It's called Backup Bouncer and like the bouncer in a bar Backup Bouncer is there to keep the patrons honest. It will let you know ahead of time if your backup system is letting you down in complex ways, like not copying metadata or is blowing out resource forks or resetting creation dates.

These are the sorts of things you won't notice until you've lost your original and for some reason your Aperture or iPhoto library won't run properly anymore.

Of course, even a defective backup is better than none.

I was happy to see that my main backup tool SuperDuper! passes the test with flying colours. (For full bootable backup, Mike Bombich's CCC (Carbon Copy Cloner) is back in the game as well, after a couple of difficult years, passing all tests as well - as a past donater, I guess I own CCC as well.)

That's great news as it means I don't have to test SuperDuper! myself . Indirectly I do test SuperDuper! by booting from my bootable backup after most backups and doing a bit of work just to be sure that the bootable backup really boots and really works.

But as good as SuperDuper! is for a whole drive bootable backup, is it (and CCC) awkward for backing up a directory or two. You need a second program to be moving image or music files back and forth between two computers. And this second sync program is a bigger problem.

My secondary tool is for syncing directories and moving anything from 500 MB to 50 GB of data around. I use a little application called MimMac which is very easy to use and inexpensive ($10/per computer).

But MimMac is a bit of a black box. We don't really know what goes on inside. Everything seems fine, but what exactly is MimMac copying and how well?

As the backups are not bootable, MimMac is more difficult to stress test.*

Here's the Backup Bouncer report to save you the trouble of setting it all up and running it yourself:

Verifying:    basic-permissions ... ok (Critical)
Verifying:           timestamps ... ok (Critical)
Verifying:             symlinks ... ok (Critical)
Verifying:    symlink-ownership ... ok 
Verifying:            hardlinks ... FAIL (Important)
Verifying:       resource-forks ... 
   Sub-test:             on files ... ok (Critical)
   Sub-test:  on hardlinked files ... FAIL (Important)
Verifying:         finder-flags ... ok (Critical)
Verifying:         finder-locks ... ok 
Verifying:        creation-date ... ok 
Verifying:            bsd-flags ... ok 
Verifying:       extended-attrs ... 
   Sub-test:             on files ... ok (Important)
   Sub-test:       on directories ... ok (Important)
   Sub-test:          on symlinks ... ok 
Verifying: access-control-lists ... 
   Sub-test:             on files ... ok (Important)
   Sub-test:              on dirs ... ok (Important)
Verifying:                 fifo ... FAIL 
Verifying:              devices ... ok 
Verifying:          combo-tests ... 
   Sub-test:  xattrs + rsrc forks ... ok 
   Sub-test:     lots of metadata ... ok 

Not bad. The failures in hardlinks and resource-files in hardlinked is similar to Apple's cp-copy command. Failure in fifo only happens in ditto. FIFO stands for first-in-first-out. As far as I can tell, FIFO is not mission-critical for personal/local backups.

What MimMac gets right that most of the other methods do not get right is metadata. So Benjamin is paying attention. Still not clear what copying engine he's using though.

What is good about MimMac is that it is very fast. What is not so good about MimMac is that you can't do a test run. Either you run your sync or you don't so you can't find out about conflicts or mistakes before you press go. The speed probably makes up for the risk.

I would like to recommend MimMac but can't due to licensing methods. MimMac relies on the esellerate engine for license verification and each license is tied to your specific hardware. If Benjamin goes out of business or just gets tired of MimMac and you upgrade your computer or your hard drive, you have no further access to the software. Full stop. Period. For core programs, I much prefer either open-source (commercial open-source is fine, it doesn't have to be GNU) or if not open-source, at least just a personal license code which will continue to work even if the developer decides to stop work. I've lost enough software over the years to developers leaving the business, that there is no way I want my core functions dependent on whether another person's whim or even health.

Moreover when you switch computers, all software which is tied to hardware either has to be unlicensed and relicensed (forget it!) or it requires emails and phone calls to the developer (one obnoxious developer once told me for his $25 utility as a courtesy he would allow me to license it on my new computer once, but next time I had to unlicense his utility or he wouldn't issue a replacement key - what do these developers think: their two-bit utility is one of five applications we own: this licensing system just doesn't scale and reminds me of the Lubyanka in Moscow).

The worst developer in Mac backup actually runs background spyware applications on your network full-time if you decide that you want to use his software. The problem is that the spyware not only spies but steals significant background cycles and is constantly pinging the inside of your network, creating no end of dead-end traffic. While the solution is speedy, slowing down my computer is not on. At this point, licensing this guy's software is extremely dicey: you need to give him special codes for your hardware (not even the standard ones) and if you're lucky it might just work. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. He's made using his software so painful that from being the best solution, he's become the worst solution - as well as the most expensive. I guess he's been taking lessons from the RIAA paranoid and self-destructive school of copyright.

So I am looking for an rsync GUI, paid or not. One rsync GUI can always be replaced with another in the worst case. Unfortunately rsync doesn't pass the Backup Bouncer test unless you do a special install which means you have to tinker on all your computers (slowing you down) and that a certain number of these GUI won't work as they will be defaulting to the built-in Apple rsync.

Here's a couple of candidates to save you the time of searching for rsync GUIs (there's a lot of abandonware out there):

• aRsync 0.41. I don't like that a simple rsync GUI is 4.7 MB - what are they hiding in there? I don't like the Pirate logo on backup software. This is the kind of software which could compromise your whole hard drive or send out your financial data. No to pirates or unknown entities. I don't like betas for backup or sync software either. This is an area where you need 100% reliablility. Moreover aRsync fails many tests including semantic links, hard links, creation date, fifo and metadata. Ouch.
• Simple Sync 1.1. I don't know how well SimpleSync works. Perhaps very well if you do follow the instructions for updating rsync. If not certainly it will work as well as Apple's rsync with. It's worth noting that Simple Sync is just 210 KB - that's about right for a wrapper - and that Kevin includes both his mobile number and a link to his main company's home page on the Simple Sync page. I'm feeling much better about using this script already.

Maybe we will build a self-contained advanced rsync GUI ourselves and release it so that we can get the right version of rsync and a GUI - and then we can share it with the world. For the moment, SuperDuper! and MimMac are keeping us safely backed up and synced.

Whatever you do, don't forget to backup!

At least once a week.

For those interested in specific backup strategies for Mac OS X for photographers and other media intensive users, I've written another article called The Backup Manifesto.

* MimMac is capable of bootable backups but I have more trust in SuperDuper! both for technical reasons and for licensing reasons as outline later in the article. On the other hand, if you are willing to accept MimMac's licensing you can probably take a pass on SuperDuper! and use MimMac for everything, saving yourself $28 to spend on a replacement whenever Benjamin decides to abandon MimMac or change his licensing and MimMac won't run on your computer anymore.

By Alec

Backup on Mac OS X: Testing MimMac with Backup Bouncer

Post from: Foliovision

Related posts:

1. The Backup Manifesto
2. How to create a network backup with Apple’s TimeMachine
3. Backup Router-Firewall for a Small Office: D-Link DIR-100 vs ZyXEL Prestige 334

I'd downloaded a 600 MB disk image to use with Parallels. The disk image came wrapped in a .rar format.

Unpacking the .rar file was very difficult.

• StuffitExpander crashed
• Forklift couldn't handle it
• Archive Utility just wanted to compress it further.

Finally I was able to unpack it with IAarchiver, slowly but certainly.

After unpacking, I was offered a directory with three files in it:

• image.img
• image.ccd
• image.sub

Clone CD img ccd sub files

I had no idea Windows used the archaic Mac .img format. It turns out that Windows doesn't. What I'd inadvertently downloaded is what is known as a Clone CD image. I was unable to mount it on my Macbook. No known solution or software for Mac OS X can handle Clone CD images. BIN and CUE files are no problem, but CCD files - there's nothing out there.

• DiskUtility wouldn't do it (error mounting the disk)
• Toast 6 wouldn't do it (although Toast did make me a coaster with the file when I changed the .img extension to .bin and used Copy Disk Image)
• Burn also made me a coaster, even after I followed elaborate instructions on renaming files and creating a fake .cue file
• Firestarter was a non-starter. It didn't want to use my DVD burner at all. In any case, Firestarter seemed confused about what to do with the files.

If one had a Windows computer with a CD burner nearby, the logical step would be to burn the .rar file to CD, move it to the Windows computer, mount it with the freeware Virtual Clone Drive (download) and burn it as a disk and bring it back to the Mac as a ready made CD. I didn't have a Windows computer handy - and it seemed pitiful that my Macbook with 10.5.2 couldn't handle a foreign disk image format.

I managed to convert the Clone CD .img / .ccd files to an .ISO file in the end though.

How?

Command line. Those command line addicts over on the Linux/BSD side of the fence have written a lovely utility called ccd2iso. It's a single command.

Unfortunately, ccd2iso is not included out of the box in Mac OS X.

You have to install MacPorts (ccd2iso might also be in Fink). If you haven't got MacPorts installed it's a bit of a drama.

First, you need Xcode. Xcode is the developer toolset.

If you install MacPorts without Xcode, you will be able to install it, but when you try to update you will get nothing. With DarwinPorts you will get this error:

sudo port -d selfupdate
DEBUG: Error installing new MacPorts base: 
shell command "cd /opt/local/var/macports/sources/
rsync.macports.org/release/base && 
./configure --prefix=/opt/local --with-install-user=root 
--with-install-group=admin 
--with-tclpackage=/Library/Tcl && make && make install" 
returned error 1
Command output: checking build system type... 
i686-apple-darwin9.2.2
checking host system type... i686-apple-darwin9.2.2
checking target system type... i686-apple-darwin9.2.2
checking for sw_vers... sw_vers
checking Mac OS X version... 10.5.2
checking MacPorts version... 1.6.0
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cl.exe... no
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.

So install Xcode as you were supposed to (I have Xcode installed on another Mac and thought I had it on the Macbook as well).

Breaking news

There is a workaround to avoid installing MacPorts, kindly provided by Jolyon.

Once you have Xcode installed, first you need to bring MacPorts | DarwinPorts up to date:

sudo port -d selfupdate

This takes a little while and generates a lot of messages: you are installing about a one thousand open source components, including Gnome, KDE and X11. I ran the updater a second time just to make sure that everything was caught the first time.

You know you're okay when you get this message:

The MacPorts installation is not outdated and so was not updated

DEBUG: Setting ownership to root

selfupdate done!

The next step is installing ccd2iso.

sudo port install ccd2iso

And to convert the rogue .img to .iso:

ccd2iso image.img mycd.iso

The conversion takes about ten minutes with a 600 MB file, but I can confirm that my disk image works as a perfect self-contained ISO. The .iso can be mounted in the Finder with DiskImageMounter and can be used directly in Parallels.

ccd2iso finished ISO

If you've already got Xcode and MacPorts installed, you're golden. You are two minutes away from converting your Clone CD image to ISO. If not, you have a 1 GB download ahead of you (Xcode) and some tinkering.

I wanted to have access to MacPorts on this computer in any case. An open source drag and drop converter for the Clone CD format for Mac OS X might be nice though. It would have been faster!

More discussion

emuforums: pscx

By Alec

How to Convert a Clone CD Image to ISO

Post from: Foliovision

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1. How to get HTTPD and FTP to play well together or SEO image management nirvana
2. How to create a network backup with Apple’s TimeMachine
3. Foliopress WYSIWYG Image Management now works in Safari