dizzyrocks2001
Hey guys, here is a tip that might allow you to sleep better at night. I had heard that you can use an external HD as a backup startup drive should your Macbook's hard drive die on you. I investigated this on the Apple support site and via my Macbook's "help viewer" where it explains about partitioning the external HD with a RAID structure etc. but I found the instructions to be a bit difficult to follow. After some online research I stumbled across a free program called "SuperDuper" which basically allows you to easily clone your Macbook's HD file-for-file, and if your Macbook's HD ever dies on you all you have to do is restart the computer while holding down the "option" key and then select the external HD as your startup drive. From that point the external HD literally becomes the Macbook's HD. In other words, the Macbook can run everything off the external HD; operating system, software, files, everything. The documentation for SuperDuper recommends using a Firewire external HD but I'm using a USB 2.0 HD and it works just fine. The program is free and if you choose to upgrade by buying it then you are able to update your external HD very easily so it's always a perfect clone of your Macbook's HD (with the free version it can be done as well but it takes much more time and many more steps). The program was totally easy to run and it only took about 20 minutes to complete the process. Now I can breathe easy knowing that If my Macbook's HD ever dies (which from what I understand is the most common cause of death for laptops), I have a totally reliable backup which is as quick and as easy as simply restarting my computer. Here is the link to SuperDuper's site...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
BTW, on a side note, I originally included an external HD as part of my set-up strictly to access my music in order to let the Macbook's HD concentrate solely on running VV because I read this was a good solution for running the software more smoothly and making it more stable. In fact the opposite was true. For example, if I was accessing my music from my external HD and activated "clone deck" before the first song finished loading, VV would freeze up for about 2 minutes or so. If I did the same while accessing my music from the Macbook's HD the freeze would only last about 20 seconds or so. I should mention that I tried this scenario with 2 other external HD's and the result were always the same with the freezing issue so it wasn't just the one particular HD (and none of my external HD's "spin-down").
So in conclusion, I'm very happy with the piece of mind that SuperDuper gives me when playing out and I plan to buy the full version (as soon as I make some payments on my credit card and it's re-activated lol). I'd highly recommend using SuperDuper if you want to sleep better at night. I hope this info helps all you fellow Mac users out there.
P.S. - to the support team; should VV be freezing like it does when cloning a deck before the first song finishes loading? I understand that it's confusing for the HD to suddenly be asked to load the same file at the same time and this could be the reason VV freezes up. If the issue can't be fixed because of this then perhaps something could be written in the code that tells VV to wait until the first track is fully loaded before it starts cloning the track to the other deck?
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
BTW, on a side note, I originally included an external HD as part of my set-up strictly to access my music in order to let the Macbook's HD concentrate solely on running VV because I read this was a good solution for running the software more smoothly and making it more stable. In fact the opposite was true. For example, if I was accessing my music from my external HD and activated "clone deck" before the first song finished loading, VV would freeze up for about 2 minutes or so. If I did the same while accessing my music from the Macbook's HD the freeze would only last about 20 seconds or so. I should mention that I tried this scenario with 2 other external HD's and the result were always the same with the freezing issue so it wasn't just the one particular HD (and none of my external HD's "spin-down").
So in conclusion, I'm very happy with the piece of mind that SuperDuper gives me when playing out and I plan to buy the full version (as soon as I make some payments on my credit card and it's re-activated lol). I'd highly recommend using SuperDuper if you want to sleep better at night. I hope this info helps all you fellow Mac users out there.
P.S. - to the support team; should VV be freezing like it does when cloning a deck before the first song finishes loading? I understand that it's confusing for the HD to suddenly be asked to load the same file at the same time and this could be the reason VV freezes up. If the issue can't be fixed because of this then perhaps something could be written in the code that tells VV to wait until the first track is fully loaded before it starts cloning the track to the other deck?
Mensajes Sun 17 Feb 08 @ 12:13 am
deejaytomek
Thanks mate - i'll remember this
Mensajes Mon 18 Feb 08 @ 1:26 pm