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I LOVE Time Machine Backups!
Nov. 10th, 2015 04:35 pmBeing a database guy, I'm also a data collector. I have a spreadsheet that I've maintained for over 25 years of every tank of gas of every car that I've had from the fourth one forward. Both of our cars have a notebook that we log our fillups in so I can monitor when oil changes or other service are due. At the start of the month I try to update my spreadsheet and get the new info in.
Something happened, and I'm not sure what.
So exactly a month ago I get my new car. This requires changes to my spreadsheet: a new page for the new car, copy over the cells for formulas and formatting, start entering information. No big deal, easy peasy. Today I grab the two notebooks and update my car and go to update Russet's car and the page is not there.
Very weird. I know I didn't delete any pages, I know I created a new page to copy stuff over, nothing I did should have resulted in any data loss, yet her car is gone.
Fortunately I have backups. I have two sets of two external HDs: two 3 TB and two 1 TB, the latter are for our laptops, the 3s are for my desktop iMac. I change them at about the start of the month. The spreadsheet had a date of 10/23 for its last update, but I changed my backup drives just last week so anything prior to that date was on my set at work in my desk. So I restored the one from 10/1 and just updated the info. Since I already had my 2015 Crosstrek in the spreadsheet that was missing my wife's 2005 Outback, it was easy to copy the page from the copy of the flawed spreadsheet to the new one. Add a few entries, all is well.
I also updated a summary page that had all of my cars from the fourth one on. I'm on my 9th car, my first Subaru that was mine, and I've driven over half a million miles (467,000 documented). My 2005 Toyota Matrix (outside of the US known as the Corolla Hatchback) had 184,000 miles on it when I traded it in, 99% of a light second, and was the most miles that I've put on one car. Second place was my 1990 Mazda 626LX that had 166,000 miles on it after 10.5 years. I've only put 1800 miles on my Subaru, so it's not even a contender yet. :-)
And I realize that I didn't really talk about Time Machine. Apple's OS-X operating system for the Mac has, for years, had a built-in backup program called Time Machine. And it is fantastic. Plug in an external USB drive, do some minimal configuration (including encryption if you so desire) and it's off and running. It does one full backup of your system, then afterwards it copies anything new or changed. It keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. If it runs low on space, it deletes the oldest backup. FANTASTIC program. Last year we found that my wife's laptop's hard drive was failing. I was able to refresh the backup, we drove to El Paso where Apple replaced the drive under our extended warranty, got home that night after a movie, plugged the laptop in to the backup drive and told it to restore. Three hours or so later, with no further effort, it was done.
I honestly don't know if there's a similar program for Windows. Back when drives were much smaller I used an amazing program called Fastback, but that's long gone and superseded by newer tech. I switched to Mac 8 or 9 years ago and haven't missed Windows in the least, even though I still use it at work and have it in a virtual machine on my home systems.
Something happened, and I'm not sure what.
So exactly a month ago I get my new car. This requires changes to my spreadsheet: a new page for the new car, copy over the cells for formulas and formatting, start entering information. No big deal, easy peasy. Today I grab the two notebooks and update my car and go to update Russet's car and the page is not there.
Very weird. I know I didn't delete any pages, I know I created a new page to copy stuff over, nothing I did should have resulted in any data loss, yet her car is gone.
Fortunately I have backups. I have two sets of two external HDs: two 3 TB and two 1 TB, the latter are for our laptops, the 3s are for my desktop iMac. I change them at about the start of the month. The spreadsheet had a date of 10/23 for its last update, but I changed my backup drives just last week so anything prior to that date was on my set at work in my desk. So I restored the one from 10/1 and just updated the info. Since I already had my 2015 Crosstrek in the spreadsheet that was missing my wife's 2005 Outback, it was easy to copy the page from the copy of the flawed spreadsheet to the new one. Add a few entries, all is well.
I also updated a summary page that had all of my cars from the fourth one on. I'm on my 9th car, my first Subaru that was mine, and I've driven over half a million miles (467,000 documented). My 2005 Toyota Matrix (outside of the US known as the Corolla Hatchback) had 184,000 miles on it when I traded it in, 99% of a light second, and was the most miles that I've put on one car. Second place was my 1990 Mazda 626LX that had 166,000 miles on it after 10.5 years. I've only put 1800 miles on my Subaru, so it's not even a contender yet. :-)
And I realize that I didn't really talk about Time Machine. Apple's OS-X operating system for the Mac has, for years, had a built-in backup program called Time Machine. And it is fantastic. Plug in an external USB drive, do some minimal configuration (including encryption if you so desire) and it's off and running. It does one full backup of your system, then afterwards it copies anything new or changed. It keeps hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month, and weekly backups for all previous months. If it runs low on space, it deletes the oldest backup. FANTASTIC program. Last year we found that my wife's laptop's hard drive was failing. I was able to refresh the backup, we drove to El Paso where Apple replaced the drive under our extended warranty, got home that night after a movie, plugged the laptop in to the backup drive and told it to restore. Three hours or so later, with no further effort, it was done.
I honestly don't know if there's a similar program for Windows. Back when drives were much smaller I used an amazing program called Fastback, but that's long gone and superseded by newer tech. I switched to Mac 8 or 9 years ago and haven't missed Windows in the least, even though I still use it at work and have it in a virtual machine on my home systems.
