Friday, September 21, 2007

After updating to the last firmware version for my Airport Extreme (7.2.1) our MyBook USB hard drive which had worked perfectly until that point disconnected and will no long mount giving an error of wrong password. After spending two days resetting the Airport I replaced the MyBook it with a spare external hard drive I had setting around. I reset the Airport and that replacement hard drive showed up and has been working ever since. Even though I have heard reports of this happening it was kind of a surprised to have it fail after the firmware update. So all you MyBook owners be advised. Update the MyBook was moved to my G5 tower where I ran DiskWarrior 4 on it that found lots of little errors. After the directory was rebuilt I returned the drive to my Airport Extreme rebooted the Airport and all was well again. Just proves you can never have too many hard drives setting around.

I have since gone back to the 7.1.1 firmware and my drive problem has got away. 7.1.1 was very stable and 7.2.1 very likely to disconnect and then refuse to let me remount the volume telling me I used the wrong password. Apple needs to get a Firmware version of this working correctly, VPN is also a problem for some users, so if these things worked it would be the perfect wireless router for all my clients.

Friday, September 14, 2007

iLife 08

Not sure what kind of beta testing Apple did with the iLife components but it does not sound like very much was done to preserve old data and insure ease of upgrade. I’m going to make this really clear back up your hard drive before updating and installing new products. That’s right even Apple products. If you value your data at $150.00 then buy a FireWire hard drive and back it up. Cloning from your computer to a Mac formatted hard drive will take several hours but is worth every minute of the time. Use Carbon Copy Cloner, or SuperDuper Clone it all not just the data, clone everything. Then if your upgrade goes south clone it back. I use the paid version of SuperDuper for my clones the basic version is free http://www.shirt-pocket.com/ paid version $27.95 has more advanced features. CCC is http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html and is donation-ware. There are several other back-up products but these are two I use all the time.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Try something new

Video creation by animoto.com

Saturday, August 25, 2007

backing up your data

We all talk about backing up but when is the last time you did that with your data? In fact when was the last time you backed up your purchased iTunes? If you don’t know then it may be time to burn some CDs or DVDs!