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OS X Problems

The two best ways to avoid OS X Problems: backup before problems start and don’t fix what’s not broken.

Avoiding OS X Problems – Backup Before Problems Start

Before making any chages to your Mac, backup your current system by making a mirror image of your current system.  This places an exact copy of your entire Mac hard drive onto an external drive such as a USB hard disk or a secondary internal hard drive on your desktop Mac.

Making a full mirror image backup or clone of your Mac is simple with SuperDuper free backup software from ShirtPocket. This program makes it easy to perform full backups of your entire OS X Leopard Mac without any technical knowledge.  By making a mirror image backup of your system before you make changes, you can always rollback your system to this previous pristine backup version of your Mac.

Understand that there is a major difference between Apple’s Time Machine and mirror image backups using SuperDuper. Apple’s Time Machine makes incremental backups of individual files. SuperDuper backs up your entire hard disk as a mirror image copy.

A SuperDuper backup placed on an external USB drive can be used to boot or start your computer. You cannot do this with Time Machine. Seriously. Try this: install SuperDuper, make a full clone of your current drive onto an external drive (do this before going to sleep or if you have a few hours to do other things), then reboot your Mac and press & hold down the Option key (double up arrow key beside the Apple key).  After a few moments you’ll see two hard disks appear on the Mac bootup screen. Release the Option key.  One disk is the drive inside your Mac and the other is the SuperDuper clone you just made, attached to your Mac via USB.  Using the arrow keys on your keyboard, move the highlighted disk on the screen to the clone backup system on the USB drive and press Enter.  Your Mac will now boot up from this clone on your USB/Secondary drive that you made using SuperDuper.  Once the bootup is finished, you’ll be running your Mac from the mirror backup sitting on your backup drive.

This is the ultimate in security, safety and simplicity in terms of backups! If you happen to drop your Mac off a cliff or it gets stepped on by an elephant and you have a SuperDuper cloned backup, just pop that disk into a new (hopefully insurance covered) Mac and bootup as if nothing had changed.  You can get back to work (or play) immediately. Zero downtime.  Apple’s Time Machine will not be able to do this as it creates incremental file backups, not a mirror of the operating system itself. To restore a system using Time Machine you need to reinstall Mac OS X from scratch and perform a restore from Time Machine.  A lengthy process.

Avoiding OS X Problems – Don’t Fix the Unbroken

I’m loathe to suggest this, but I don’t recommended installing Apple updates to an operating system unless it addresses a specific problem you’re experiencing. I understand that security updates are important, and that stability and other compatibility issues are nice to fix, but if preventing these rare but possible issues comes at the cost of rendering your Mac unusuable then is it really a wise update to perform?

This is akin to injecting a vaccine that prevents disease but is likely to kill the patient. Unless you’re very likely to be exposed to the disease, should you really be taking the risk?  With any medical treatment, a doctor always considers whether the treatment’s possible risks are outweighed by its benefits. If the risks are high and the success of the treatment low, the treatment will be avoided in search of better alternatives. You should think about this too before haphazardly installing Apple Updates only to be rewarded by one of the common OS X problems that can occur.

One Mac OS X problem that generates a lot of frustration and discussion is Airport wireless network connections disconnecting from a router every 15 minutes.  This is an extremely common Mac OS X update problem that is incredibly difficult to diagnose and fix. And, it often starts just after an OS X Update.

When to install a Mac OS X Update:

  1. the update closes online security holes that you’re likely to run into because you perform risky Internet behaviour
  2. software that you currently use has issues that are fixed with the latest update
  3. you’ve just mirror image cloned your system with SuperDuper

You really should never install a Mac OS X update before cloning your current OS X install.  It takes nothing more than a spare drive, some free software and a few hours while you’re asleep.  The cost of an external drive is really reasonable these days.  I just picked up a Western Digital Terabyte USB 2.0 drive for 135€ delivered from Amazon (which you can find it even cheaper in the U.S.).

With respect to Apple OS X upgrades, have a surefire way to return your system to its previous (working) versions: create an image backup of your current Mac OS X system before upgrading by using SuperDuper.

ps. I don’t work for Shirt-Pocket software.  They just make damn good software.

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4 responses to “OS X Problems”

  1. Gabriele Avatar
    Gabriele

    Avoiding OS X Problems – Backup Before Problems Start:
    If you want to keep an up-to-date copy of your OS you have to run SuperDoper more than once and this will always mean the same story: (do this before going to sleep or if you have a few hours to do other things).

    Time Machine asks time once at the beginning then keeps backing up your system in background every hour so when the elephant has finished the restore will be done you will lose last hour data at most. Moreover the free trial doesn’t feature as may option as Carbon Copy Cloner does (donationware)

    Are you trying to sell something here ?

    Reply
  2. Ben Lam Avatar
    Ben Lam

    Gabriele,

    Comparing Time Machine and SuperDuper as you have done illustrates the fact that I haven’t made my point clear: Time Machine & SuperDuper do different things and both are great. (I use both.)

    If your harddisk dies and you have only Time Machine backups… you will not be happy with what comes next: buying a new disk, installing OS X, asking OS X to do a Time Machine restore, manually restoring your machine’s personal preferences. (Granted that you have an idea of what to do.)

    With SuperDuper, you simply boot off your SD disk, either via USB/Firewire or by swapping out the harddisk. Afterwards, it’s as if nothing has changed.

    See this Google search on CCC vs. SuperDuper.

    Most people prefer SD, but for more technical reasons. CCC does sound like a good product. Thanks for bringing that option to my attention.

    I am trying to sell something here: backing up your Mac so you don’t end up sorry and not pro-actively fixing things that aren’t broken. How far you go with that and the results you achieve are completely up to you.

    Ben

    Reply
  3. Yoo Avatar
    Yoo

    I think os problem is very common as we don’t know much about our os, days ago, i read a essay which tells us the reason why your mac runs slowly, there are nearly tens of reasons, the most problem is that we don’t know how to use your mac os well. Although i don’t know well about mac os, and i need to learn more about it, as a mac user, i know this Mac DVD Ripper is good to use.

    Reply
  4. David Avatar
    David

    Great tip! I always create an exact backup every time I upgrade to a new OS. I am a big fan of Time Machine over others as it works seamlessly and I don’t have to think about what gets backed up.

    Reply

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