There
have been several incidents inthe past in which an Institute member has
lost data due to a computer crash or hardware failure on a Macintosh that
had not been properly backed up. As a result, the files were permanently
lost. We would like to take this opportunity to remind you about the importance
of the Skirball Macintosh desktop backup system, and to explain a few
things about how it works.
Although you are strongly urged to keep all of your important documents,
data and Eudora
Folders on Saturn,
most Skirball desktop Macs are backed up to tape every night using software
from Dantz Development called Retrospect. This takes place at night after
8p.m. Should your Mac hard drive crash or become corrupted, or if you
simply delete files accidentally, they can then be retrieved from the
backup tapes .
The proces of restoring files is long, it may take a whole day.
If you have your files on saturn you can work with them using another
machine while your computer is being repaired and backup restored.
Also, getting replacement parts for your computer may take a week
or more.
The
backup system is not meant to be a permanent, secondary storage
but only an emergency measure. The backup tapes are kept for six
months only and then erased and reused. Therefore, you are encouraged
to burn your data to CD disks, store on DVD disks or other Magneto
Optical disks. One of the best solutions is to keep reduntant copies
of your files on an external FireWire drive
Do not trust your data to floppies, ZIP and Jaz disks. They are
very unreliable and due to their magnetic nature are subject to
corruption by magnetic fields, heat, humidity and static electricity.
You are welcome to use the CD-ROM
recorder located in the Digital
Media Center. Just remember to sign
up!
Computers that generate large amounts of data daily, such as these
connected to digital cameras mounted on microscopes, will not be
backed up due to limited capacity of the tape drives and time required
to move all that data over the network. These files should immediately
be burned to CDs, DVDs or selectively moved to your desktop computer
or your Saturn volume.
A
few important things to remember about the Retrospect backup system:
1. A computer is not automatically backed up just
by virtue of being on the Skirball Ethernet network. Special software
(control panel) called Retrospect Client needs to be installed and
activated in order for the computer to be recognized by the central
backup software.
2. Simply copying the Retrospect Client to your
computer will not work either. It needs to be activated by us first
and added to the client database.
3. The Retrospect Client relies on its name, number,
the IP address and the name of the hard drive and cannot be renamed
or moved from one machine to another. It will be invalidated and
the machine will no longer be backed up. If a computer is moved
between floors and is assigned a new IP address, its Retrospect
Client will become invalidated and will require reactivation. Also,
if a hard drive is renamed Retrospect will not back it up any more.
4. The Retrospect Client must not be disabled or removed from the
Control Panels folder, or the central backup software will not see
that machine on the network any more. We have seen several Retrospect
Clients disabled by users!
5. Do not ignore any Retrospect error messages!
Get in touch with us as soon as possible.
6. If a computer is backed up you should see a
message in the morning telling you that successfull backup has happened.
Therefore, if you do not see any message from Retrospect it means
that Retrospect software responsible for backups is either not installed
or inactive.
7. Your machine needs to be left ON, in order to
enable the Retrospect Client to do its work. Log out at the end
of the day if you can but leave it on.
8. We have not tested and do not support any screen
savers other than Dark Side, in particular, SETI @Home distributed
computing software has not been tested, and we do not know how it
may affect the functionality of the Retrospect Client. Therefore
do not use these on any machines that contain critical documents.
9. If a computer goes to sleep and doesn't wake
up in a timely manner then the backup script moves on to the next
client. This is mostly an issue under OS9 on older machines but
it may also affect some newer G4s as well. Solution: go to the Control
Panels: Energy Saver and slide the "Put the computer to sleep"
slider to Never. You can set it to turn the screen off to save the
monitor.
Go to this page to report problems
with Retrospect backup.
