When you are responsible for hundreds of clients advertising, marketing, public relations, graphic design and web files within the system, the computer crashes at the risk of possible loss of data can be one of the main reasons for panic! What to do?
I've been in the marketing business for more than thirty five years. I have active clients whose work often needs to address. I am also active customers unpredictable surface every now and then, which also needs immediate attention.
No matter who asks, should be ready, willing and able to perform what it takes to snap. This means that it must maintain a comprehensive archive of work that I can access at any time to modify, update, references, or otherwise adapt to new applications as desired.
This work includes a large library of high resolution Photoshop files that May had hours, days or weeks of work dedicated to them in order to enhance the original image in some way, big Quark files final text, photographs and works of art composed of a sophisticated and meticulous design, which is also undoubtedly be many, many hours of setup, not to mention customer reviews, and final changes, extremely complex files Dreamweaver web site, participate equally impressive Flash files for web animations, produce perfect vector file artwork created in Adobe Illustrator, variety of drop-down menu for web use was created in Fireworks, hundreds of PDF files created with Adobe Acrobat distiller for high quality printing. and a medley of other businesses that use music, movies, videos and various other files
for thirty-five years is a very long time, and lasted for several technology (and not-so-technologically) period in the process, this work is in various forms, including scans of older work, as well as actual digital files of local programs, some of which are now obsolete or discontinued products. Having learned from years of trying and storage of files and work on them on the same hard disk with limited space can lead to problems, I have resorted to always have an external hard drive or two as an extension of my computer system so that I always have enough open space on the disk for digital "shrink" for lack of better term.
My external hard drives are included FireWire and USB data transmission system, FireWire is faster and more expensive versions. And, as might be expected, every time I need a new external drive capacities have increased dramatically, and costs are not ironic.
Over the years, I have had many different Macintosh computers, usually the most expensive, fastest and most celebrated versions available. But I'm currently working on a more conservative cost iMac using OS X 10.4.11 with 2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 GB RAM (memory) and an internal hard drive with 232.89 GB of storage capacity. I bought this system a few years ago, used it almost eighteen or more hours each day, and loved every minute of it, especially his beautiful monitor. I fully intend to upgrade my whole system is likely later this year when the new OS X operating system is released. I say this with full knowledge that such an upgrade would require that I upgrade all the previously mentioned software programs can be used, which will add up to a nice weight, but necessary, investment.
Until just two weeks ago, I had two external hard drives connected to this system: Firewire is filled to the last place that I stopped taking it on a daily basis, because it is making a funny noise and I thought I was supposed to preserve what is left of him, a Western Digital "My book", which has approximately the same capacity as my internal hard drive (about 232 GB). After some two years, I only used about half the available space. So, when my system started to decline in more recent times one afternoon, I was deeply upset, because I do not know what is causing the problem.
, I was immediately suspicious of the "My Book" because it exposed some disturbing symptoms during the past six months I usually was able to dismiss or reject. It involves taking a long-burning, or if the mount at all on the desktop, without apparent provocation. However, the computer is restarted, the drive to mount, and I chose to not dwell on the incident.
In discussions with the decline in the appearance of her husband, who is a retired IBM technician and specialized engineering consultant, immediately asked me what I was doing just before the collision. I said I was trying to save my work in any of the many programs that are Quark, Photoshop and others. He also felt the MyBook is the culprit because the goal of my saved data. I said I did not even gotten to the point where I said that where to store the data so that I still had my doubts that was the problem.
I decided to do some tests in an effort to eliminate some possibilities. I spent the Disk Utility diagnostic test on the internal hard drives and My Book, and both reported that no problem, something I seriously doubted. Then I copied some of my most needed files to my nearly empty internal hard drive and reboot my system without turning on MyBook. I was able to work and save the file without a crash. This seemed to confirm to me that MyBook is wrong. But why?
I shopped online for a new external hard drive and reading and researching the problem, I learned that the external hard drives do not like to be put to sleep, then woke up suddenly rough work in the immediate function. Since I tend to be impatient person moves enough time in the day and too much work at the time when I'm available, I realized that this scenario is commonplace in my work life. In checking my System Preferences under Energy Saver, I noticed that my system is set to go to sleep if idle for more than 15 minutes (the default), which happens quite often when the phone rings or I get up to attend to some other activities from time to time during the day. Probably the MyBook has gotten older and slower (like all of us as we age), it simply can not keep up with the steps trying to implement. It may also function as data on the disk, it just needs more time for everything, especially to wake up and perform.
Also, I read that is May to ask the computer system to multitask too many programs open at one time all of which are based on available RAM, although a generous amount of it. My husband did at the thought that maybe I have not given my memory correctly. It rang a distant bell in my head ... very distant bell. I remembered the days of allocating memory for each of my programs, sharing my available RAM for what is the point: more for Photoshop, Quark less, for example. I realized I did not do the job for many years. However, in researching the case on Google, I quickly discovered that those days were long over with the advent of OS X that is automatically assigned to RAM as needed. It's no wonder!
So, I decided to restart my system with a My Book connected and try to limit my program to use one at a time and adjust the sleep mode to "never" allowing him to go to sleep. It seemed to be the magic bullet. However, with the knowledge that the MyBook was getting old and eventually overwhelmed with data, I decided to invest in new external hard drive with the aim of putting all my important files on it as an additional backup.
On Mac Mall, I found a very reasonable Fantom Drives 1TB External eSATA / USB 2.0 hard drive with a customer service rep, which is compatible with Windows and OS X 10.4 or later, for approx. $ 50 after rebates and free shipping, I could not resist. In accordance with the instructions, I installed it into my USB hub, a new hard drive designed for use with OS X.
Just like the MyBook, it is recommended always starting with the hard disk before you turn on your computer and always striking soon shut down to avoid any damage or data loss. What no one seems to ever mention is that when the power goes off unexpectedly as it does every time the wind is blowing in the wrong direction in which I live, the computer shut down abruptly and without hard disks ever get dismounted properly in the process. Until now, the new Fantom drive seems to ignore such events and mounts instantly without any apparent consequences.
, however, from past experience, I know MyBook does not respond positively to such incidents and I recently learned that the best way to deal with any negative results in the MyBook completely disconnect the power cord and let it I was clear for about five minute break before you plug it back in while the computer is off. I also find that if I restart my computer and a system to shut down between starts with the external hard drive connected, as a similar "clearing out" after such an interlude of electricity or decrease the incidents of any kind, the whole system work better later.
Just use common sense has helped me sort through this problem, find solutions and work on correcting my situation with the equipment I need to do. I started my system with the MyBook and Fantom both are connected, set the mode to "never," waited long for the MyBook to mount and then prudently dragged many of my files from the old hard disk to copy to new hard drive while asleep at night, so as not to disturb the system multitasking demands. While MyBook has continued to misbehave at times when asked to pull off after a long session, once again drop the whole system, I was able to move all my important files to a new drive, and now not even have to turn increasingly to the MyBook. I can now successfully working on the Phantom, or on my internal hard disk with multiple programs open at once, without worrying about crashes as long as I continue my sleep is set to "never". When I plan to be away from computers for a long time, I downloaded the Phantom and off, return to the default settings and go to sleep knowing my system will be able to wake up when I come back, without worrying about crashes and data loss. What a relief!
Of course, the motive which finally got me to focus on this problem - the total loss of the MyBook folder full of some very important information I did when I attempt to save a simple file caused the recent crash - a valuable lesson in facing what which is important when you start the job: you can never have enough reliable back-up system
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