Area Man's Bacon Saved by Time Capsule

Hats off to all the Apple folks responsible for Time Machine: I’m pleased to report that restoring my Mac from the data stored on my Time Capsule went off without a hitch. Performing a synch with the drive was easy, and after a couple of hours everything was just where I left it–right down to my Dock icons, desktop picture, and app preferences. (James Duncan Davidson provides more detail on a similar (albeit planned) experience.) I was especially pleased to see that all my NetNewsWire clippings & tabs came back in place.
I’ve encountered only a little strangeness so far:

  • In Adobe Contribute, my local drafts are present, but the app preferences seem to have gotten partially lost. I’ll pass my info along to the CT team. I did lose some material I’d worked on over the weekend (as Saturday night’s Time Machine backup failed for unspecified reasons), but the rest of the drafts look recoverable.
  • Photoshop held onto my serial number, but it asked to be reactivated (which transpired successfully)
  • Update: iTunes lost my authorization info. Hopefully I haven’t now burned another authorization. Also, Ambrosia’s iSeek and Snapz Pro have lost their registration info. QuickTime Pro seems unaffected.

Thanks to everyone who provided suggestions below. The Letterbox add-on for Apple Mail seems to do a great job enabling Entourage-style three-pane viewing, but I haven’t tried it extensively. I’m really torn about leaving my old friend Entourage, especially as Mail apparently doesn’t offer the ability to accept/decline meetings sent through the Exchange server. Efficient incremental backups sound pretty appealing, however.
I’m now going to try using Time Machine with a Drobo. It seems that it’ll be possible to store a large photo collection (which wouldn’t fit onto the laptop drive) alongside the Time Machine data file. If anything interesting develops, I’ll pass along the info.

0 thoughts on “Area Man's Bacon Saved by Time Capsule

  1. Good to know ! 🙂
    But do you know if it is safe now to keep Time Machine up and running while we are working with Lightroom ? Up to now, we had to close LR before a backup ?

  2. Hello Jack,
    Any way to back up my mouth and trash talking?
    “Look at this corner cut, see how natural it looks?”, I said. “Well, well” she said, here eyes rolling like a bowling ball down a dirt hill. “We will talk later”, as she laughs and walks away. “But honey, I took Scott Kelby’s class on the 7 point system to photograph this and Joe McNally’s class in lighting this wonderful angle, you just gotta love it”!.
    http://kblawson.wordpress.com
    In my latest adventure of gardening with the help of Scott Kelby and Joe McNally.
    Ken

  3. Yeah, I know a lot of people are down on Time Machine for one reason or another. Yes, it saps up your resources when it’s backing up. Yes, it doesn’t allow you to change the backup frequency. But it does do the very thing it was designed to do: make backing up your system simple and effortless. There’s always SuperDuper! for those who want more control and being able to instantly recover from a bad hard drive crash. Since I started using it, I’ve been able to recover from two pretty bad spots. Once when my iTunes library got corrupted when I was upgrading my iPhone. I just had to restore the iTunes Library file and I was back in business. And then another time when I accidentally trashed an iMovie I was working on. I think after Time Machine saves your butt once or twice, you become a true believer of it. But until that happens, you wonder “why is this backing up all the time?!?”. How do you get happy customers? One bad situation recovered from at a time.
    And as far as Entourage vs. Mail. I’ve tried Entourage several times and even tried 2008 hoping it would be any better. I just find it’s not very different from the version we got in Office v.X; except maybe it’s looking less attractive over time (unless your favorite color is purple). I was surprised that we didn’t get Quick Look functionality in the 2008 version seeing that Microsoft had several years to build this and had the heads up on Leopard. Well, I guess I’m not that surprised. Our office is a mixed bag now with me and a couple of other people using Mail, a bunch using Entourage or Thunderbird, and the rest on Outlook. I’m amazed we ever get any meeting invites worked out at all. Mail will show you an invite as an .ics icon that you can click on and open in iCal. There you can accept or decline the meeting invite, which iCal then fires off an email in the background. It’s not seamless as going through an Exchange application but it does work.
    I don’t mind Mail. I actually like how fast it feels and not very bloated with features I wouldn’t use anyways. The Quick Look integration is great since I can check out images, PDFs, and even Word and Excel documents without opening another application. I’ve also grown fond of the Organize by Thread presentation. Although your mileage may vary. I didn’t even consider it has native Time Machine support. That makes it all the better for me. I guess another added bonus of staying pretty much with Apple on these things. It’s like using the same brand of hair conditioner as the shampoo. Even if it’s not true, you feel they’re working together for you.
    [Heh–good analogy. I’m sure electrolytes are involved somehow… –J.]

  4. im probably telling you something that already know or doesnt apply to you. but just in case, you may be using two of your activations for one computer now. had similar problem with a clients laptop where he wiped without deactivating then ran into trouble when he tried make his second valid activation on a tower.
    [I’m not so concerned about my Adobe software (after all, I can pester people here and don’t have to call customer service to nudge my activations as I would if I worked outside Adobe), but it’ll be interesting to see whether my iTunes DRM stuff is affected. I think I’ve got a couple of burned activations floating around on a pair of dearly departed PowerBooks, so the next time I get a machine I’ll probably have to call Apple to have them deactivate those boxes (as I can’t now do it myself). –J.]

  5. Hello John,
    As Ben Hansen said, you have probably used your second activation to get Photoshop going again.
    This happened to me after a repair shop replaced the mainboard of my Mac Pro without prior warning. To be able to run Photoshop on the laptop too, I rang Adobe customer support to sort this matter out.
    Oh man…
    All the customer support did was to send me around in circles. I tried on different days, talking to different people. Eventually I simply gave up on the phone “support” and tried to resolve the matter via the Adobe support on the website – in writing, hoping that somebody competent might actually resolve the matter.
    The answer I got was that this could only be resolved through the phone support!!
    I replied that I had been there and done that, would he please let me know what information he needed from me, a confirmation by the repair shop re. the mainboard exchange perhaps?
    Like a broken record he replied that this could only be resolved through the phone support.
    I am now in the wonderful position of having paid for my Photoshop licence, but being forced by Adobe to used a cracked version on the laptop. And – I am not the only one, plenty of people out there have to do the same.
    Want to know what I think of Adobe customer service? I think it would be a good idea!
    [Sorry to hear all this, Roland. I can look into the issue to see whether things could be handled better. Just gotta get a few free minutes to rub together… –J.]

  6. I bought a Time Capsule the day it showed up at the Apple Store here in SF. While I have had the occasional problem, (mostly with linux’s smb) it has overall been a dream for my multi-mac house. I now have my linux box backing up to it, and my AppleTV network-mounting it for additional storage space.
    Good to hear the restore worked for you, it is the one thing I haven’t had the time (or cojones) to test yet.
    [May you never have to do so! –J.]

  7. Hi John,
    Regarding iTunes authorisation, there’s a way to reset them all even if you don’t have access to all computers.
    To deauthorize all computers associated with your account:
    1. Click iTunes Store in the Source pane.
    2. If you’re not signed in to the store, click the Account button, then enter your account name and password.
    3. Click the Account button again (your ID appears on the button), enter your password, and then click View Account.
    4. In the Account Information window, click Deauthorize All.
    (From http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1420)
    Regards & thanks for this blog,

  8. I wish Adobe could come up with a deauthorization setup like iTunes.
    I had to wipe out my computer after some major problems. I was able to deauthorize and reauthorize iTunes in no time. I’ve not been so lucky with Adobe.
    [You can choose Deactivate via the Help menu in any Adobe app. Did that not do the trick for you? –J.]

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