Just as a quick introduction; I am Paul Fletcher, the Service Manager here at Mac Outpost. As a techie, I have worn many varying hats over my 8 years as an IT Professional. I have a varied amount of responsibilities here at the store but, the primary one is that of being the customer-facing technician that records what you – the client – is experiencing with your machine and how our service department is going to best be able to resolve/assist you with your issue(s).
My primary goal with this blog and all subsequent entries will be to share with you the reader, the basics to having a stable, hassle-free, mutually agreeable experience with your technology. Of course, mainly as it pertains to your Apple computers.
Now this may come as a shock to you (or maybe not so much) that there are still a large amount of our clients out there who do not have a backup system in place or even more astonishingly (because they have one!) do not put into practice the external drive they have into regular use! This being said, it’s no wonder that at least once a week, I am faced with puffy-eyed, distraught people at my counter who all oddly enough know what the Folder with the flashing question mark means. Yes, you guessed it; a failed/failing hard drive. At this point, after finding out that they don’t have a backup or don’t use the one they have I provide for them their options for data recovery. This is also when I reach under my counter for the box of tissues. Let’s face it, data recovery is not cheap. It is time intensive and the utilities that are used are very expensive. And even with data recovery, nothing is guaranteed.
How could the woe-begotten client have avoided this? You ask. The answer is really quite simple. Now before I answer I want to quickly state that all external drives are a solution to this. The trick is, how do you make sure (especially for those of you who own laptops) that your backups are done regularly and the drive connected everyday to accomplish this? The answer for most of us, that are busy from the time we wake up for our day until the time we close our eyes, there is no sure-fire way to accomplish this. However, Apple has provided us with the perfect solution. It’s called the Time Capsule.
The Time Capsule simply put, gives you the functionality of a Class N Wireless dual-band router with a hard drive that starts at 1 TB in size and also comes in a 2 TB flavor. The dual-band functionality is great for those of you who have older machines or devices that communicate with an older wireless technology because it will not slow down the rest of your wireless network to accommodate for the slower devices. “But, I already have a router in my house.” you state, hoping to catch me off guard. Well, there are a couple of responses to that statement:
A) This maybe the perfect time to upgrade your wireless network at home and
A) If you have a new wireless router already installed at your house, you can in most cases simply join the Time Capsule to the existing network!
What you have is an external drive that you do not have to remember to connect your desktop or laptop to. As soon as you join your wireless network and configure the Time Machine application you are all set. From the moment of initial setup you no longer have to worry about your system being backed up.
I welcome questions and comments and look forward to my next installment here at the Mac Outpost blog. You can call me at the store or send me an email to paul@macoutpost.com
