Back it up!

It would be safe to say that you most likely treasure a good majority of what you keep on your Mac’s hard drive. What is a hard drive, you ask? The simplest answer I can give you is that a hard drive is where your pictures, movies, music, and documents are stored in your computer. The slightly more complex version is that a hard drive consists of a thick, CD like disc, a circuit board and an arm with a laser. From the moment you start up your computer it begins working; the disc spins, the arm passes back and forth from the outer edge to the inner edge and back, at precisely the same time the laser scans the disc while it reads and writes data to and from the disc.

You probably now have hundreds, maybe thousands of precious photographs, music and even movies stored on the hard drive. Maybe you even have invaluable documents and other personal and business information on it too. Increasingly more everyday we do things with our computers and save things as we go.

What’s the worst that can happen? Well, in an instant, without notification, it can all be lost to the mechanical failure of the hard drive. At best case you can have it recovered via software tricks, however at worst case you will not be able to get any of your cherished data back from the dead hard drive.

What can you do to prevent this from happening? First thing I will tell you is that it is not a question of if the hard drive fails, it is a matter of when it fails. The only thing you can really do to prevent losing all of your pictures, movies, music, and documents when a hard drive fails is to have your computer’s hard drive backed up. Meaning, make copies of the contents of your hard drive on to an external hard drive, perhaps on multiple DVDs, and/or having it backed up off-site (using an online backup storage website).

How do you go about doing this? The easiest thing to do is, if you have Apple’s latest operating system (OS X 10.5, Leopard), to get ahold of an external hard drive (preferably one with a Firewire connection if your computer can handle it), get one as big as you can afford. ( I recommend Western Digital (although their portables are not so great), or OWC for excellent quality and reasonable prices.) Then hook the hard drive up to your Mac,  almost instantly Apple’s built in back up software, Time Machine, will ask if you would like to use the hard drive to back it up, to which you will answer, yes. Then Time Machine will take over and make one initial full backup from your hard drive, from then on it will make hourly backups of any changes that you have made on your computer. Recovery from this method is usually very simple, however Time Machine is not 100% reliable. The backups have a tendency to become corrupt leaving you out of luck when you need to recover your data.

The software I tend to recommend for most home and small business users is called SuperDuper. This creates what is known as a “bootable” clone of your hard drive. Which basically means that you can run your computer from the clone that SuperDuper makes on your external hard drive. A very powerful option for times when disaster strikes and you need your computer immediately. Not only can it produce bootable clones of your hard drive, you can also schedule it to do so as often as you need. It also does a much better job at creating a backup that does not take up too much room than, say, Time Machine does on your external hard drive. All this and more for a mere $27.95!? It’s an absolute steal for the peace of mind you gain!

I could go on and on about backup strategies, but the most important thing I want to convey is that you get a backup strategy and use it. This will prevent you from the horrid pain of losing your most valuable data. I spend mornings as a Mac Technician in a Mac repair shop called PowerBook Guy, where the #1 thing we deal with is hard drive failure and replacement. I cannot tell you how many tears I have seen from clients who lost all of their data because they failed to backup their data. It’s always a painful loss. So prevent it and BACK IT UP!

One last thing I will state about hard drive failure and replacement is that, you should not panic and run out to buy a whole new computer if it happens. Hard drive replacement is a fairly inexpensive repair for a computer. I am talking under a couple hundred bucks in most cases, which is a lot cheaper than a new Mac. So, especially if you were wise enough to back up your computer, there is no reason to panic when your hard drive starts clicking and making grinding noises. When that happens, just give DandyMac a call, or send us an email and we will get your Mac back for you!

Old video to your Mac

It may seem as though it should be easy to get the videos off of your old video camera or vhs recorder and put it right into your Mac. Well, it is providing you have an old dv tape camcorder that has firewire. You can import the video straight to iMovie and then do with it as you please. But what if you want to digitize some old vhs tapes? or get video off of a camcorder that uses mini dvds? Not an easy, or all that cheap thing to get done. But there are definitely affordable methods of doing so.

The first solution you could come up with would be a simple conversion box that converts, analog (rgb and s video) and USB inputs to firewire. This is a decent solution, although not very cheap, the quality is great, and you can import directly to iMovie with it. The price tag is around $250 for such a device.

The second and preferable choice is Elgato’s EyeTV 250 plus. This is not only a converter but also a tv tuner. The TV tuner enables you to watch and record analog or even high definition cable directly on your Mac. Which you can then export to any iLife application, Quicktime, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV or a host of other destinations. The software that Elgato ships it’s products with is called EyeTV. Currently in version 3, you will find this a rather intuitive, powerful and flexible piece of software. The price tag is not all that much less then a simple converter box,  however it is far from just a converter box. Right now it is available directly from Elgato at a tidy sum of 199.00.

So how does one use the EyeTV? You will need either an s-video or RGB cables to connect your analog source to the EyeTV box with it’s included adapter cable. The EyeTV box connects to your Mac with USB 2.0. (Unfortunately you cannot use the box if you do not have USB 2.0 ports on your computer.) First thing you need to do is install the software by dragging and dropping it’s icon, from the included CD, into your Application folder’s icon in the same window. Then navigate to your Application folder and double click the EyeTV icon to launch the program. Plug the EyeTV’s USB cable directly into your Mac (a non-powered USB hub will not work.) You will be prompted to accept the end user license agreement, then tell the software what Elgato hardware you have from their drop-down menu. It will ask you how you want to use the product, make your choice then click next. Another prompt will ask you for your Titan TV username and password (Titan TV is an online service that grabs programming schedules based on your local cable company. Which you then use to schedule TV show recording with EyeTV’s software.). After all of the prompts you are given a window for live tv, and another window which is called EyeTV programs. This is the center of the EyeTV software, where your Titan TV schedule and recorded programs library lives.

For the purpose of this blog, I am focusing on getting old video from older media types imported. So for this to happen you need to go to the controls menu at the top of the screen on the menu bar. From there, select ‘composite video’ from the bottom of the menu. This changes the input on the EyeTV hardware from cable to RGB mode (select s-video from the controls menu if your video device has that option.). Then press play on your device to see if the video is coming through ok. Once the video signal looks, and sounds good,  simply go to the controller window which by default sits at the top right of your screen and click the EyeTV button to begin recording. Finally push play on your video device once again (rewind to the beginning if necessary). EyeTV is now pulling the audio and video into it’s program windows ‘Recordings’ library. The software does not automatically stop when your video does, so when the video is done playing click the EyeTV button on the controller again to stop the software from recording.

Once you get the video fully recorded you have many options available to you, which is where it’s power and flexibility comes in. From here you select a video and you can have the software export into all iLife application formats, several different video formats, iPod/iPhone formats and Quicktime formats. You can also burn the recordings directly to DVD or CD from Toast which is included in the software. Exporting for use on the web in various popular formats is supported as well. When all of that’s done you can plug in your cable tv to the box or watch over the air HDTV shows and record them as well.

I am not usually one to pimp products, but this one is all too worthy of my praise. Not to mention the fact that it provided me the means to help out a client by getting old wedding videos off of one of those, unbelievable disasters of a recording medium, mini dv camcorders. The project was a huge success, so much so that I now have my girlfriend digitizing old video tapes in the same exact manor. Nice job Elgato, you have the rare DandyMac seal of approval.