[whitedog]

Lance666, on 16 August 2012 - 01:50 AM, said:

graxspoo, on 20 July 2011 - 03:10 PM, said:

"it's no substitute for having a reliable, regularly updated backup."

This is what scares me about Apple's move away from having DVD instal disks (and DVD drives for that matter!!!)... So, I have a time machine back-up, but its not bootable, my internal drive dies, I replace the drive, now what?

You restart holding command R, and get an Internet recovery option, no restore partition is needed.

That works only if your machine is new enough to support Internet Recovery. And a machine that new should hot experience a total hard drive failure in the first place. If it did it might well still be under warrantee, in which case you would be better advised to return the computer to Apple and have them replace the drive and the system. If you have an older machine without recourse to Internet Recovery, a total drive failure would necessitate reinstalling Snow Leopard from an install DVD, updating to OS X 10.6.8 and then, with the Apple ID you used to buy Lion, re-download and install Lion again. This would insure that you get a Recovery HD partition on the new drive. Then you might be able to restore your system to it's pre-crash state from a Time Machine backup. Note I say "might"; Time Machine can be fickle about recognizing a system as the one it was built from.

A better solution altogether is to keep an updated clone of your system. Not only would this be bootable in the meantime, while you are waiting for a new hard drive to be delivered, but you could be certain of restoring the system to the new drive - once you've installed Lion to get the Recovery HD partition back. This whole rigamarole is more complex than the previous method of installing from optical media. It has no doubt reduced the cost to Apple of providing system upgrades, assuming the bandwidth involved actually costs less than providing installation DVDs. And they have passed this savings on to users, drastically reducing the cost of OS upgrades. But I'm not sure the cost savings justifies the additional complexity. This may be fun and games to power users, but I doubt the "average" user feels so sanguine about it. In fact, I doubt the average user would even be aware of all of this until a problem arises and they have to consult their local Mac guru for a solution.

Of course the Internet download paradigm works well with Apple's new optical drive free MacBook Air and Pro RD models. With them its all of a piece. For users of other Mac models, which still have an optical drive, the system is far less holistic. The problem is that Apple adopted the new process in one fell swoop, with not viable transition options. That's why I made a point early on of following the tutorials to create a Lion install disk on both a DVD and a thumb drive. There is now an excellent piece of donation-ware, Lion DiskMaker, that makes the process relatively easy and painless. I recommend it to anyone who has any concerns about reinstalling Lion/Mountain Lion in the future.

[Gwyneth Llewelyn]

I know this is an old article, but a very useful one, IF you have one Mac with EITHER of those options:

1) A working DVD-ROM;
2) The ability to boot from USB flash drives or USB hard drives.

I have a Late 2006 iMac. The DVD-ROM is faulty and cannot read most DVDs; I'm not even sure it reads CDs, but it might. That hardware is too old to boot from USB flash drives/hard disks; I did lots of tests, with rEFIt and other things, and it's clear it won't boot from them.

After a failed Windows 7 installation on Boot Camp, the partition table was apparently trashed. Now the iMac believes it should boot from Boot Camp only, but that fails, and so, I get a lovely DOS prompt to insert some bootable media, but of course the failed Windows installation has no drivers and will not launch anything.

I started to become worried when I saw that Command-R didn't work at all. Now I *know* that I have a Recovery HD partition there, because I saw it from previous tests, when Lion was working flawlessly. It's just that the failed Windows installation is "hiding" everything. It might even have destroyed the partition information.

What can I do to restore the partition information? Recovery HD should be the solution -- but without a working DVD-ROM, and without the ability to boot from USB, what are my options?

Is there a way to put the Recovery HD on a CD-ROM? When I last saw the partition, it seemed to be smaller than 650 MB.

The alternative would be using a FireWire cable and either boot it from an external hard disk with FireWire (I have one of those), or put it into T mode, letting my MacBook fix the iMac's partition table, or even wipe it totally. Will that work? Sadly, the last remaining 6-pin FireWire-400 cable I got was misplaced and it's very hard to buy a new one on shops locally. I'm a bit scared to wire my own cable, as I've heard reports saying NOT to do that.

(No, the MacBook hasn't a working CD/DVD-ROM either)

Any thoughts?

[whitedog]

Gwyneth Llewelyn, on 17 August 2012 - 10:49 AM, said:

I know this is an old article, but a very useful one, IF you have one Mac with EITHER of those options:

1) A working DVD-ROM;
2) The ability to boot from USB flash drives or USB hard drives.

I have a Late 2006 iMac. The DVD-ROM is faulty and cannot read most DVDs; I'm not even sure it reads CDs, but it might. That hardware is too old to boot from USB flash drives/hard disks; I did lots of tests, with rEFIt and other things, and it's clear it won't boot from them.

After a failed Windows 7 installation on Boot Camp, the partition table was apparently trashed. Now the iMac believes it should boot from Boot Camp only, but that fails, and so, I get a lovely DOS prompt to insert some bootable media, but of course the failed Windows installation has no drivers and will not launch anything.

I started to become worried when I saw that Command-R didn't work at all. Now I *know* that I have a Recovery HD partition there, because I saw it from previous tests, when Lion was working flawlessly. It's just that the failed Windows installation is "hiding" everything. It might even have destroyed the partition information.

What can I do to restore the partition information? Recovery HD should be the solution -- but without a working DVD-ROM, and without the ability to boot from USB, what are my options?

Is there a way to put the Recovery HD on a CD-ROM? When I last saw the partition, it seemed to be smaller than 650 MB.

The alternative would be using a FireWire cable and either boot it from an external hard disk with FireWire (I have one of those), or put it into T mode, letting my MacBook fix the iMac's partition table, or even wipe it totally. Will that work? Sadly, the last remaining 6-pin FireWire-400 cable I got was misplaced and it's very hard to buy a new one on shops locally. I'm a bit scared to wire my own cable, as I've heard reports saying NOT to do that.

(No, the MacBook hasn't a working CD/DVD-ROM either)

Any thoughts?

Have you tried booting the iMac while holding down the Option key? If your OS X partition is still viable it should show up as a boot option, as should any other bootable partitions on the drive, including the Recovery HD partition. If no bootable partition is listed, then your partitions are undoubtedly damaged. In my experience the best tool for repairing partitions, if they can be repaired, is DiskWarrior, if you can borrow or buy a copy (though DiskWarrior doesn't currently work when run on an OS X 10.7.4 system. The latest viable system is 10.7.3).

You can order new FireWire cables from any number of sources online. They're relatively inexpensive. If you can boot the iMac in target disk mode you may be able to determine how badly damaged your iMac's drive is by running Disk Utility on it. However, there may be a problem if your iMac has a newer version of OS X than the MacBook - in that case you won't be able to repair permissions. At a minimum you should be able to recover your data from the old iMac, copying it to an external drive connected to your MacBook. After copying your data you can then use Disk Utility to reformat the iMac's hard drive. You could install Lion from the MacBook, if it is running Snow Leopard or Lion. If, as the dead optical drive you report suggests, your MacBook cannot run Lion you are out of luck because the App Store won't download it to an incompatible computer.

I have put the Lion installer on a DVD as well as on a thumb drive. If you intend to continue using the iMac and the MacBook, it would be worth you while to buy an external dual-layer DVD burner. A dual layer drive will be necessary even to install Snow Leopard, which comes on a dual layer disc. Neither your iMac nor your MacBook has a dual layer drive. Frankly I don't know how you got Snow Leopard on the iMac in order to be able to get Lion - unless you borrowed an external optical drive.

Hope this helps.

[Geoharmonix]

Cannot be overstated how important it is to keep up with the updates as they become available from Apple.Even though your computer may be an Apple there are lots of differences between different models and chips that they have inside of them such as graphic cards.Whenever Apple releases a new operating system there is often bugs for older computers.But, within a few months Apple is usually covered most problems and updating the regularly will often Saul any problems unless it is a hardware issue.I run disk utility quite frequently because I am on a three-year-old Mac. I will do a disk repair and permissions repair whenever I get any glitches. I have a dual core Intel running on 2.6 GHz with 4 GB of RAM. I do not think I will be able to go beyond Mountain lion. I always take note as to which programs seem to be running whenever I had a problem And I will avoid programs that seem to be causing issues.
Another key point is to make sure that the software you are using is upgraded for your operating system.If I ever have a problem I can guarantee that I am not the only one and can usually find forums online with people who have had similar issues.I do not install or use software on Mountain lion unless I have researched and verified that it is indeed compatible with Mountain lion.
One of my biggest issues is Time Machine. Relying upon backups from Time Machine is a crutch and he can get you into trouble.I live in an area where we often have power surges outages. If I should be in the middle of a back up when I get a power outage, then there is a strong likelihood that my backup has been corrupted.Nonetheless you can still big into these backups and recover a lot of important files.I have found that partitions using Mac OSX journaled Are very fragile and what happens is that the directories can get jumbled quite easily.After quite a bit of research I decided to go a very alternative route for keeping my software backed up.Mac keeps track of all your files by constantly learning to check on the files and Directories using spotlight. This can be a lot of work in the background and consume a lot of CPU.
So now, Instead of having time machine constantly making backups onto an external hard drive that is Mac OSX journaled, I am using ChronoSync to do my backups once a week. Last year I lost my backups four times and I said never again. Partitioning to drive with Fat 32 can be just as problematic.So I have installed a special drive that allows my Mac to use and NTFS partitions. NTFS is considered to be the most reliable partitions available by many people. You can get the driver necessary for this with the paid version but keep in mind that there is an open source for NTFS drivers. There is a couple drawbacksOne being that there isn't a good disk utility found yet for repairing permissions and directories. Another issue is that spotlight cannot Read the filesystems so doing searches in the finder on this hard drive does not work.I have Had files disappear on occasion.But all I have to do is go to a Windows machine and run a simple permissions repair and the files reappear.I am happy to say now in the last six months I have not lost any more backups.Last year I lost years of my work with photos and videos and it was extremely regrettable. But, I feel comfortable now and do not worry about the power going off anymore.
Issues that can make a computer sluggish: Many background processes can really bogged down older CPU's. One process new programs use is the option to create versions of documents as changes are being made.This may be handy if you need to go back 20-30 minutes ago to review changes but it comes at a cost. All of these versions and saving processes can eat up memory and slowly your machine down. When Lion first came out, this was a very big issue And often programs would be making unnecessary copies of files. but most of the problems with memory leaks and programs have been fixed. Nonetheless, on my old machine I rely upon manually saving my documents instead.
One last thing that you should be quite aware of is how much your computer is syncing with clouds. Even though it seems really handy, unless you are on a newer machine, a lot of Items really don't need to be mirrored the cloud. I tend to use it only for what is necessary and as often as necessary. First thing I do when using any program is go through all the preferences and make sure that it is doing only what I really needed to do and knowing what to expect so I don't get surprised.

[Geoharmonix]

I apologize for getting a little bit off-topic but I know how important it is to a lot of people dealing with the problem with crashes and lost backups.
But, there is one last thing I forgot to mention.I came across online hey very slimmed-down version of Snow Leopard that is just phenomenal.This guy took a lot of care to get rid of all the excess fat and is created a very fast OS that I can run from an extra hard drive and do any repairs on my machine quickly and reliably. He has named it Snow Leopard 911, SL911. Now is a great for doing repair from an extra Ernal bootable hard drive, but it comes in quite handy when I have to use software that just isn't compatible with the new lion OS X systems.
Many people don't realize it, but it's not just the robust functionality which is changed since lion OS has come out.In order to take advantage of the real power of quad core and multi core chips, A new form of programming has the duty belt called OpenCL.This is a very complex computer language that can be running many different threads of computations simultaneously.It was a big leak in programming and took a lot of programmers some time to get their heads around how to write this very complex code safely. Programs that use the system are one such as audio and video editing software. In 2011, a lot of software that used the style of programming was quite buggy and very problematic. Fortunately, a lot of progress is been made in the last couple years and now programs that use Multithreaded programming are becoming quite reliable as they work out the bugs. In that respect I think that mountain lion OS X is much smoother than lion OS X.

[whitedog]

Geoharmonix, on 10 December 2012 - 09:56 AM, said:

I apologize for getting a little bit off-topic but I know how important it is to a lot of people dealing with the problem with crashes and lost backups.
But, there is one last thing I forgot to mention.I came across online hey very slimmed-down version of Snow Leopard that is just phenomenal.This guy took a lot of care to get rid of all the excess fat and is created a very fast OS that I can run from an extra hard drive and do any repairs on my machine quickly and reliably. He has named it Snow Leopard 911, SL911. Now is a great for doing repair from an extra Ernal bootable hard drive, but it comes in quite handy when I have to use software that just isn't compatible with the new lion OS X systems.
Many people don't realize it, but it's not just the robust functionality which is changed since lion OS has come out.In order to take advantage of the real power of quad core and multi core chips, A new form of programming has the duty belt called OpenCL.This is a very complex computer language that can be running many different threads of computations simultaneously.It was a big leak in programming and took a lot of programmers some time to get their heads around how to write this very complex code safely. Programs that use the system are one such as audio and video editing software. In 2011, a lot of software that used the style of programming was quite buggy and very problematic. Fortunately, a lot of progress is been made in the last couple years and now programs that use Multithreaded programming are becoming quite reliable as they work out the bugs. In that respect I think that mountain lion OS X is much smoother than lion OS X.

I, too, have found Time Machine to be unreliable for restoring a system and for that purpose I also maintain a mirrored clone of my boot drive, using SuperDuper!. Time Machine is more useful for recovering changed of deleted files - which is why I use both forms of backup.

As for Snow Leopard 911, what you don't mention is that it's only available through torrents, not from a reliable source. When it was first developed, some time in 2010, thumb drives were somewhat limited in size and a stripped down version of OS X could be useful. These days, flash drives of 16 GB and more are readily available so that a regular install of Snow Leopard - if that's what you need - can easily be made from a Snow Leopard install disc. Of course, if you don't have Snow Leopard, and are comfortable using torrents, then Snow Leopard 911 may be a viable option. If you go looking, though, don't bother trying the abbreviation - SL911 - as that is the name of a brand of moisture drying agent, something you might use on a boat to keep your computer at safe humidity levels.