Apple talk

[isoS]

Brace yourself for all the whining about the price and the "Apple tax" noize.

[isoS]

Quick question. I'm finally setting up Time Machine; is it meant to take an hour to back up 1 GB of data? At this rate it'll take 214 hours to complete the first backup. All I can think is that the USB hub I'm using is slowing it down... Should I give up and start over with the external drive plugged right into my computer's USB port? (I've never had speed problems with this hub before -- I use it to sync an iPod and an iPhone all the time and it's never been noticeably slow.)

[nathansmart]

I remember it taking a while but I don't know about an hour for a gig. But, I just let it sit and went about my day.

[isoS]

That was my plan, but I looked at the progress bar and got scared. Hopefully it will speed up at some point, otherwise it's gonna be a long week... (I know I can still use the computer, and I have my laptop anyway, but psychologically it's disconcerting for something to take, and for HDDs to spin for, that long.)

[man124]

I just set mine up last week and it only took about 7 hours to back up 150 gigs onto a usb hard drive plugged directly into the computer. I was doing it on a macbook pro as opposed to a desktop, but I really doubt that would make any difference.

[Darryl]

I use Time Machine, with a third party drive. The first backup took a long time but I just started it before going to bed and let it do its thing. Subsequent backups take way less time.

I use a MacBook, so I can't stay connected all the time. (Apparently, only the Time Capsule drive allows wireless backup through Time Machine.) But, I just plug in the USB cable every week or so, or after I dump a bunch of photos into iPhoto, and it does its thing.

For the first backup, I do think I would use the USB cable. It can't hurt. But once it's going, walk away, man, just walk away.

[isoS]

I just stopped the backup, plugged it into the computer and restarted. Seems to be going faster... And luckily it just picked up where it left off, so those hours weren't totally wasted.

[Darryl]

Awesome!

Even though I have to plug in, it's still the sweetest backup system ever. And the retrieval interface is slicker than [something slick] on a [slick surface].

[isoS]

Update: in two hours, it has backed up... 2.77GB. Faster, yes. But this does not feel right.

[Darryl]

I don't remember the exact number when I did my first backup, but I had the exact same experience of thinking it was incredibly slow. Then, at a certain point it went a lot faster. I wonder if the initial indexing is what takes so long, and not the actual copying of files.

This site might help. You're not running any anti-virus while backing up are you? Sounds like that's an issue for some people.

[Darryl]

Another possible tip.

[isoS]

Thanks. I'm leaving it overnight; we'll see what happens. I'd love to use eSATA instead of USB, but unlike the guy in that link, I'm not using a MBP. I think I once searched brieffly for an eSATA card for a G5 tower and came up empty -- anyone know if that exists? For whatever reason, FW drives are always more expensive (esp FW800), but many low-cost external drives now have eSATA right alongside USB2.

[Dan B]

Snow Leopard out this Friday! Only $29 dollars to upgrade, too, if you have Leopard.

Unfortunately, I still have Tiger and they want me to spend $170 to get this package that comes with iLife '09 and some other stuff I don't need. Thanks, Apple.

[isoS]

Also only works with Intel Macs, so my G5 will be left behind like a Kurt Cameron movie. Sure, my laptop can join the snow patrol, but then I'll be on two different versions and it will get confusing what I can do on which. Also, my old-ass Photoshop CS1 won't work, so I might as well stick with it. Hey, I didn't upgrade to Leopard until like six months ago, so I'm still enjoying 10.5.

But yeah, $29 is nice.

[man124]

My cd drive is broken on my MBP and even with my warranty, it will cost 400 dollars to get fixed. I don't really need it for anything, so it is not worth the price to get it fixed. Anyone know of any really good, really cheep external CD drives or some possible easy fixes?

[Itslikeimsayin]

Will CS2 work on Snow Leopard? (Answer me, slave.)

[arruns]

Will CS2 work on Snow Leopard? (Answer me, slave.)

No, my master.

[nathansmart]

Kurt Cameron sounds like an awesome mashup

[Darryl]

I prefer Kirk Russell.

[isoS]

Do you know who you're fucking with?! Anthony Koenig is a personal friend of mine!

I didn't read that link, but yesterday a guy from Adobe said CS3 would (99.9%) work on Snow Lep, but they didn't have the resources to fully test and officially support it. So CS2 might work also, or mostly work, but who knows... I doubt CS1 was ever officially said to work on 10.5, but it works for me.