exclude your Time Machine disk from Spotlight indexing
Just the other day I noticed an odd thing: the Spotlight magnifying glass on my MacBook Pro had that little pulsating dot in it that means it is indexing something. That was odd, since I hadn’t added any large files to my Mac, nor had I connected an external harddrive. Or did I?
As you might be able to guess from the picture above, Spotlight was dutifully trying to index my Time Capsule’s harddrive every time that drive was mounted by Time Machine (which is once an hour). This process was making my backups take a little longer than I wanted them to, so I simply excluded my Time Capsule from Spotlight’s indexing.
Here’s how you do it:
- Launch System Preferences (or you can open the Spotlight preferences from the Spotlight dropdown menu).
- Click on the ‘Privacy’ tab.
- click the little plus icon (
) - Choose your Time Machine disk (as you can see mine is cleverly named)
That’s it! Now Spotlight will ignore your Time Machine disk, your backups will run a little faster, and there will be a spring in your step.
Popularity: 7% [?]
New screenshots of Snow Leopard appear, show desktop web apps
A German site, Apfeltalk.de has posted screenshots of the forthcoming version of Mac OS X, 10.6 (a.k.a “Snow Leopard”). Most of the screenshots show off the Safari 4 developer preview that will include the “Save as Web Application” option in the File menu.
The website also shows off the next version of Address Book.app that will bring Microsoft Exchange support to the Mac platform. We do however have to speculate about the System Preferences.app screenshot that shows two Time Machine icons with one labled “Dock” and another labeled “Time Machine” — this seems out of place and unlike Apple.
You can see all of the screenshots (before Apple’s legal team gets a hold of them) on the Apfeltalk.de site.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Backing up iTunes
Just like every machine with moving parts, the hard drive that holds your iTunes library will eventually stop working. Read that line again - I didn’t say might stop working, but will stop. It’s going to happen, so be prepared.
Mark Nichols at zanshin recently wrote about his own experience of swapping and burning CDs and DVDs to back up iTunes purchases (something we blogged about awhile ago). That got me thinking about strategies for iTunes backups.
Time Machine and SuperDuper make it easy to execute local backups at regular intervals, but that’s only half the battle. A good off-site backup of your mission-critical files (and I don’t know about you, but for me, music is definitely considered mission-critical) is essential. You can go with services like Mozy or CrashPlan.
Personally, I’ve been very happy with Bandwagon. For only $12US per month, they provide the means to backup to either Amazon S3 or your own FTP server.
So, what’s your solution? Please share in the comments, and save Mark another day of swapping discs in and out of his optical drive.[Read]
Popularity: 9% [?]
Good folders to exclude from Time Machine backups
Time Machine is a really effective tool for backing up everything on your drive. And when I say everything, I mean it — Time Machine indiscriminately backs up a lot of junk on your drive. And because of the techniques it uses and the way some files are used by your apps, you might find that your 500GB external backup drive is getting full after just a few months of use.
It’s really easy to identify folders for exclusion from Time Machine, which will save time and space during backups. It’s worth noting, though, that if your machine’s drive does fail, you won’t be able to execute a full restore without having some of these locations backed up. Then again, if you’re anything like me, you’re far more likely to just do a full reinstall and just restore your lost user data. (Doing a full restore from backup just doesn’t have many advantages compared to a full system reinstall, anyway.)
These are just a few suggestions — you should NEVER exclude anything from backup if you’re unsure you have another copy, aren’t able to get it again, or are unaware of the possible ramifications. Of course, you’ve got any good folders you think should be added to the list, feel free to drop ‘em in comments.
Obvious
The duh stuff.
- /Applications - This will likely save you more space than any other single folder, especially if you have lots of apps. Just make sure you know what programs you’d want to get back if your machine were to die.
Caches and downloads
Big directories of files that should probably be excluded automatically, but aren’t. Unless you’re a crazy developer debugging code, you’ll probably never need a backup of your caches.
- /Users/[user]/Library/Caches and /Library/Caches - Between the two you can knock off a few hundred megs of constantly changing, essentially useless data.
- /Users/[user]/Downloads - Where all your internet downloads wind up. Frequently changes, and if you’re anything like me, it’s filled with gigs of garbage.
- /Users/[user]/.Trash and /.Trashes - Some people might see value in backing up their trashed files. Not I.
More after the break.
Audio and media
Some more obvious picks. You probably don’t need to back this stuff up.
- /Library/Audio - You can save from the hundreds of megs to gigs here. Keep an eye out for the GarageBand samples, they weigh a ton.
- /Users/[user]/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Podcasts - I don’t really re-listen to podcasts, but even if I did, they can be re-downloaded easily. So the 3GB+ I save here is a no brainer.
Time Machine un-friendly apps
The data produced by some of these apps can easily be the worst offenders when it comes to backups. Until they get their act together, they should likely be excluded categorically.
- Parallels (/Users/[user]/Library/Parallels) and VMware - You’ll definitely want to keep a copy of your virtual machines, but if left included in Time Machine backups, your system will continuously save the virtual disks each time you use Parallels or VMware. (VMware has become a little more TM-aware though, which is good.) That means potentially hundreds of wasted GB — not to mention tons of lost time during backup.
- Entourage - Same deal here, Entourage uses one giant, constantly changing file to store all your mail. It sucks not to have your email backed up though, so be sure to use something other than Time Machine for keeping a copy handy in case of emergency.
- /Users/[user]/Library/Mail Downloads - Whenever you open an attachment in Mail, it stores a copy of the file in your Mail.app attachments folder. If you’re a heavy Mail user, excluding this will save you some real space.
System
Beware! You likely won’t screw up anything by excluding this stuff, but if you run into trouble these are some pretty important folders. Note: you’ll need to hit “show invisible items” to exclude some of these.
- /usr, /sbin, /private, /bin - Collectively contain about a billion essential system files that can ultimately just be reinstalled in case of disaster.
- /system - Root system folder. Contains lots of essential stuff — gigs of it, in fact. Great place to save space.
P.S. -I don’t use Entourage or VMware, someone want to hook me up with the best paths to exclude on those?
Popularity: 13% [?]
Microsoft compatibility problems, iPhone charging, Mail bouncing, syncing, and more
In this riveting episode of Ask TUAW we’re catching up a bit on the backlog, so we’ll be looking at a couple of problems generated by Microsoft products (Hotmail and Photo Story), charging an iPhone from a sleeping Mac, syncing personal data between two user accounts, using a Mac mini as a backup server, and more.
As always your suggestions are most welcome, and questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you’re running and which version of OS X, as certain answers will vary between different Macs and Tiger vs. Leopard, etc. (we’ll assume you’re running Leopard if you don’t specify). And now, on to the questions!
Andrew asks
I’m running the current version of Leopard on a PowerBook G4 (1.5GHz with 1.25GB memory). I was wondering if there is a way to shut the lid on my laptop while still keeping power to the USB ports. I would like to be able to put my computer to sleep and keep it charging my iPhone..
Unfortunately, no; this is a hardware issue. In fact, Apple recently added this feature to the iMac line. However, according to this thread and this hint the FireWire port is still powered while the computer is asleep. While you can’t sync your iPhone over FireWire, you can possibly use that to charge it with a FireWire to Dock connector cable and if indeed if you use this double headed cable ($19) you don’t even have to switch (i.e. plug in both at the same time).
pjones asks
When using iChat, I love that the icon bounces in the dock when I receive a new message. Is there a way to assign this same icon “bounce” behavior to the Mail.app dock icon, so that it bounces when I get new mail?
As another reader pointed out this is easily accomplished with a Mail.app rule. Just configure a rule in the Mail.app preferences as follows:
Kyle asks
I have recently switched to a mac mini 1.83Ghz running leopard and now use a .mac e-mail address. Previously I used a windows live hotmail account as my primary e-mail and I am wondering if there is any way to have e-mails to the hotmail account delivered to the “mail” application on my mac?
I have a very short-term solution for you: the Mac OS X HTTP Mail Plugin will allow you to download Hotmail into Mail.app. However, the developer has a note saying that “Microsoft is closing us down” as of June 30, 2008 because they’re replacing WebDAV access with a new proprietary (and undocumented) technology called “DeltaSync.” Now if you’re willing to pay you can get POP3 access with a Hotmail Plus account. Finally, there’s also a third-party service called IzyMail that will supposedly allow you to access Hotmail with an IMAP mail client, however I have never used it and cannot comment on its reliability.
My wife had this problem when switching and I finally just switched her over to Gmail. If I were you, I would go ahead and just pull the band aid off switch away from Hotmail. Microsoft’s mail service is just not competitive anymore and it’s a bear to deal with as you’re finding out.
Adam asks
Some time ago, in the not so distant past, I noticed that the .Mac sync icon started to appear on the top menu bar for me. I have a MBP running Leopard. I have never synced anything with .Mac, yet so much as subscribed so I have no clue how this appeared. Now I want to know how to make it disappear, the .Mac button in Settings does not help me out as far as I can tell.
The sync item will also run for the iPhone so that may be how it got there. Anyway you can remove in either of two ways. Just hold down the ⌘ key and drag it off the menubar. Or you’ll find the checkbox setting in the Sync tab of the .Mac Preference Pane.
joeyjoe serially asks
I use my MacBook at work and home, so I created two accounts on it. I did this primarily because I need easy access to different applications at work and at home and because I didn’t want anyone to accidently stumble onto my personal files at work. This setup, however, has not really worked because I would still like to keep my email, contact, calendar and applications in sync between the work and home accounts. The simple solution I suppose would be to use one account and set up two different docks and desktops, but this isn’t even possible with Spaces. What do you suggest?
You could try using one account and keeping all of your personal files in an encrypted FileVault created with Disk Utility. Alternately, you could continue using separate accounts and adopt some kind of syncing solution. The obvious one is .Mac, however, you might also consider using something like IMAP for email and something like Google for calendar and contact information. You can even sync Google’s services with iCal using BusySync ($25) or Spanning Sync ($25/year). Address Book syncing is now possible with Syncman ($15) though apparently Address Book syncing is coming to the others as well. Having lots of this kind of data online as other advantages as well, so that might be worth looking into.
I created a Windows Media File using Microsoft’s excellent slideshow program, Photo Story, however I cannot view it on my Mac. The WMV file that Photo Story creates cannot be played in anything before Windows Media Player 10, and as far as I can tell, the latest version of Flip for Mac only covers files created for Windows Media Player 7.0 and earlier. I can’t find anything to play this thing!
I found this site with some suggestions. Basically, it is a codec problem and so the suggested solutions are converting the file to a QuickTime MOV with the file conversion site Zamzar or (if you have access to Windows) convert the file to a Flip4Mac compatible version with the Windows Media Encoder.
computergeeksjw asks
I have a Rage 128 video card that came with my old iMac. I’ve looked and looked, but I can’t seem to find a driver anywhere. ATI’s website only has drivers for Windows. I wanted to set up Extended Desktops but my Mac won’t recognize it. Apple Technical Support @ 1-800-My-Apple said to get a driver, but I can’t find one:). Any solutions/suggestions?
Unfortunately, I do not think Extended Desktop is possible with the Rage 128. The hack to enable this on older machines is called Screen Spanning Doctor but the Rage 128 is explicitly not supported.
Jason asks
…. My utopian goals for the backup system are 1) to have an automatic system that takes the responsibility out of it as much as possible, 2) have an offsite - preferably, online - backup of my photos and music (because those are virtually irreplaceable - especially the photos), and 3) if possible, have online access to all my personal files for when I travel (a lot)…. Is it possible to use the Mini as a backup & Time Machine server (with a huge HDD attached via USB) without having to buy Leopard Server ($500) to expose the external disk?
Yes. Backup to an AFP-shared HFS+ disk mounted on any Leopard computer (Client or Server) is officially supported by Time Machine. What I would do is buy a large external FireWire drive and hook it to the Mac mini. Then, share that drive with AFP and use it with Time Machine and/or SuperDuper!.
Finally as far as accessing file from the road goes there are a number of ways to accomplish this from Back to My Mac and iChat Screen Sharing, to others like iGet ($49). You might also want to check out a little application we posted on before called FarFinder ($35).
Sam asks
If I have a 1st gen iPhone and want to get a 3G one, could I just buy a 3G phone and put my 1st gen sim card in?
You’ll probably have to unlock the new phone to get this to work. It’s obviously not known yet whether the unlocking tools with work on the 3G iPhone.
Joel asks
I am thinking of an application, but I can’t remember it’s name, and I can’t find it via searching for the life of me! It was talked about on TUAW, and what it does is, it allows you to make a bookmark of a website, and it treats the bookmark like an application that you can open separately, and keep on your dock and stuff.
I’m not 100% sure what application it is you’re referring to. I suppose you know that you can just drag a URL to the right side of your Dock (assuming it’s on the bottom) and add a spring icon to launch any website.
If what you want is a site-specific browser, you can check out Fluid or Prism — these custom builds of the Webkit and Firefox browser engines can create one-off apps that launch a specified website in a standalone window.
[Via TUAW]
Popularity: 50% [?]
