Kina Grannis – Stairwells

Apple Linen

With the recent iOS 5 and OS X Lion updates I’ve been noticing a lot more linen in my UI. It shows up everywhere, from the login screen in Lion to the canvas behind a Safari window on the iPad and OS X.

I was curious to find out where it appears and discovered this thread on reddit.

I discovered at least 4 different shades.


Dock.app – backgroundTile.png


Dock.app – defaultdesktop.png


AppKit.framework – NSLinenBackgroundPattern.png


Safari.framework – ReadingList-BGLinen.png

It’s interesting that the Reading List variant isn’t 256px by 256px, but rather 300px by 300px – a non base-two size. It’s also worth noting that the iPad uses the darkest texture for the canvas in Safari, while Lion uses the second lightest version.

Update: George mentions in the comments, as of 10.7.3 backgroundTile.png from the Dock.app bundle was renamed to ecsb_background_tile.png. The files appear to be exactly the same.

Update 2: The new beta of Messages for Mountain Lion includes a new addition to the linen family.

/Applications/iChat.app/Contents/Resources/linen.tiff

OS X 10.7 Lion + OWC Data Doubler (SSD + HDD) + Filevault Encryption

I just picked up a new Macbook and wanted to share my experience with getting Lion and Filevault working with the OWC Data Doubler.

The Data Doubler1, my dear reader, is a frame with a SATA connector that fits in place of the internal optical drive (The floppy of the ’10’s!). It holds any 2.5″ hard drive like a normal HDD bay would. Why would you want to do this? Well you get the speed of a SSD and the capacity of a HDD at the cost of not being able to read/write DVD’s and CD’s.

My setup was as follows:

SSD
OS X and Applications on partition 1
Windows 7 via Boot Camp on partition 22

HDD
OS X User directory (Documents, Movies, Music, Photos, etc.)

Note: I wasn’t that interested in encryption, but I’ve included instructions never the less. I played with it and found it to be limiting.

 

Ingredients

I purchased the Macbook with the upgraded 128GB SSD ($90 increase over stock), nabbed an inexpensive traditional HDD on Newegg (500GB WD 7200 RPM Scorpio Black) and picked up the Data Doubler from OWC. The Data Doubler came with a nice little tool kit for opening the Macbook. I followed the always handy guide over at iFixit to take it apart.

If you’re also thinking about upgrading your RAM (Never buy from Apple, pick it up cheaper from Crucial or else ware.) now is a good time to do it as you’ll have the case open and RAM exposed.

 

Note on Boot Camp

First, don’t remove the optical drive just yet! At least, if you want to install Boot Camp and to run Windows you’re going to run into trouble. Once the optical drive is removed and if you try to use an external drive to install Windows you’ll get a blinking cursor upon boot and won’t be able to continue the install.

Note: These directions are assuming you’d want Boot Camp on the SSD. If you’re looking to have Windows live on the HDD,  you’d have to put the HDD in an external enclosure and install from the internal optical drive.

 

Setup a Secondary Account

Your first step is to boot into Lion and setup an account. This account should not be the name of your primary account, but an admin account you can use for…administrative purposes.

If you’re looking to install Windows, launch the Boot Camp Assistant, step through the guide, partition a chunk of your SSD/HDD for Winders’ and install.

Once complete you should be able to install the Data Doubler. I suggest putting the HDD in the internal hard drive bay and the SSD in the Data Doubler. The optical drive bay that the data doubler will occupy does not have the sudden motion sensor that the default hard drive bay would. SSD’s don’t need the sudden motion sensor – traditional hard drives do.

 

Without Encryption

That new (and large) HDD you’re going to store all of your stuff on probably didn’t come formatted. Open Disk Utility and Erase the drive/partition. Use “Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Give it a good name. I called mine “Macintosh HDD”.

So now boot into OS X, login to your admin account and setup a new user account. This will be your day-to-day account with all of your documents, music, etc. Open System Preferences, select “Users & Accounts” and click the little plus button toward the lower left. (You may need to unlock the control panel with your admin password.)

Once you create the user via the System Preferences, “control + click” on the account and select “Advanced Options…”.

From here you can select where the “Home directory” lives. I pointed mine to a manually created folder on the HDD under “/Users/username”.

Now you should restart, login to your new day-to-day account and get to work!

 

With Encryption

If you want to encrypt just the SSD, go right ahead and use Filevault. Be warned however that Boot Camp doesn’t appear to work nicely with the full disk encryption.3

The GUI for Filevault does not support encrypting secondary or external drives. To encrypt the HDD with all your documents, boot into OS X , login to your secondary admin account and launch Disk Utility. You’ll want to erase the HDD and set it up as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted).

Note: You can also do this via the command line. Open Terminal and run “diskutil list”. Make note of the IDENTIFIER for the HDD. Then run “diskutil cs convert diskidentifier -passphrase yourpasswordhere” (If you don’t provide a password you’ll be prompted to do so. Be careful when typing!)

Change your mind about encrypting that secondary hard drive? Use “diskutil coreStorage revert diskidentifier”. Disk Utility will then decrypt the drive. This might take some time, so to check the progress type “diskutil coreStorage list”. Look for the line mentioning “Conversion Status” to see how far along the encryption or decryption is.

 

A Note on Encryption and the Keychain

After encrypting the HDD and trying to login to the day-to-day user account (that lives on the HDD) I would get an error and not be able to login. I could login fine with the secondary admin account as it lives solely on the SSD. Apparently this is a bug (or feature!) with how the password for the encryption is stored in the keychain. The secondary admin account has access and doesn’t rely on the password to mount its user directory. The day-to-day account does rely on the password to decrypt the HDD, but doesn’t know the password (as it’s stored in the keychain of the user that created it.)

The solution is to login to the secondary admin account and run this utility. It’s called Unlock and performs magic to allow the system to authenticate the HDD upon boot, not user login.

 

Conclusion

At 1,000 words this is probably my longest blog post – ever. I hope it helps those brave few who want to turn a Macbook Pro into a super-charged Macbook Air. Well, kinda. The power of the SSD, large screen real estate and superior graphics! It’s ALIVE!

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Thanks to the chaps and chapettes in the following communities for their assistance in figuring this out.

MacRumors

Apple Support Communities

StackExchange’s Super User

 

Update: After this was posted this hint showed up over on Mac OS X Hints. There might be a few nuggets of wisdom for you there regarding FileVault and secondary drives.

Update 2: Hello Googlers. There’s been another great hint shared over at Mac OS X Hints that might prove useful to those wanting to encrypt the HDD where your user data resides.

I will never tell her she’s doing it wrong.

I love getting emails like this one:

No, I’m not being sarcastic. You see, this email came from an iPad/iPhone game called Pocket Frogs. In this game you breed and nurture tiny frogs. You can feed them and race with them with the goal to create new generations of offspring with new combinations of colors and designs. To encourage new users the developers have a messaging feature baked in. You can message your friends to let them know about the app in hopes they’ll download it.

So why do I love emails like this? Because they’re from my daughter. At the ripe old age of five, she’s discovered how to use the in-game messaging – she taps on the frog, then the “Share”, then “Email” and sends a message to my name, stored in her Grandmother’s iPad.

So while I’m staring at code, sitting in a meeting or editing video for 8 hours a day, my daughter sometimes thinks about sending her newest frog to her old man. I’ll never tell her she’s doing it wrong.

The Speed of Things

First, a prediction. This generation of hand-held consoles will be the last.4

How can the multi-year spans between console releases compare to the yearly improvements of devices like the iPhone and iPad? Apple claims that the iPad 2 is 9x more powerful than it’s predecessor. In benchmark testing Anandtech confirms – yeah pretty much.

While it’s early in the life of both the iPhone and iPad, it’s hard to imagine that future incarnations would not continue this increase in graphical prowess.5

Year after year the iOS devices continue to improve while companies like Sony and Nintendo are in a cycle of releasing a device and then supporting it for a few years. The DS was released in 2004 and just this month is being replaced by its successor, the 3DS. The PSP has also been around a while with an original release in 2005. Its successor, the Next Generation Portable or NGP, is planned for a late 2011 release.6

According to this article from Business Insider the iPad 2 is “equal to NGP in terms of raw graphical horsepower”. Wait, that can’t be right. Sony’s much heralded next-generation portable that won’t be released until November is only equal to a device that is in consumer’s hands right now?

I’m not trying to over-emphasize graphics, there are many other factors when it comes to an enjoyable gaming experience. You can ding the iPad for lack of physical controls or the DS for not having many mature games. While smart intelligent readers such as yourself realize this, there are tons of consoles bought due to graphical fidelity over gameplay or library selection.

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The genesis of this post came to me while laying in bed this evening. I was playing Real Racing 2 on my iPhone 3GS and was struck by a few things. 1) How well this game looked on a 2-year-old phone. 2) How smoothly it ran – no stuttering and load times were all but nonexistent. 3) How well the controls worked on a device without buttons.7

Next to me were a Nintendo DS and a Sony PSP, both loaded with a few top-notch games. Yet, here I was playing a racing game on my cell phone – a game that was about $25 cheaper than similar titles on its console brethren.

So the iPad 2 is as fast as the NGP, which won’t ship for another 9 months and the old cycle of developing a console and waiting a few years to improve is dead. Or dying. Develop, a website about game development noted that next-gen handheld console budgets have tripled. How much are the games going to cost? $50!?

I’ve been able to play the same games over the last 4 generations of iOS devices with out a hitch. In some cases the games are even improved on newer hardware. Meanwhile DS games are fuzzy on the new 3DS and all of my UMD games for the PSP will have to be re-purchased when the NGP is released. :-/

From one perspective, not only are the graphics a huge win, but also the financial and vitality aspects of this new breed of gaming devices.

Photo by sneeu – Licensed under Creative Commons