SaaS data loss: The problem you didn’t know you had
Apple's Time Machine interface.
Last year real backup heaven arrived for me when I replaced a dire Tosh Windows notebook with a MacBook. It came with Apple's Time Machine. My MacBook with its Tiger O/S had a usable, near continuous (hourly), and automated backup facility. Oh frabjous day. Not only that but it had the world's sexiest backup software interface bar none.
It got better. You can have a wireless link to an external disk, and restoring files was not only easy but enjoyable, an excuse to go time travelling. I took to deleting files just so that I could restore them and enter that great screen doorway into the past.
Now Redmond, dratted Balmerdom, has gone and crafted Vista, and among all its other dreadful aspects is the lack of a Time Machine-like backup facility. There's ShadowCopy, but the interface isn't as sexy as Time Machine's. It's dependent on restore points and data is saved, I understand, on the system drive. Er, so what happens if it breaks?
It doesn't look as if a Time Machine clone is in Windows 7 either. Can't someone, anyone, craft some software that reverse engineers or clone Time Machine for Windows? Otherwise I 'll just have to buy a Drobo.
Maybe the Ballmer drones are thinking that cloud backup will sort it all out. Like I want to pay yet another PC tax. It's my data and I want it in one of my places so I can get it back in a flash, just like that, not so that I have to log on to the cloud, verify my ID and then wait while four gigs of data comes from Belgrade or Tunisia or wherever the data centre vault is, using an internet link suffering from contention with other users downloading Mamma Mia. I want my data back instantly, Time Machine style.
How about Time Machine and a Drobo with Windows support in Time Machine? That would float a whole flotilla of my boats, and stop this personal data storage protection whinger right in his tracks. Anyone got any better ideas? ®
COMMENTS
Another one
I was looking for this one, but nobody has picked it up: How about Lazy Mirror?
it's here:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wstudios/LazyMirror/index.html
Maybe there is something horribly wrong with it - (like, gee, RAID5's lack parity on read).
If Lazy Mirror is offensive to the cognoscenti, I will stop using it (as soon as I have shut down all my RAID5 arrays).
Why I don't use Time Machine: I hate single button mice and don't need a lecture on the efficiency of using control keys. Sure, I remember ^K^K^B and ^C/^V but why do I have to use them?
Single button mice are just one example of the Orwellian Mac universe. There are plenty of others. Remember the PowerPC chip? RISC good/CISC bad? Oops. Forget I said that. Repeat after me: CISC good/RISC bad. PC vs mac ads? A company that needs to promote bigoty against users of competing products is just plain evil.
And in the end it's just an effing tool.
Get a life. It just works better than arguing about computers.
No, I'm not arguing about computers with you. Or am i? Is black white?
sixscrews
Storage?
I was assuming this was going to be an article about what disks to avoid/ the history of how they have become more reliable. We got a bitch about tape storage and then an advert for Apple.
Whatever.
Where has all the usability gone?
Home data protection should be all about usability (assuming it works). I can understand that El Reg readers are a bunch of techies, but after years of (perl)scripting during your life – you get sick of building a new plane each time you want to fly (especially because you are the only pilot). While Time Machine addresses pretty much the backup usability aspect, I would expect that in the future there will be the ultimate file recovery interface – an advanced content based search.
Implementing similar solution for Windows does not introduce major technical challenges. The scary parts are the patents. What is the situation here?
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