Day: May 8, 2021

Backup strategy

This is only FWIW. After some time testing various backup techniques, involving everything from Retrospect to TimeMachine, here’s where I’ve landed. This is only best for me… what is best for you is what WORKS for you, and what you’ll actually -use.-   I use SuperDuper to keep clones of my various volumes. I have […]

Fun with disks and folders: copy & delete

two quick tips: 1) I had a cd with about 40 folders and a total of almost a thousand files on it. I wanted to move all that to a hard drive, but if you drag and drop the cd image (as mounted on the desktop) all you’ll get on the drive is an alias […]

Mac FTP not working?

Well, not sure this applies to anyone in the world except me, but it sure lead a bunch of ftp gurus on a wild-goose chase until by brute force I discovered the problem’s solution: the problem: some, but not all, ftp clients (including Apple’s own finder built-in !!!) failed to connect to ftp sites. The […]

Multiple “From:” addresses in Mail

Quick tip for Apple’s Mail software: you can have multiple “from” easily – just enter them in the account setup “from:” separated by commas, like this: tracy@someplace.com,  tracy@elsewhere.net, tracy@overthehill.org Doing so will create a popup menu below your “Subject:” line, and allow you to choose which one to use. Handy, for example, when some services […]

ebay: There was an error in your input. Solution?

I was plagued by this suddenly a few days ago, and now I think I’ve figured it out. It began when I signed into myEbay and got: “There was an error in your input. Please go back and ensure that all fields are properly filled in.” Nothing I could do, over several days, including calling […]

Changing Mail checking frequency

Of course, Mail has some settings built-in, via a popup menu in the Mail Preferences. But what if checking for new mail every minute is too fast, and every 5 minutes is too slow? Well, it’s just a plist entry: ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist The entry you’re looking for is “Poll Time” and you enter the number of […]

MTBF – Mean Time Between Failures or why your hard drive won’t last 170 years…

I ran across this a while back: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/12/17/toshiba.512gb.ssd/ …in which the author breathlessly proclaims: “Longevity is also a focus with about one million hours (114 years) between failures thanks to reduced wear on potentially short-lived memory cells.” Wrong. I often get asked about MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) and it’s amazing how many “industry people” […]

How long will my drive last?

3 years, on average. OK, if it’s warranted by the manufacturer to last three years, it should last three years. If it’s warranted for 5, it should last 5. You can add maybe as much as a year if you never turn it off, but remember, the warrantee is only as long as it is. […]

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