Think of it this way: blocks are “containers for data”.  Or, let’s pretend they are dominos, and the “data” are the dots painted on each one. line up 20 dominos. See the little dots on the tops of them?   a file-level copy will read those dots, and go to the destination, and write the […]

I bought my first Apple in 1978; sat down with Woz’s Red Book (which I still have) and taught myself programming. In December of that year, I was awakened by a woman, unidentified, who has seen my advertisement for “Apple programming.” She asked what I thought of Apple’s own accounting software. I replied that I was not […]

Got a new SSD, or a Raptor? Need to squish down that boot drive so it will fit? Most likely your User (Home) folder is the single largest item on your drive. For example, of my 520 GB of files, 205 GB of it was my home folder. Moving that to a different drive (and […]

I’m a huge fan of SuperDuper! and I’ve used it for years. “Fan” because it’s saved my bacon several times. When a drive dies, I just remove it and use the SuperDuper “clone” and I’m up and running in under 5 minutes. That said, it’s a “file-level” clone, fully bootable of course, but it’s not […]

If you have not run DiskWarrior against your boot drive in a while, it probably wouldn’t hurt to do it now.One thing I always do before installing a new OS, or update, is run Repair permissions. Downloading the 3.76 GB file took 45 minutes on my (fairly fast cable) connection, and resulted in an application […]

Just the observations of an old guy, but one who has been watching and working with Apple since 1978… FCP-X launch is a disaster. iCloud reception is luke-warm; hostile in some cases. Android is a serious contender. Lion dumbs down the OS. Apple reduces iAd rates as advertisers flee. Apples loses “App Store” tm… (maybe) […]

Please don’t get me wrong: both of these are superior products, and I have and use and love both. That said, SuperDuper (SD) offers a “clone-on-mount” (auto-clone) option that can wreak havoc when and if you decide you want to run Diskwarror (DW) on the destination drive. That is, if you mount the destination drive, […]

OK: the title is a bit over the top….. the finder is not dead… but it’s in its later years. I’m prompted to write this as the release of Lion is impending. Many of us understand the Finder/Desktop metaphor as the “filing cabinet” it’s intended to emulate. Others (although this blows my mind) don’t understand […]

I was recently asked my opinion on Anti-Virus software for the Macintosh.  Here’s my reply: Most Mac folks will say “none.”   I sometimes use Intego VirusBarrier (VB), but there are others, some free, most paid. Leaving aside the whole issue of “is it really necessary on Macs” one thing to consider when looking at a […]

After a couple of years of use, the “spring” in the catch lock of the Firmtek trays gives out, and you have to manually push it up to engage the latch. (See trays here: http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2en2/) I asked, and they will not sell replacement parts, nor will they fix the tray if it’s over 1 year old. […]